I watched this video about comics.
I wasn’t aware of Nick Sousanis before. In his introductory remarks, he briefly describes a teaching exercise he uses called “Grids and gestures.” In a technical paper, Sousanis (2015) wrote:
In comics, not only are we concerned with what goes on in each frame or panel, but we also need to attend to the size and shape of individual panels, their orientation, and their placement within the overall composition and relationship to other elements of the page(.)
It struck me that this is something that is so missing from thinking about conference posters, even in my own writing.
Posters, like comics, are often made with distinct panels, but makers are mostly concerned about what goes into the panels, rather than how the shape, size, and placement of the panels themselves could show information.
Here’s an example: an old Little Nemo in Slumberland page. Think about what those ever lengthening panels signify,
Or this famous page from The Amazing Spider-Man #33.
Those four panels could be all the same size. But making that last panel so big shows that is a pivotal moment.
Poster makers can practice those layout skills using Sousanis’s grids and gestures exercise. It goes like this.
- Take a page of paper and something to write with. The page is going to show one day. It could be today, yesterday, a memorable day, any day you want.
- Divide the page into panels that represent parts of that day.
- In each panel, put something that represents the feeling of that part of the day.
I think you can make some guesses about how someone’s day went.
To adapt this to a conference poster, we might ask, “What does the shape of this project to this point look like?”
Was there a long boring grind? Was there a big “A-ha!” moment? How would that look on a page like above? Can you capture some of that in the final poster?
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