Link round-up for June 2020

Hey! Everything is still awful. If you are taking the time to read this, thank you.

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A typeface for the times: COVID Sans.

Hat tip to creator Felix Bernoully.

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Many poster creators would benefit from working with people whose specialty is art and / or design. But part of the challenge is making it typical, not exceptional. It is possible. Steve Cook wrote:

We have “normalized” including money for art and design within the grants we apply for. This past year our lab spent $15K+ on graphic design, fine arts, video production, photography, story boards, and animated shorts. A powerful way to increase the impact of the work we do.

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Which nicely segues into this month’s gem. This is a deep dive blog post on how to work with a science artist. Fifteen artists answer common questions! Questions include:

• How can I meet a science artist?
• Where do I start – how do I reach out to an artist?
• What questions should I ask?
• What can I expect from working with an artist?

Recommended!

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Magda Julkowska gives a nice seminar on data visualization, courtesy the folks who bring you Plantae.

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I’ve said a lot that the title of your poster is the most important thing on it. Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein does a close analysis of a great headline and why it matters.

(I)n today's news landscape, headlines circulate MUCH more widely than the associated stories.

The headline was, “Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide.”

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MyFonts has a guide to using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Their main message? “If you choose to set display copy in all caps, do so sparingly.” (My emphasis.)

That is to say, you probably do not need to set the long-ass title of your poster in all capitals to get attention.

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Research posters as done by 4 year olds.

Just one example here, there are more in the link!

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Krista Byers-Heinlein has a nice thread on electronic posters. Excerpt:

Landscape format pdfs require scrolling both vertically and horizontally - not great. We wanted something with vertical-only scroll, that would adapt to different devices (phone/tablet/computer)(.)

 

This example later in the thread shows the “scroll down” format well. It was created in Visme.

I’d like to think efforts like these validate my suggestion that that a single scrolling column probably works well for on online poster.

These posters remind me of Scott McCloud’s “infinite canvas”: experimental web comics where he took advantage of the fact that he could have a “page” on the web that was bigger than any printed page could ever be. A computer screen was conceptualized as a window, rather than a page, As we see more and more online conferences, it would probably be wise to revisit comics’ forays into graphic communication on the web.

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Nature looks at how scientific conferences are managing the pandemic and whether they can survive in the future. Posters appear briefly (emphasis added):

Researchers who have attended virtual meetings say that the meetings have several important downsides. Poster presentations can fall flat in an online space, and it’s difficult to have serendipitous encounters between sessions, which is where a lot of collaboration normally happens.

 

I think the pandemic will definitely force a lot of societies to push harder on setting up online experiences. But meeting in person has so many advantages that it's hard to imagine it vanishing entirely.