Link roundup for November 2014

November is the biggest conglomeration of posters in the world: the Neuroscience meeting. And there are always interesting poster-related tweets arising from that!

Here is a nice “Tips and tricks” for poster presentations blog post from Caitlin Kirkwood. She has obviously been to the rodeo that is neuroscience a few times:

(F)for those that appear in front of you haggard, with a glazed-over look in their eyes (the telltale signs of SfN-itis: too many posters, too little time), it is nice to have an abbreviated synopsis of your work ready.

Winner of “best new way to present a poster” (hat tip to MBF Bioscience):

Winner of “worst new way to present a poster” (hat tip to Jason Snyder):

Winner of “best new re-use of a poster” (hat tip to Rodrigo Braga):

Eric encapsulates how important the poster experience is to Neuroscience:

Feel naked without a poster tube. Thumb drives just don’t identify you as an #SFN14 attendee in the same way.

Jordan Gaines asks and interesting question about assessing your audience:

How do you like to assess someone's knowledge of your poster topic as you're presenting? Ask upfront, or read their body language?

The Cellular Scale has advice for poster audience members:

If you want a 5 min poster summary, ask for a 2 min one.

Neurd Girls ‏reports a crime to sfnpolice:

I’d like to report a criminal offense. Poster entirely in Comic Sans on bright purple background.

DrugMonkey reminds us of good design principles:

Font size people, font size. #sfn14 #oldeyes

Michael Carroll makes an observation on poster presenters:

Interesting seniority gradient within the poster rows here at #SfN14: students and postdocs at the posters, PIs and greybeards in the center

I’ve followed Neuroscience’s introduction of “dynamic posters” for some time now. Benjamin Saunders thinks people are still not making full use of the medium:

Seeing some better #SfN14 dynamic posters this year but most are still just a poster. On a video screen. Get it together people.

Jason Pipkin found one dynamic poster he liked:

Title, intro, and conclusions always visible while large central area used for displaying series of movies.

Then there was that flight out that was stopped by posters! Fear them! Fear the posters! (Hat tip to Joshua Burda.)

American Airlines flight grounded due to unruly poster-wielding SFN’rs!! So many posters!!!

Finally, a two part article by Erik Kennedy about designing user interfaces that has some good lessons for posters. I particularly appreciate rule 2:

(D)esign black and white first. Start with the harder problem of making the app beautiful and usable in every way, but without the aid of color. Add color last, and even then, only with purpose.

And rule 3:

If you want to make UI that looks designed, you need to add in a lot of breathing room.

Sometimes a ridiculous amount.

Rule 5 is particularly interesting, because it talks about text in a way I have never heard before, about combining emphasis (“up-pop”) with de-emphasis (“down-pop”). I think I might try this in some of my next posters.

This link goes to part one; this link goes to part two.