Five myths of poster design: The Hello PhD interview!
I’m on Episode 195 of the Hello PhD podcast! The subject, of course, is posters. We hooked the conversation around five “myths” of poster design, according to me.We got a lot of mileage out of just...
View ArticleWhat does your poster say after you take away the words?
Posters are a visual medium.You check if you’re using the visual aspect of the poster format effectively by taking away all the words. Without text, this poster by Recovery Health has nothing on it...
View ArticleThis Barbie is an astrophysicist: Humour on conference posters
You know, Twitter has many problems now, but it is still the best place for me to find posters like this. Click to enlarge! It in pink. And unabashedly so!This poster is by Natasha Latouf and I just...
View ArticleHow to win a poster competition on Hello PhD
The hosts of Hello PhD were generous enough to ask me back for a second kick at the can 🥫! This time, the topic was poster competitions.Have a listen to Episode 196 wherever you get your postcasts, or...
View ArticleLink roundup for July 2023
Margaret Hinkle is this month’s “poster reuse” winner:Baby in the office and you don’t have a blanket for tummy time? Turns out a poster is the perfect fix! Also doubles as a changing pad! Academic...
View Article“Nobody will stop you”: The viral machine learning poster
You’ve probably already seen this poster:“You can just put up a poster at ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning - ZF) and nobody will stop you.” Hail Eris!Daniel Severo’s tweet about this...
View ArticleLink roundup for August 2023
I wouldn’t have pegged the British Association of Drama Therapists as being into conference posters, but here we are.Unfortunately, I do think this presentation’s suggestions lead to some very common...
View ArticleYou are not “too good” to give a poster
Recently, Franck Marchis wrote:Received an email from a senior scientist (over 65 years) suggesting he might skip a prominent international conference if given a poster presentation. The sense of...
View ArticleReview: The Little Guide to Giving Poster Presentations
The Little Guide to Giving Poster Presentations is well named. It is, indeed, little.Perhaps too little.John Bond’s book weighs in at 150 pages, and they are kind of small pages, too. A fast reader can...
View ArticleWhy does my poster look different when it’s printed full size?
Maureen Stone was on a recent episode of the Policy Vis podcast talking about the intricacies of colour. I’ve talked here about how designing a poster on a computer screen is so different from a...
View ArticleLink roundup for September 2023
Best poster prize ever. Kristen Zuloaga wrote:My 8 year old judged posters from my lab and Zuloaga lab at local Society for Neuroscience conference.My grad student Emily Groom won him over with mice...
View ArticleCritique and makeover: I love that word, “Reform!”
In my new job as Program Director of DORA, I didn’t think that I would have many opportunities to scratch my itch for poster making. I was delighted when one of our colleagues, Alex Rushforth, said he...
View ArticleLink roundup for October 2023
“What do you think of German coffee?” This question is a great conversation starter at German conferences, writes Vicky Howe. Vicky wrote a blog post describing her recent poster, which moves away from...
View ArticleRecord your presentation and listen to yourself
I’ve been fortunate that in the last couple of years, I was invited to do some podcasts. I listened back to each of them afterwards.Yup, it was not fun. I became more aware of some of my speech...
View ArticleCell Bio 2023
How it started:How it’s going:Second photo from https://x.com/lenakumba/status/1731423282228867322
View ArticleA great conference poster is worth $1,000
Okay, the title of this post is a fib.A great conference poster is worth $910. On average. After talking about poster competitions on podcasts (like the Hello PhD podcast episode on “How to win a...
View ArticleAI-generated rat image shows that scientific graphics are undervalued
The big story on science social media last week was this figure: No, it doesn’t make any sense, and that’s because it was made with generative AI. The authors disclosed this, as journal policy required...
View ArticleBelated fifteenth blogiversary
That’s right, I totally forgot to mention that this project clocked 15 years last month!While posting has slowed due to my new job, I have no plans to discontinue this project. There is still so much...
View ArticleYour conference poster should have less than one thousand words
One of the biggest realizations I have had in the time I have been writing this blog was that on average, people want to spend about five minutes at a poster.If you are at the poster, you can develop...
View ArticleA simple way to assess conference posters shows you can do better than the...
A new paper by Khadka and colleagues has two interesting results.The first interesting result mentioned in the title of the article is a relatively simple way to assess conference posters. They created...
View ArticleLink roundup for August 2024
It’s been a minute on the blog! I haven’t finished with this project, just been busy! Shira Joudan writes about the transition from attending conferences as a trainee to attending as a supervisor:I...
View ArticlePoster sessions may reflect scientific progress more accurately than the...
I was listening to a podcast recently, and heard this:In an analysis of more than 300,000 scientific conference presentations, informal posters or talks that scientists often endeavour to turn into...
View ArticleSpin me right round like a record
I love papercraft on posters, and Caroline O’Donnell has used it cleverly on her poster.While I have a still photo in this post, you probably should see the video on LinkedIn to get the full effect of...
View ArticlePalm-sized poster
Handouts of posters at conferences are not new. But handouts that are hand-sized, well... I haven’t seen that before.Jake Wintermute shared this image, and wrote:(T)his image makes me want to go to a...
View ArticlePresenting to a pigeon
In big convention centers, it’s not unusual to find an interloper. Ben Filio wrote:You’ve heard of presenting your research to a general audience now get ready for… pigeon #sfn2024Little did he know....
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