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Type as technology
Australian science communicator Dr. Karl tells a story of going on vacation in the United States. They rented a classic 1957 Chevy and were going to drive the length of Route 66. Sounds romantic and...
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Using “Two wides and a tall”
I’m red-faced. I’ve perpetuated a myth.Since most people fashion their posters in blocks, I’ve said and written that people should avoid the “two wides and a tall” layout.The conventional argument...
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Link round-up for March 2021
The Perseverance rover team hid a message in the rover’s parachute. You can encode a message at Encode Mighty Things website. Here’s one I did: I’ll save you the stress of trying to decode it. It’s...
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The Better Posters book is on its way!
It’s happening! After a year’s delay, the Better Posters book is shipping – at least, my copies are! Of course, I’m still having mild panic about shipping my book at a time when world shipping is...
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When can you read the Better Posters book? Update!
While I encourage you to support local bookstores and my publisher (who, let’s recall, is offering 30% off when you pre-order when you use the code “POSTERS30” at checkout), the reality is that we all...
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Three things are at the core of good science communication
Very interesting report here about science communication. It tried to develop a scheme to asses what makes for good science communication, and came up with this summary diagram.The three key elements...
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Rejected blog names
For a while, I thought about whether I should give the Better Posters book a different title. Ultimately, I decided it made sense to keep the phrase “better posters” as the title. Enough people have...
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Sunday scraps: First book cover draft
“The cover should look like a poster,” my editor said.“That’s... a completely logical idea,” I said.I mocked up this.Needless to say, this is not a very good book cover. I doubt I would have sold a...
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Writing a “forever book”
One of the things I aspired to do in the Better Poster book was to come as close as I could to writing a “forever book.” I think I spotted the phrase in something written by Edward Tufte; maybe in his...
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The unboxing of the Better Posters book
Advance copies arrived yesterday!Love to say more, but I have lectures to prepare!
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Respect for posters
This is what respect looks like.I stumbled across this retrospective book that examines the advertising posters of Paris’s Belle Époque. It includes the work of artists like Alphonse Mucha and Henri de...
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Poem for my publisher
I was a little miffed when I saw this book coming out from my publisher, Pelagic Publishing.I was like, “Whoa. I never knew rhyming verse was an option!”I might have written a very different book if...
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Sunday scraps: Second book cover draft
This is another early cover concept for the Better Posters book.Much better than my “cover that looks like a poster” effort. But more iterations were to come...
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Designing The Perfect Invader website logo
Graphic design walkthrough! Not a poster, but still.A while ago, biologist Julia P.G. Jones asked on Twitter if anyone would be up for a simple little graphic design project. I said I might be able to...
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Little things make messes
Sometimes, I bet people wonder about why my critiques so often make fiddly little adjustments to posters. Surely such tiny little things don’t matter that much, right?Ever been someplace where...
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How a scientist wrote a book on graphics: Some things never change
Buried in the back of Starlog magazine #133, you’ll find one of my earlier appearances in print. And what am I doing? Complaining about graphics.Some things never change. A letter given the title...
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What the HEIC? WEBP is going on with image formats?
A while ago, I wrote about how fonts are technology. And like any technology, it changes. Same is true for images. I just learned about HEIC images. (I’ve read this is supposed to be pronounced “heek,”...
View ArticleConference posters books: the numbers
As far as I know, there have only been three books specifically about conference posters ever. I wondered how they compared.TitleAuthorYearPagesFiguresScientist’s Guide to Poster PresentationsPeter J....
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