Critique: Small town fungi goes to the big city

Today we have a trio of posters from Stephen Kutos. Click to enlarge!

This is the first of the posters chronologically, and already shows a lot of sophistication in the design. There are usually few white on black posters at large conferences, and they stand out from the pack. 

The poster has a clear visual hierarchy: the network diagrams get the most real estate, and there is a clear “What’s the story?” summary right next to it. 

The diagrams look like art. Abstract art, mind you, but they are visually striking and different than bar charts and scatter plots. But while they look great, I think they might have needed just one sentence to describe what they show, and how.

The methods get less space, and things like logos and QR codes are present but small and not distracting. (The QR code is no longer operational, though.)

A common problem of many posters is trying to fill every part of the poster with content. Stephen showed restraint by leaving space on either side of “So, what’s the story?”

The orange and blue are easily visible to someone with common colourblindness. Hooray for accessibility! I am a little concerned about whether there is enough contrast of the orange against the dark background, particularly in the title. That could be a different barrier to accessibility.

This poster was sent some time ago. When I reached out to check that it was still okay to show, Steve generously sent two more! 

From time to time, I have experimented with making a poster with the title on the left. Stephen manages it more successfully here than any of my attempts! And I love the split tree / mushroom graphic.

While the first poster might have leaned a little too far away from explanations, this one might lean a little too far into explanations. This comes in at about 700 words. Better than most, but this might be a bit tricky to read in five minutes. This poster also has a lot of small icons that need deciphering. There are not more graphs than the first poster, but the graphs are more complex.

Not sure if this is a PDF conversion issue, but a couple of elements needed more separation to avoid touching:

And here is number three: 

One of the nice things about seeing several posters from the same person or lab is that you can see common stylistic elements. This one pulls some features from the other two. It is reminiscent of the first in its structure and strong visual hierarchy (big summary up top, smaller data, still smaller methods, very small logos), and use of colour. It resembles the second from its use of icons throughout.

There is a big visual summary at the top, some smaller detailed data underneath, still smaller methods shown graphically, and the fine print neatly corralled at the bottom. The word count comes in at about 300, making this very manageable for a quick read.

Only a couple of things come to mind as things I’d like to try. The dotted lines used for the central row to organize the sampling sites and separate the graphs work better than solid lines, but I might have tried going even thinner. 

The colours work well, but they are a bit muted. I might have tried to make one of the main colours a bit brighter to add just a little visual pop; maybe the green. 

Thanks to Steve for sharing this set of fine work!