Latest modern science | Critique: Immune cells - Si Bejo Science
critiquesMatteo di Bernardo reached out to me on Twitter to ask for feedback on this poster (click to enlarge):
My first and fiercest reaction is, �Ditch the abstract!� Shorter text and a visual may entice people more than a big block of small text, which sucks away energy like a tombstone in a graveyard.
Likewise, the conclusions seem to have a lot of writing for only a couple of data figures. The conclusions are written as a long list of bullet points. An alternative is to turn the first level of bullets into subheadings. Then, there are a few short bullet lists instead of one massive list.
I had a hard time figuring the main take home message of the conclusions. The poster shows a bunch of evidence, but doesn�t make a single definitive statement that ties it all together. (Matteo replied that the data was not very conclusive, making a punchy concluding statement difficult.)
Speaking of headings, the underline should be removed from the headings. Bold does the job.
I am never crazy about logos bookending the title, although this is not the worst case I�ve seen.
The references are chewing up a lot of space, so I would look for ways to abbreviate them. Perhaps they could be shortened with an �et al.� instead of a complete list of every author, or omitting titles or articles. Remember, the point of a reference on a poster is to allow someone to locate a citation unambiguously, and you don�t need every piece of information in a journal reference to do that.
The figures would benefit from captions. Currently, I have no idea what those images mean.
I would also try lightening the dark box around the western blots. The line could be thinner and more subtle, perhaps with a gray instead of a hard black. Similarly, I might try removing or lightening the horizontal lines in graphs, and changing the red in the bottom graph to something in the blue/green palette the rest of the poster is in.
Matteo asked, �Does the color scheme work? Seems a little bland to me...� I replied, �You want bland. Or, if you prefer, subtle. Colour is very, very easy to overdo.� It may be better to use colours in the images on the poster, rather than bringing it on the background and text.
I do like the ample space on this poster. The use of space is done well enough that I would remove the three boxes around the columns, and just let the margins divide the text.
My first and fiercest reaction is, �Ditch the abstract!� Shorter text and a visual may entice people more than a big block of small text, which sucks away energy like a tombstone in a graveyard.
Likewise, the conclusions seem to have a lot of writing for only a couple of data figures. The conclusions are written as a long list of bullet points. An alternative is to turn the first level of bullets into subheadings. Then, there are a few short bullet lists instead of one massive list.
I had a hard time figuring the main take home message of the conclusions. The poster shows a bunch of evidence, but doesn�t make a single definitive statement that ties it all together. (Matteo replied that the data was not very conclusive, making a punchy concluding statement difficult.)
Speaking of headings, the underline should be removed from the headings. Bold does the job.
I am never crazy about logos bookending the title, although this is not the worst case I�ve seen.
The references are chewing up a lot of space, so I would look for ways to abbreviate them. Perhaps they could be shortened with an �et al.� instead of a complete list of every author, or omitting titles or articles. Remember, the point of a reference on a poster is to allow someone to locate a citation unambiguously, and you don�t need every piece of information in a journal reference to do that.
The figures would benefit from captions. Currently, I have no idea what those images mean.
I would also try lightening the dark box around the western blots. The line could be thinner and more subtle, perhaps with a gray instead of a hard black. Similarly, I might try removing or lightening the horizontal lines in graphs, and changing the red in the bottom graph to something in the blue/green palette the rest of the poster is in.
Matteo asked, �Does the color scheme work? Seems a little bland to me...� I replied, �You want bland. Or, if you prefer, subtle. Colour is very, very easy to overdo.� It may be better to use colours in the images on the poster, rather than bringing it on the background and text.
I do like the ample space on this poster. The use of space is done well enough that I would remove the three boxes around the columns, and just let the margins divide the text.
