Interview on the PolicyViz podcast
I recently spoke to Jon Schwabish (author of Better Data Visualizations, reviewed here) on the PolicyViz podcast, and I’m happy that the episode is now available wherever you listen to podcasts! Jon is...
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The strange case of a “Martian insects” poster
Last week, I wrote about why posters should be reviewed a little more stringently than they usually are. I put out a call on Twitter for posters that people thought should have been nipped in the bud...
View ArticleSale!
The Better Posters book is on sale from Pelagic Publishing until December 5! Use the code CHRISTMAS30 at checkout to get 30% off.Strictly speaking, it’s all Pelagic titles that are on sale, so check...
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Posters should not be rated like Yelp reviews
WHhn I was on the PolicyViz podcast, there was one joke I left on the floor that I wish I'd told. When Jon asked me about poster competitions, I should have said, “I know: academia isn’t competetive...
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Link round-up for December 2021
Antonia Hadjimichael has a blog post, “Five tips for creating visually appealing scientific posters.” It contains some material familiar to readers of the blog. It is always great to see ideas spread!•...
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Critique: Particulate matters
Alexandra Lai is a repeat customer of the blog. She was kind enough to share her work some time ago. She wrote, “I appreciated your critique so I am coming back for more!”Well, when someone asks, I...
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The New York Times COVID-19 serpent
Opinion is split on this New York Times graph:This spiral is showing the same thing as this:A lot of people were dunking on the circular top graph. Zach Freed, who wrote, “Literally no reason to make...
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Link roundup for January 2022
I have seen a lot of repurposing of fabric posters, but this one is surely the cutest: Ferran Nadal-Bufi writes:Award winning poster on peptide-based drugs to target cancer becomes play mat for tummy...
View ArticleOnline conferences offer many benefits, but online poster sessions still suck
Since 2020, most academic conferences have been online. A recent paper on conferences found many positive effects from online conferences. In short:More people overall.People from more places. More...
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Link roundup for February 2022
Bruce Kirchoff, author of Presenting Science Concisely, has a nice blog post on strong scientific posters. You know, the ones that can bench press twice their weight. He discusses two...
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Belated blogiversary
Ask any parent. Teenagers are difficult. This extends to blogs. I’ve been so caught up with teaching that I missed the thirteenth blogiversary of Better Posters at the start of the month!Just a couple...
View ArticlePosters are big in Japan
A forthcoming article about conference presentations is remarkable. It is the first paper I have ever found to show a greater probability of a poster being published than a talk.The publication rates...
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Graphic design basics: Expressive typography
In the movie Carbon:The Unauthorzied Biography, the filmmakers asked, “What does carbon sound like?” “Carbon Rising” is such a beautiful and surprising piece. This is carbon's journey through the...
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Link round-up for April 2022
How many visitors can you expect to your poster in a virtual conference? This paper suggests about 10.Six hundred ninety electronic posters (ePosters) were visited by over 7,000 unique visitors. Each...
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Conference dress codes, or, “Twitter outrage of the day”
Making the rounds on Twitter today an image of a dress code for a physics conference. Here’s the top result as I write this. Click to enlarge.The top tweet from David Smith calls it, “the most...
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Lecture Breakers #121
I’m on the Lecture Breakers podcast this week!I saw host Barbi Honeycutt on a YouTube video, and heard about her work with teaching in alternative formats besides lectures. I reached out to see if she...
View ArticleAcademic conferences need "Codes of Public Health"
2020 was a year of conference cancellations.2021 was a year of online conferences.What will the 2022 conference season be like? I’m not sure.On the Better Posters Twitter account, I have been tweeting...
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Using artificial intelligence to create posters
Back in February, a presentation at Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference proposed “PosterBot”: an artificial intelligence (AI) for making conference posters. The...
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Reading bar graphs is harder than we thought
One of the most powerful ideas in statistics is that you can summarize an indefinite amount of data with just a couple of numbers. For example, a mean and standard deviation can tell you a lot about...
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Other easy reads don’t use bullet points. Maybe your poster shouldn’t, either.
Bullet points are overused on conference posters. But many people recommend them, often claiming that bulleted lists are “easier to read.” If bullet points were truly easier to read, you should see...
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