Critique: Dem bones dem bones, dem jaw bones...

Today’s contribution comes from Ram Vaidhyanath! Click to enlarge:

Radiology’s whol deal is taking pictures, which makes it a very visual field. This poster takes advantage of that, and uses lots of high quality images. Those are excellent.

The title is big and extremely visible from a distance. Same with the headings. The bars under the title and heading is a nice visual touch, too. It helps break up the space a little. One possible issue is that the bar under the title is about the same length as the word “Pictorial,” making it look like a botched attempt at underlining the word. The bar might be a little better if it was either lengthened or shortened so that it didn’t “attach” itself to the word above it.

The layout is clear in the order of expected reading, but there are a couple of things that are a little frustrating.

That the three right columns align the pictures in them precisely makes the single picture in the left hand column stand out, and not in a good way. In a rather jarring way. The text of the top paragraphs in each column are the same length, six lines. The diagram of jaw anatomy could be lined up with the others by removing the “Anatomy” heading, which isn’t doing a lot of heavy lifting here anyway.

The discussion section is the most problematic. The “top” of the heading sort of pokes up above the “bottom” of the three right columns.

More bothersome is that the lines of text in the discussion are long. Very long. About 35 to 40 words long, which is about three times longer than we’re used to reading. And the slightly small point size, which is an issue throughout the poster, is even more noticeable in the section that is the hardest to read.