Science Online 2013: Impressions Matter #sciostyle

Last week, I attended Science Online 2013. There’s not much “online” about posters, but there was a relevant session, co-moderated by Liz Neely and Holly Bik: “Impressions Matter: balancing art & design in research and science communication.” Say design, and I’ll be there.

Luckily, we had the awesome Perrin Ireland in the room for the event, and she live-scribed it in her distinctive style (here and here). Click to enlarge!

The one thing that was a little frustrating to me was that there were at least two fairly distinct topics  that were mushed together. Some of the session was talking about fashion: the clothes you wear, the shoes you take to conferences. Science Online had more shoe angst than any other conference I’ve been to by a long ways. Some of the session was talking about graphics: the typefaces and colour choices and spacing decisions that you make when preparing a slide presentation or conference poster. Yes, there are some broad issues where these two things overlap, but they are different skill sets. I am almost as disinterested in my clothing choices as I am interested in my graphic choices.

The other frustrating this was that Better Posters didn’t make it on the “favourite resources” on the live scribe board. ;) (Just kidding, Perrin!)

You can get a recap of the session through the Storify below or here. Unfortunately, Twitter was hiccuping at the time, so the Storify is a bit slim compared to others.