17 July 2014

Critique: a poster about posters

This was up at this year’s annual American Association of Law Libraries conference: a poster about a poster (click to enlarge).



I like the idea of this, but I don’t see it as a terribly well designed poster. Too many colours, and too few elements are aligned. The reading order is chaotic, starting with a column, then flipping to rows.

The big red suitcase dominates the poster, but it seems to be one of the less important points of information.

Some of the content is also weak. “Choose software for layout,” for example, has little indication of what software is better than others, or why. Why not use Microsoft Word? (At least, I’m guessing that is what they are trying to convey with the barred red circle.) Further, I have no idea what the middle two icons are.

The poster is 41 inches high, and the (sideways) text on the right suggests that it couldn't be carried on several American airlines. Most of my posters are 42 inches tall (width of our plotter printer in our building), and I’ve never had to check my poster tube.

The fabric poster shows why I still prefer paper posters: fabrics are hard to get to hand as cleanly as paper posters.

Hat tip to Megan Lynch for drawing my attention to this, and to Sarah Glassmeyer for taking the picture.

1 comment:

Asphericity said...

FWIW, Frontier Airlines at least is cracking down on carry-on sizes. They made me pay to check my poster tube a few months ago because it didn't fit in the carry-on sizer (despite the fact that it easily fits in the overhead). If this trend continues, I wonder whether the era of carrying poster tubes will come to an end.