Critique: baby heads

Today’s poster comes to us courtesy of Laura Steinmann, presented at the 2018 American Nurses Association conference. Click to enlarge!

She writes:

I developed a 4 foot by 8 foot poster which is crammed with great info, and that’s the problem. ... The poster is less data and more instructional, based on two publications I wrote to teach providers how to recognize asymmetry.

Laura went on to say that she used a poster template provided on a commercial site. Coincidentally, the last talk I gave on posters, one of the questions from the end was about whether I knew any sites with good poster templates. This is a good example of why I try to steer people away from templates. People slap up templates that are... not necessarily very good.

Let’s look at just the template background, with the content removed:

The space alloted for the title and author is tiny. The space between the columns, and the margins around them, are also tiny. A poster maker would be better served if those areas were larger:

I’m still not crazy about this as a template for a poster, but I think it would have gotten someone off to a better start.

I agree with Laura’s self assessment: this poster is crammed. I often complain that people try to turn a manuscript into a poster, and in this case, there are two manuscripts residing on this poster. While I absolutely sympathize with the desire to tell a complete story, the complete story exists in the papers. They do not need to exist in the poster.

The first column is perhaps both the best. It is the best because it has a clear, wonderful diagram that Laura created (highlighted at right). Laura’s diagrams are very good, and I wish they were bigger and more prominent. They convey so much information.

The first column, unfortunately, also features some inconsistent typesetting. And it is crammed. For instance, several paragraphs in the first column might be cut down to a couple of sentences: “Infants’ skull growth is affected by internal factors, such as the normal malleability of the skull. Skull growth is also affected by external factors, such as the positioning of infants.”

There are about 1,800 words on this poster. While I personally never aim for some particular arbitrary target number, other people have had good success with posters containing a few hundred words.

Ruthless editing is hard. But that is what this poster needed.

Update: Laura sent me her revised version of the poster. Click to enlarge!

So. Much. Better.

Yes, it is still crammed. I would still want to cut down the number of words and resize some things. For instance, the references might be printed in a smaller point size. That would free up some space to make the takeaway messages in that column bigger and bolder for the viewer.

But the title is readable from a distance. The images are bigger. There’s less distracting background. The typography is consistent. It’s more inviting and interesting looking.

I particularly like the thin line running along the left side of the headings. It provides a little definition to the columns, but is subtle, and is a nice graphic touch.