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Link roundup for July, 2018

Starting off this month with a “Done in one” advice article on poster design by Tullio Rossi. I disagree with a few very minor points (bullet points are not your friend), but overall very good!


Hat tip to Anna Clemens.

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A five tweet thread from Tolpa Studies from the recent Twitter conference, #BTCon18, about visual literacy.

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This guide on making graphs more readable is very good. One of the key things in this graph makeover and why it works is the designer listened to what the scientists said about it. They used the expertise to defined the graph’s “talking points”, so to speak.


Hat tip to Garr Reynolds.

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I recommend against tables on posters almost always. But if you must have a table, make it a nice table. This is a nice animated makeover of a table by Joey Cherderchuk from Dark Horse Analytics.


Hat tip to Catherine Crompton

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Picture in Portal is a course for making scientific graphics. Hat tip to B. Haas.

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Lauren Oldach invites us to look and contribute lab logos in this Twitter thread.

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Julia Jones liked this poster:


I like the simplicity, but I am not a fan of how I have to read the poster in a reverse “S” pattern.

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Richard McElreath shared this lo-fi poster, saying:

In a world of look-alike LaTeX conference posters, the hand-written manifesto gets my eyes every time.


Hat tip to Jarrett Byrnes.

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Tom Patterson describes a situation where text is preferable to graphics.

My boss recently asked me to design a symbol for Clothing Optional Beach, a challenge that I gleefully accepted. But I couldn’t come up with a clear and tasteful solution. In this case, conveying the message with text worked best. It also kept me out of trouble.

Hat tip to NeuroPolarBear.

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A Twitter thread about posters on screens versus posters on paper, particularly with regards to the issue of waste. Andrew Pruszynski calls screens:

Massive environmental burden for effectively no gain.

The thread is lively. Hat tip to Justin Kiggins.

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Another poster that appeared in my Twitter timeline, by Adam Stone. It’s an excellent pastiche of a favourite science web comic. Click to enlarge!


Hat tip to Lorna Quandt.

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You normally have to submit an abstract when you register for a poster. Hilda Bastian has tip for how to write a good abstract.

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The only good way to do 3D charts.


Hat tip to Hadley Wickham.

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How to make a colour palette in R. Hat tip to Flo Débarre and Meghan Duffy.

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I made one.


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