Worst of the worst?

Worst venue?

Overheard at a conference over summer: a poster session at another institution that decided to hold a poster session outdoors. in the height of August.

Apart from uncomfortable heat, unpredictable weather, wind catching posters... What could possibly go wrong?

Worst poster?

On Twitter, RuthFT shared “the worst conference poster I have ever seen.” It graced(?) the halls of the International Symposium on Archaeometry.

In fairness, Ruth noted:

It is very hard to do a poster for a heavily interpretive subject. Always too much text, but how else to explain/justify interpretations?

True. But even this could be improved by:

• Putting the title in the upper left corner instead of the upper right.
• Separating the rows to indicate that you were supposed to read across instead of down.
• Better still, making the reading order go up and down instead of across, with space between each set of columns.
• More careful proofreading to fix things like “objetives” instead of “objectives” in headings.
• Keeping the type consistent; in particular not switching to italics in the Results section. 

Several of those changes only required paying some attention when hanging the poster. I almost wonder: