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Make the punctuation in your poster titles smaller
The occasional MyFonts email newsletter gave me a tip I didn’t know before. When you have large type, punctuation marks usually look too big. If your font is bigger than 24 points, they recommend...
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Season’s greetings for 2020
Nope. Nothing poster related today. I’m gathering steam for January, when I hope to be blogging a lot in preparation for the release of the Better Posters book.Meanwhile...Peace on Earth.Good will to...
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Link round-up for December 2020
Dave Rubenson explores the differences between a presentation and a journal article. Much of the advice applies to posters, except moreso.• • • • • Robert Hurt, an illustrator from Caltech with many...
View ArticleThe Better Posters advent calendar
This is the month.If all goes well...This is the month the Better Posters book should finally see the light of day! Publication is scheduled for 25 January 2021. So, just like last month, which has an...
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Lessons from jigsaw puzzles
For the holiday season, this showed up under the Christmas tree: It’s going as well as can be expected. It occurred to me that puzzles have lessons for posters. Because puzzles tell us about how we...
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Sunday scraps: Scale diagrams
In the Better Postersbook, I wanted to show the value of using a relatable objects for scale. Because it’s one thing to say “an animal was 4 meters long” and another thing to understand viscerally what...
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The loss of posters is a loss for science
Late last year, it became know that two of Charles Darwin’s notebooks are missing, presumed stolen.One contains what has become an iconic scientific image. It’s sometimes called the “I think” sketch,...
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Workshops, parties, anything: Bring Better Posters to your campus
Next month, hot on the heels of the release of the Better Posters book (available for pre-order now!), I will be giving a workshop at the University of New Hampshire.I’m looking forward to this...
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Better Posters book delayed again
Due to everything that is going on in the world, not least of which is a global pandemic, the Better Posters book release has been delayed again. This time, the delay is probably not going to be as...
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Critique: Chromatic numbers
Today’s contribution is from Tássio Naia. It was recently presented at the 14th Latin American Theoretical Informatics Symposium. Click to enlarge!I’m pleased to have a poster than leans more towards...
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Data isn’t math: Narrative stances matter
You have a survey that asks people, “Yes” or “No.” These are two mutually exclusive categories. There is no third option, like “Unsure.” Therefore, if you know that 35% of people picked “No,” you know...
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Link roundup for January 2021
Let’s start the year with this awesome interview with Nadieh Bremer. Nadieh has created very intense, high data density visualizations. For example, check out her plot of astronomical 🌗 data. What...
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Pre-order Better Posters and get 30% off!
The Better Posters book continues to inch closer to reality! Today, Pelagic Publishing showed the first teaser images of the inside of the book: And even better, they announced that you can pre-order...
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The Cosmo rule is dead
For years, I’ve used covers of Cosmopolitan magazine to illustrate a point.Cosmoalways had a sex story, and it was always featured in the upper left corner of the cover. That’s where people who read in...
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“What’s it for?” and other questions
Today, I am going to be a lazy blogger and mostly point to ideas in other people’s books.In The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, Seth Godin returns to this question repeatedly:“What’s it for?”This is...
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Coming to National Biotechnology Conference #NBC2021
I’ll be talking about making conference posters (and other graphics!) at the National Biotechnology Conference in May! Specifically:Better Posters: How to Design and Present a Conference Poster9:00 AM...
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Four critiques, on video
Last week, I gave a presentation online to the University of New Hampshire. They recorded it, and have generously made the recording not only available to their campus community, but to everyone.You...
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Link roundup for February 2021
Today in, “Please don’t.”Spotted by Ben Bolker. Hat tip to Dani Rabiotti.• • • • •Because so many people make their posters in PowerPiint, I see a lot of SmartArt on posters.Echo Rivera picks apart the...
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One dozen years!
The Better Posters blog is now twelve years old! And with the Better Posters book coming out next month, I think I can safely say that this coming year will be big and bright for this blog!Thank you...
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