Link roundup for August 2013

Katie M. Everson has created The Scientist’s Guide to Poster Design. One resource there that you won’t find here is an tutorial for Adobe Indesign.

Also extremely good is this recorded webinar on poster design, modestly titled, “Poster Presentations that Rock!”

This month’s “run. don’t walk” link is to a compilation of Nature’s Points of View column. It is awesome. Hat tip to Biochem Belle for sending this my way. There are compiled columns about:

• Composition and layout
• Using color
• Elements of a figure
• Improving figure clarity
• Multidimensional data
• Data exploration

Here is a good set of conference-going tips from David Shiffman over at Southern Fried Science. Sarah Semmler has even more.

Meanwhile, Mark Rom calls conferences “lumbering dinosaurs”. It’s mainly a criticism of “panels” (what some conferences might call “symposia”) more than anything else. But poster sessions are mentioned:

Scholars Prefer Presentations, Not Posters

For conventional conferences, this is probably true. (It is, as I’ve documented a few times on this blog. - ZF.) To the extent this is true, it is probably due to the weight of tradition and the fact that authorities largely determine who gives papers and who gives posters (‘‘I’m sorry to inform you that your paper proposal was not accepted, but you may present at a poster session.’’) This perception is probably reinforced through cultural norms that give the signal that ‘‘real scholars’’ give panel presentations, while the posters are merely a sympathy prize for the less fortunate.

A summary of some of his points are at the College Guide blog.

This retrospective on how scientific papers have been typeset over the past 350 years is worth a peek for thinking about designing with text. Hat tip to Anna Sharman for this one.

Why do we need such big text on posters? Gary Foster nails it:

That's why all students are taught to use big fonts on posters. It's hard to read when tipsy ;-)

But big should not be the sole criteria for font choice (from What we should call grad school):

I Can Haz Cheeseburger is not to be outdone:

You might remember that I am a big fan of the TV show Samurai Jack. Fellow fans, rejoice! It’s coming back in comic form.