Link round-up for November 2017

The link roundup after the massive Neuroscience meeting is always fun. Just ask Shaena Montanari, “How big is that meeting?”

Was at the bar tonight in DC and saw poster tubes... I’m not even a neuroscientist and I knew. #SfN17

With tens of thousands of posters, I find classics like this, from Steve Ramirez:

Always check your dimensions before printing.

I have written before about how people incorporated video into their poster demonstrations (QR codes, iPdas, etc.). But this is the first time I have seen anyone do a virtual reality (VR) demo at a poster:

Advice from Caitlin Vanderweele:

Convince your labmate to carry the poster tube.

Justin Kiggins noted:

Incredible how many posters at #SfN17 have "Preprint available at @biorxivpreprint" & a DOI/QR #asapbio

Coffee & Science asked:

Poster session didn’t go well?

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Everything old is new again. Fabric posters have been done since the 17th century:

The thesis of François Marescot, printed on silk, is on display at the British Musuem. Hat tip to Raychelle Burks.

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A couple of weeks back, I wrote a bit the relative accessibility of posters. I am pleased to be directed to this preprint on making scientific presentations of all sorts, inclduing posters, more accessible.

Hat tip to Simon Goring and Toby (itatiVCS).

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May Gun has been curating a list of unusual scientific graphics.

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I don’t think I’ve mentioned this conference guide by Errant Science from late last year before .

Hat tip to Helena and Prachee Avasthi.

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Today in type crimes:

Punctuation makes a difference. Hat tip to John Lopez and Mark Siddall.

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Better Posters Twitter account temporarily down

The automated Twitter feed for this blog (@Better_Posters) is currently down. I had logged in to make a few cosmetic changes to the feed. When I did, I was prompted to add a birthday, so I picked the day the blog went live. Little did I know that since this was ten years ago, it didn’t meet Twitter’s minimum age requirement of 13. This instantly got the account locked. I have put in a service ticket, and will post here when the feed is back.

Reading gravity

Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ. I recently learned that something I’ve called “ the Cosmo principle ” on this blog is an actual thing that proper designers talk about, except they have a different name for it. They call it “reading gravity.” The picture above is sometimes called a “Gutenberg diagram.” Apparently it was given that name by newspaper designer Edmond Arnold (interviewed here , where he refers to the “Gutenberg principle”). I’m not completely sure about this; need to do some more reading. What this image calls the “primary optical area,” I’ve usually called the “sex story,” because that’s invariably what occupies that position on every cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. The “terminal area” is usually what I’ve called the “take home message.” What I find usually ends up in the lower left corner, or “weak fallow area” as its called here, are my methods section. And that’s fine, because those are usually only of interest to the afficiandos. This diagram is wort...

Link roundup for October 2016

Contrast matters, and web page designers are starting to forget that . Kevin Marks delves into how grey text is becoming so prominent on the web. Marks notes something I’ve talked about before: the difference between the screen and a poster handing on a wall. (W)hen you design in perfect settings, with big, contrast-rich monitors, you blind yourself to users. To arbitrarily throw away contrast based on a fashion that “looks good on my perfect screen in my perfectly lit office” is abdicating designers’ responsibilities to the very people for whom they are designing. Hat tip to Robert J. Sawyer. It’s great when you have a lab to go to a conference with. But not everyone has a lab. Here are tips for how to rock a conference solo . An occasional reminder that if your poster hangs for several days, create opportunities for people to give feedback when you are not there: Hat tip to Ciera Martinez . Stephen Heard is unimpressed with most conference badges . This led me to another discussion o...

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