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Sunday scraps: Third book cover draft
We went through a few iterations of the “icon” cover that I showed last week. I asked to see a few colour variations and got them.The red was my favourite.Some subtleties that I appreciated: The...
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Posters from before they were famous: A dream project
Recognize the woman below? (It might be easier if you’re American.)It’s federal politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, eleven years before she was elected to the American House of Representatives in...
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Variable fonts: A quick introduction
Recently, I talked about type as a form of technology. I was more interested in the idea of the shapes of the letters and numbers and the amount of special symbols, so overlooked something kind of...
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Link round-up for April 2021
My fellow biologists will be interested in BioIcons, a library of free to use icons from Simon Duerr. Over 1,600 icons so far.• • • • •René Campbell shows off the before and after of one of her old...
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Never use a graph you can’t explain
Irena Chelyseva asked if people preferred box plots or violin plots. She said, “I guess there is no right answer.”I think there is, if not a right answer, a justifiable answer for why some people...
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Custom Better Posters bookplates
Here’s one for the book nerds. For people who ordered the physical copies of the Better Posters book, I have a little something for you. I have just ordered some custom bookplates for you! Some of my...
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Solving the Pokémon problem for posters
My editor on the Better Posters book forwarded the copy of Jon Schwabish’s book Better Data Visualizations. (I have not read it yet, but hope to soon!) If you remember of one the rejected cover designs...
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Online posters at National Biotechnology Conference
This week, I am pleased to be speaking at the National Biotechnology Conference! I’ll be presenting on Thursday, 20 May, at 8:00 am Eastern Daylight Time on poster design.Some of the conference content...
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The Better Posters book has shipped!
Yesterday, a good friend of mine posted this on Facebook:Proof of life! That’s right, the book has shipped early!You still have a few days to “pre-order” the book from the publisher at a 30% discount....
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Using poster assignments in courses
This post is for my fellow educators. How can you best use posters in a course?There are a few reasons you might want to have students make posters for a class. Probably the biggest one is practice for...
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Critique: Mercury in peatlands
Yes, the Better Poster book launches today, but you know what? There’s no better way to celebrate than by doing the thing that, if I’m honest, has become the absolute heart and soul of this project:...
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Link roundup for May 2021
I’m increasingly convinced a major secret to making a good poster is editing– whether you edit yourself or are lucky enough to have someone else do it. Ian Dunt worked as an editor for years, hated it,...
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Poster sessions in street view: Review of Artsteps
TL;DR: Artsteps provides some nice features for virtual poster sessions, but it is hampered by clunky navigation and limited resolution to view posters.• • • • • When many conferences flipped to online...
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Join me on IAmSciComm starting 7 June 2021!
I have just taken over the reigns of the @IAmSciComm rotating curator Twitter account! This is my second time hosting, and am gratified to be asked back.Here is a rough schedule for the week.Monday, 7...
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About that frontispiece...
I want to explain something about the frontispiece to the Better Posters book. The poster shown there is bad. I’ve said as much in this blog post.So why, in a book about improving posters, is the very...
View ArticleBetter Posters book reviews
In this post, I’ll be compiling reviews of the Better Posters book.Reviews are extremely helpful to get the word out on books. I thank everyone who takes a few moments to review or rate the book.June...
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Poster or talk? Decide based on your content
If I was going to present this research by Francisco Guerrero at an academic conference, I would never want to give it as a slide talk.Click to enlarge!This single image along would make a great poster...
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Posters are a visual medium, but I am always looking for ways that people with visual impairments can get data in a poster session. This paper describes a technique for creating structures that can be...
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Put your favourite data in the spotlight
Recently, I talked about how data sets like this are very hard to turn into posters:Projects like this are usually better as a slide talk, where each panel can be on an individual slide.But you don’t...
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The 2021 #BlackInX poster winners
One of the good things that emerged in 2020 was a series of grassroots Twitter events highlighting the achievements of Black scientists. Recently, these combined forces for a #BlackInXConference...
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