publisher tips

It’s a small link round-up for this holiday season, but I have one I want to share, particularly given that last week’s post was musing about how we train students in graphic design. This article talks about teaching data visualization to kids. Fourth grade students, in fact. That’s what makes it a perfect holiday post, because kids love holidays. Or something. We might be taught how to read line, bar, and pie charts in elementary school because they have been around longer than others and are used the most. ... I’m not foolish enough to think I could teach 30 kids an array of new graphs in one afternoon, but I could at least help them understand that there’s more to the world than line, bar, and pie charts. The post also talks about a Match-It game for data visualization that looks interesting. And for a lighter touch, here’s a graphic artist’s breakdown of all the Marvel movie posters . That wraps up the year for the blog. Next year will be big for this blog. I have some very ...

This blog exists to help solve a problem: that academic conference posters are ugly. But I am under no illusions that this blog is going to fix the problem. So, what would move the dial the quality of conference posters? When faced with this kind of question, I often see people say, “We should include this in our training for students!” As an educator, I never want to be the person to say we shouldn’t train students. I’ve done it myself, often. I support this sentiment, but I’m wary of calls for “more training,” for two reasons. First, suggestions for “more training” make me worry about mission creep. Over time, I’ve heard that students need more training in statistics. And in writing. And in ethics. And in grantsmanship. And in social media. And diversity issues. And in dealing with media. And in public outreach. And so on. Don’t get me wrong, these are all worthy topics where I think training would be beneficial. But there is only so much we can realistically expect to make st...

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers features a fantastic battle scene: the battle for Helm’s Deep. There’s a lot of reasons why it works. The scale and physicality of it is awesome. But there is one factor that is underrated. In the DVD commentary, director Peter Jackson talked about watching famous sieges and battles of film, like Zulu . He said that what he learned from those was that the secret was all in the build-up . The movie spends a lot of time making sure that the audience understands the situation. The fortress is literally set against a mountain, creating the impression of “backs against the wall.” The city is outnumbered, with hundreds of defenders against thousands of attackers.  And you see that army of thousands marching in. Not doing anything at first. Just standing there. Then thumping their spears and yelling. More waiting. And then the army charges and all hell breaks loose and it is on . And when those orc charge and start throwing ladders up against the for...

Today's poster is a contribution from William Elaban. This was not for a conference, but a class. Click to enlarge! Now, I have to apologize to William here, because my first reaction to this poster is not a kind one. But sometimes, my first reaction to a poster is: “Blow it up. Blow it all up. Blow it all up and start again.” This poster has deep structural issues. There is too much text. The reading order is all over the place. When the problems are that big, you want to see a fresh page. But first impressions can lie. Then I calm down and start tinkering. And by following some of the usual design principles, the poster slowly but steadily gets better. The first thing I did was get rid of lines. Underlined text and boxes were immediately banished. Headline case was replaced with sentence case. Next, I tackled the table. I gave it a more standard format, with just horizontal lines separating the top, header, and bottom. I cut the large number of decimal places down to a more reas...