#PlantBio20: “Get your message across” workshop

I’ll be speaking at the Plant Biology 2020 meeting next month as part of the workshop, “Get your message across: a guide to artwork and illustrations for better impact and clarity.”

I will be joined by Magdalena Julkowska and Patrice Salome. They will be hard acts to follow!

If you are attending that meeting, please join me! If there is anything you would like me to address, @ me on Twitter or shoot me an email.

29 July 2020. Don’t miss it!

External links

Plant Biology 2020 workshop: Get Your Message Across: A Guide to Artwork and Illustrations for Better Impact and Clarity

Plant Biology Worldwide Summit

Link round-up for June 2020

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

• • • • •

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.

• • • • •

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!

• • • • •

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.”

• • • • •

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.

• • • • •

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.

Review: Academic & Scientific Poster Presentation: A Modern Comprehensive Guide

Full disclosure: This book was published after I had started the process of writing my own book on posters. I wanted to write my book my way, and didn’t want to imitate Rowe’s work. I bought Rowe’s book, but put it aside until my manuscript was handed over to my editor and my book was well along its own path to publication. That’s why there has been no review until now.

That I have my own book coming out means I am not exactly a dispassionate observer here. You may gauge my comments about this book accordingly.

Nicholas Rowe’s Academic & Scientific Poster Presentation is only the second book I have found specifically devoted to academic conference posters. The first, from 1999 (reviewed here), hasn’t aged well, so it was past time for a new book on the topic.

Near the end, in Chapter 12, Rowe admits the book is the end result of his own frustration:

(T)he author (tired and mildly disappointed after a mediocre poster session) began to wonder about the actual benefits of poster presentation and what could be done to improve the current situation. ... This book is one output of the research(.)

 

It’s telling that Rowe describes the book as a research product. The style of the book is conceptual, theoretical, and analytical. (There is even an equation.) Here’s a taste of the style:

Figure 3.3 shows the way that poster presentation facilitates transactional exchange around a given topic (for a more detailed discussion on this subject, see Rowe 2012). No robust empirical studies have been conducted into the level of knowledge transfer that is achieved by the poster medium...

This is more a book of scholarship about posters more than it is advice on how to create posters. For example, Rowe reproduces one of the earliest examples of something that might have been at a “poster session” from 1946!

Rowe repeatedly mentions how little research has been done into conferences in general and posters in particular. The lack of research is strange, he notes, given that the cost of making posters probably reaches into the billions of US dollars per year, and is the second most common form of academic communication.

There is some “how to” advice. If you pick up this book looking for advice on how to make a poster, chapters 6 to 9 on design, and chapter 12 on presentation, are the most relevant. Like most of the book, the advice tends to be on the theoretical side. The advice sometimes delivers very specific details on how to do things in PowerPoint, which is can be a somewhat jarring shift in gear.

The book has 26 figures. Most appear to have been made in PowerPoint. This would not be surprising, since many of Rowe’s specific recommendations concern how to do things in PowerPoint.

As you can see here, most of the figures are low resolution mock-ups of posters, not final, polished versions. Chapter 6 has examples of completed posters, but they almost thumbnails (4 and 7 examples to a page) where the detail is hard too see.

One of the ways I check for “currency” is whether links still work. Some diagrams have QR codes, so I scanned a couple of those. They still work!

There is only detail which I disagreed with.

(T)he annual convention of the Modern Language Association of America, the MLA, is said to be the largest academic conference in the world, and in 2014, it had more than 10,000 attendees and 810 sessions and lectures

This is in no way near the largest. The 2014 American Geophysical Union fall meeting had 25,920 registered. The 2014 Neuroscience meeting had 31,250 in attendance. This claim was, unfortunately, on page 2! Fortunately, this did not auger ill for the rest of the book.

Rowe’s book is alone in its scholarship of poster presentations, and ends with several potential research topics for the future. I absolutely agree with his point that posters and poster sessions have been an overlooked topic for research. Rowe’s book is an excellent starting point for any scholar who wants to start examining an untapped vein of research about research.

Related posts

Review: Scientist’s Guide to Poster Presentations

Reference

Rowe N. 2017. Academic & Scientific Poster Presentation: A Modern Comprehensive Guide. 170 pp, 26 figures. Springer: Cham, Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61280-5

Four bad habits of academics that cause ugly posters

There are many reasons that academic conference posters are often bad. Some of it is lack of experience. But even with some experience, many academics have some habits – often deeply ingrained habits – that work against good posters.

1. Academics are verbal.

Think of a generic, stereotypical “smart person” or “academic,” and you probably think of books.

Any kid who likes reading is sort of pegged as “the smart kid.” Books, reading, and writing are almost inextricably linked with our ideas of intelligence and academia.

What does this mean for posters?

Academics are largely a selected group of people who love words. Maybe too much. So they write and write and write and write.

Because academics love words and have a lot of experience writing, they forget that reading is hard. Kids start reading maybe around 6. Even after ten years of practice, teenagers would still struggle with most academic articles.

But posters are a visual medium.

Academics, inexperienced in communicating visually, struggle to shift to communicating in a visual medium. For instance, they will write out a prediction rather than drawing a graph of what they expect the data to look like.

2. Academics are cheap.

Academics are weird about money.

I get it. Education in many places is not cheap, and undergraduate degrees can leave a student deep in debt. Grad school doesn’t pay well. You learn to be careful with money. And that mindset sticks with you.

I remember hearing one professor describing how he was in the grocery store, debating what to buy. It was something like, “Butter or margarine?” Something nice versus something cheap. And then he said he realized, “I’m a tenured full professor. I could probably buy out most of this aisle.”

Academics are often reluctant to shell out cash for anything that would help poster design.

Over and over and over again, I see academics say, “I’m looking for free tools,” “Where can I get free software?”, “It has to be free.” I think this contributes to why so many people use PowerPoint to make posters: because they already have it on their computers and they don’t want to buy anything else.

They won’t shell out money for graphics software like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. They won’t pay for fonts. They won’t hire an artist or designer.

3. Academics are busy.

Academics have time management issues. We have multiple, constant demands on our time. We have teaching to do, we have meetings that we are expected to go to, we have to squeeze in our research and writing somewhere.

In fairness, this is only part “habit.” Part of it is the reality of being in an academic setting. But “busy-ness culture” that works its way into your mindset. There’s an old joke about academics going to grab a cup of coffee somewhere so they can complain to each other about how busy they are. Being busy is seen as a virtue.

Good graphic design takes time. But “busy” academics are often unwilling to put in the time to design and refine the work, because there is always more work to do.

And on top of that, some kinds of “busy” are expected more than others. “I’m busy collecting data” will earn you more nods and approval than, “I’m busy picking just the right typeface for this presentation.”

4. Academics are detail oriented

For many academics, every data point is sacred.

When I asked others about what habits got in the way of communicating visually, this was was the most common answer by far.

There are many factors that contribute to this bad habit.

First, data is hard to get. People have egos, and by showing lots of data, they are showing off how hard that have worked. (See bad habit #3 above.)

Second, academics operate in an environment were everyone is trained to be skeptical and critical. If you put up a bar graph of averages, someone will ask if the data are normally distributed. If you put up a regression line, someone will remind you of Anscombe’s quartet or the Datasaurus dozen. So people want to show all their data as insurance against people who see summary statistics as a place where flaws can hide.

Those two factors mean that even experienced academics have this bad habit. But many people making posters are often early in their careers, and they are faced with a third factor that contributes to “demoncratizing” data

It takes experience to develop that “view from 30,000 feet” perspective. They may be doing one small slice of research that fits into a senior professor’s long term research master plan, and they don’t know the big picture. When you’re not sure what is important or not, it is extremely difficult to edit.

Habits are hard to change. But identifying bad habits is at least a starting point to cultivating good habits to replace them.

Problem #1: Academics are verbal.

Possible solutions: Draw and sketch. Get a whiteboard in your office. Collaborate and work with graphic designers and artists.

Problem #2: Academics are cheap.

Possible solutions: Normalize spending money on visualization and design. Put money for “visualization” in grants - graphics created for a poster can be used in many other places!

Problem #3: Academics are busy.

Possible solutions: Block out poster making and put it in your schedule instead of working it into cracks made out of cancelled meetings. Hire someone to work on your poster (also helps with solution in #2.)

Problem #4: Academics are detail oriented.

Possible solution: Put summaries on poster, but bring detailed graphs on paper or mobile device to show to skeptics. Edit other people’s work for practice. Always be asking, “What is the main point here?”

Thanks to the Lifeology slack group for discussion!

The power of pictures: America 2020

This post is not meant to make you comfortable. It contains a lot of images that range anywhere from  unsettling to terrifying. Just putting that out there before going on.

This is not a political blog, but I don’t want to continue with “business as usual” here with the fear, pain, and turmoil that is going on in the United States this week. This is where I live and where a lot of my readers live. I want to take a moment to say:

Black lives matter.

We are not out of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

American democracy is at risk.

But this blog is about the power of visuals. Photographers have been brilliant in documenting America in 2020, vividly distilling turbulent times with unforgettable images.

Patricia McKnight’s photo of Wisconsin voters. 7 April 2020.

Alyson McLaren’s photo of nurses counter-protesting in Denver. 19 April 2020.

Jeff Kowalsky’s photo of white man in the face of state police in Michigan’s capital. 30 April 2020.

Nathan Aguirre’s picture of Deveonte Joseph in his graduation gown during a protest in St. Paul. 28 May 2020.

Nick Swartsell’s picture of Cincinnati protest. 29 May 2020. (But he says, “Please stop using this photo to shame.”)

Julio Cortez’s picture of Minneapolis. 29 May 2020.

Artist and photographer unknown. A sculpture called “To serve and protect,” from Salt Lake City, Utah, after protests against police violence. 31 May 2020.

Richard Grant’s picture of police pointing a rubber bullet gun at a black girl in Long Beach, California. 31 May 2020.

Martha Raddatz’s tweet of the Lincoln memorial. 2 June 2020.

• • • • •

I don’t think verbal descriptions could capture how dire the situation this moment is for America. If you had shown me these not long ago, I might have guessed they were from some overblown movie.

The lesson for posters? Use more photos.

I may add to this post as I spot more photos. If you want to suggest an addition, email me or tweet @Better_Posters.

Update, 29 June 2020:

Lawrence Bryant’s picture of an armed St. Louis couple confronting peaceful Black Lives Matters protesters. 28 June 2020.

There are many pictures of this incident. Many show only the woman, including the first I saw making the rounds today (by Lauri Skrivan, fifth from top here). I prefer this one because it shows both man and woman, and importantly, who the guns are being drawn against.

• • • • •

Update, 25 July 2020:

Robert McNees says of this picture, “At what point is something too literal to be a metaphor.” 14 July 2020.

Portland. This photo is making the round on Twitter without credit. This tweet has the earliest timestamp I have been able to find, so the picture was probably taken the night or early morning of 23-24 July.

Update, 27 August 2020:

The California wildfires meets COVID-19. Photo by Noah Berger. Hat tip to Rupert Myers.

Update, 29 August 2020:

There are many pictures of this protest on the last night of the US Republican National Convention (27 August 2020). This particular image is from here.

Update, 22 January 2021: Yes, these are from a while back.

 

From after the 2020 election.

External links

An interview with the college senior behind the iconic photo of Wisconsin’s pandemic election

'Everyone Was Screaming at Them.' The Story Behind Those Photos of the Counter-Protesting Health Care Workers
Michigan man in now-famous Capitol protest photo: 'I didn't scream in anybody's face'
This is a graduation. No wonder they wore caps and gowns.
US riots: Rubber bullet gun pointed at child at Long Beach protest

Link roundup for May 2020

An old PowerPoint or Keynote slide deck won’t protect you in a pandemic. But an old poster can.

Hat tip to Janet Stemwedel for realizing:

Thing I haven't seen yet this pandemic but which I suspect already exists: cloth face masks made from old cloth conference poster.
Possibly with matching sundresses.

When I tweeted I would pay money for that, Alexandria Hughes replied with the picture above. Outstanding!

• • • • •

And the end of April, Amy Frietag posted some art that cropped up in her neighbourhood, saying “Sure is a sign of the times.”

I’m fascinated by this, because it shows the power of a visual.

The sculpture is obviously showing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. But SARS-CoV-2 didn’t really exist in the public imagination even a few months ago. If you had put up a white ball with red spikes in February or even March, I doubt people would have thought, “coronavirus.” It’s because of the illustration made by CDC illustrators Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgins that we now have a shared visual “identity” for the virus.

And it is definitely the Eckert and Higgins illustration that is the source material here. Because a virus doesn’t have colours. There is no particular reason to make a sculpture of the virus white with red spikes, except because the CDC illustration is white and red. Eckert and Higgen chose those colours to signal that the virus was a serious threat, not because there was any scientific reason to pick them.

• • • • •

So research conferences are cancelled. Now what?

Hat tip to Melissa Vaught.

• • • • •

How to use bold type effectively.

That’s only one example; the article has more!

• • • • •

Make your own Penguin Classic book cover.

This was only done as a demonstration! I have been loving working with Pelagic Publishing!

Lessons from make-up

In theater, the viewers are often far from the action, and lighting is not always perfect. To make sure everyone can see what’s going on – even the people in the last row who might not be paying that close attention – theaters around the world have developed distinct styles of make-up to communicate performances clearly to people in the back.

Beijing opera in China.

Kabuki theatre in Japan.

Commedia dell’arte from Europe.

Broadway in the US.

And burlesque.

The task faced by posters is much the same. You have to communicate to people in the “back row.”

This is a graph with no make-up. Click to enlarge!

This graph might be just fine in a printed journal. Everything is there. It’s high resolution, and would probably look just fine if professionally printed. But put that on a poster, and it will vanish, just like a stage performer without make-up seen from the back row.

This is a version of the graph that reaches out to the person in the back row.

The biggest change is filling the box with a colour, so now the box reads from a greater distance. The symbols are bigger. The lines are thicker both around the box and in the very wide whisker caps.

But the graph above might be a case of “everything louder than everything else” (to borrow a phrase from Jim Steinmann). It is definitely visible from a distance, but might be too much. There is no visual hierarchy that emphasizes the point.

The point of make-up isn’t to make everything bigger. It focuses and emphasizes. Usually that means drawing attention to the eyes and mouth. Make-up isn’t supposed to emphasize your lines, your pimples, your age spots, or pores. Indeed, de-emphasizing some features is one of the major attractions of make-up for many people.

Make-up and graphic design bring emphasis using some of the same tricks: colour, contrast, and size. Whatever you want to highlight, might it colourful, high contrast, and a little bigger.

Let’s say that you wanted people to be able to quickly see the averages in your box plot. You might make a graph a little more like this.

The saturated red symbol for the average pops out from the background. You can see those symbols from the back row.

Reordering the bars helps to show a pattern in data.

The boxes are still filled and still visible from a distance, but the making them more pale means that they are more visible in a close read: someone who comes right up to the poster and wants to see details.

The whisker caps are thin for the same reason.

But what if you wanted to emphasize the range of data instead of the central tendency? You would emphasize different parts of the box plot.

The whiskers end in high contrast symbols that bracket the range of data. Now your attention is drawn to the maximum and minimum.

The boxes are still filled, but are thinner to emphasize continuity with the whiskers.

I did not tinker with the axes at all in any of these. I wanted to focus on the presentation of the data. There is surely more that could be done to make-over the axes and labels so they would be more appropriate for a poster.

So when you are doing “make-up” on your graph, ask yourself:

• What do you want to emphasize? (“Everything” is not a valid answer!)
• Does it reach the person in the back row?

Beijing opera picture from here. Commedia dell’Arte photo from here. Kabuki photo from here. Nala makeup from here. Burlesque make-up by Frankie Fictitious.

This post inspired by Justin Stewart.