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Link roundup for January 2023
Michelle Francl asks why posters are second-class presentations. I could give many reasons to answer that question today, but Francl’s article finds some surprises about poster history.The original...
View ArticleEven award-winning posters don’t follow best practices
I have a short little project analyzing years of award winning posters from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), which hold some of the largest scientific conferences in the world.Nothing against the...
View ArticlePlease visit the gallery
After years of blogging, even I have a hard time tracking down some of the interesting posters that have appeared here.So The Better Posters Gallery is now open.This isn’t meant to be exhaustive...
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Arts and disease
I was scrolling through the #SICB2023 hashtag for the 2023 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting. Among them was this gem from Kathleen Lu. Click to enlarge!Kathleen is an...
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Upcoming presentations, early 2023
Incoming!If you’re part of the University of New Hampshire community, I’ll be giving the first of two presentations on 15 February 2023 on poster and presentation design. This event was rescheduled...
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“The Value of Visuals in Science Communication” by Mark Belan
On February 8, illustrator Mark Belan gave a talk at McMaster University for the Sherman Center for Digital Scholarship. It was a wide ranging talk on design, and even contained a few slides about...
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How fast do fingernails grow? A graphic makeover
Years ago on my general blog, NeuroDojo, I wrote a post about how fast my fingernails grew. As part of that post, I made this graph: I created this graph in OriginLab, and it is clear enough. It’s very...
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Critique: Limpet or leave it
This week’s contribution comes from Louise Firth. It was presented at the International Tidal Reef Symposium (#ITRS2023) in January. Click to enlarge!I am a big fan of using the techniques of comics on...
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Link roundup for February 2023
Even though online conferences seem to have lost almost all momentum in 2022, papers describing online conferences from 2020 to 2021 keep coming.The poster session was important to the planning of the...
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The annual tradition continues: the Better Posters blogiversary
We made it. Fourteen years, my friends! That’s a lot!Having been in a pandemic for a few years, I don’t take it for granted that a project will make it another year. So I’m glad this one has.One of the...
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Plastic octopus
This is not timely post. But join me and step into the Wayback Machine with me, to go back to 2017. I stumbled across this award winning poster from Stephanie Harris. This is from the Association for...
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Conference posters in movies: Awake
The opening minutes of the Netflix movie Awake (2021) take place in a secured research building. How do I know?Posters!You can see them in the right side of all of these screen shots. There are a few...
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Don’t make your figures like journal figures
I’ve written about the importance of respecting reading order on this blog many times. English readers generally look at the top left of a page first, because that’s where we have learned that text...
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Canva revisited
I reviewed Canva back in 2020. Canva has introduced many new features since then, so here are a few quick updates on the platform. Size seems to have increased, but is still limited. I still can’t make...
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Link roundup for March 2023
It’s time for you monthly anthology of quick hits on things that are somehow tangentially related to poster, poster sessions, and conferences!• • • • • There are going to be quite a few book reviews...
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What shall we do with a missing poster?
This was the plan: This was the reality.A plain sheet of paper with hand drawn lettering (possibly done with a Sharpie) saying, “Disgust and religion, ask me about it!”I wondered, “What do you want to...
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Review: Creating Effective Conference Abstracts and Posters in Biomedicine:...
I started this blog back in 2009. But unbeknownst to me, a trio of authors published a book about conference posters around the same time. Somehow, Creating Effective Conference Abstracts and Posters...
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Review: Building Science Graphics
If I hadn’t written a book on poster design, Building Science Graphics might be the book I would recommend to people who wanted help creating posters.The book is not about posters, no. It’s not about...
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Accessibility doesn’t happen by chance
Today, there is an encore presentation of work on conference presentation accessibility I helped with. This work was presented back in January at the European meeting of the International Society of...
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Link round-up for April 2023
A well executed poster in comics style:Poster by Roger Ort. Hat tip to Antonia Hadjimichael.• • • • •Pop culture reference? Hmm...Wait, interactive papercraft?Well...Work by Fitzy. She nailed one of...
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