Critique: SoDA

The commercial printer, PhD Posters, has a gallery where this is described as, “One of the best I’ve ever seen – perfect balance of color and line. Even the figures match the color scheme!” (Click to enlarge.)


This is a very nice poster indeed. The consistent colour scheme is indeed a simple, but underused element of poster design. It indicates that the authors honed their graphics specifically with the poster in mind, and that they didn’t just dump figures prepared for a journal article or slide onto the poster.

Is there room for improvement? Maybe some small ones.


The column widths are uneven. The width of the first column is shown by the horizontal cyan bar in the left and center columns. Fortunately, in this case the unevenness is so slight that it’s not noticeable at first. Still, it’s surprising given how much attention has been paid to the poster.

Otherwise, the major question is whether so many lines are necessary. The layout is so crisp that nobody is likely to have any problems following the flow through, making the numbers unnecessary. Similarly, the horizontal diving lines seem to serve little purpose. The vertical dividers are more understandable, given that the authors chose to set their text ragged right.

Finally, some figures are set up in boxes, but others are not. And the line heaviness of the boxes are inconsistent, with the ones on the right more prominent that the one at bottom center.

Here’s the poster with some of these possibly extraneous elements removed.


I’m not sure whether the edited version is a substantial improvement, but I think it does point out that when the basic layout is solid, a reader doesn't need a lot of help in deciding what to read next and won’t be confused about which elements belong together.

The gallery has many other interesting posters, with some innovative layout designs.

References on posters

Technical poster are often similar in their structure to technical manuscripts. But a big difference between technical presentations – posters or verbal – and technical papers is that there are very rarely any rules for posters other than, “Make it fit within the defined space on the poster board.” Technical manuscripts often have extraordinary obsessive and detailed rules.

Poster presentations have only a few loose, generally accepted practices. Everything else is up for grabs.

References are incredibly important in technical papers, but should they be handled the same way for posters? I know some of my colleagues who have said that if a poster doesn’t have any references, it’s an automatic fail. On the other hand, I have had some posters with no references (though not in a long time).

In general, you probably shouldn’t have as many references as in a full manuscript. A poster is not intended to be a complete literature review. The point of references is to give an indication that you’ve done due diligence in reading the literature. Audiences will rarely want to copy down the references to check up on them, which is often a major point of references in a paper.

Experiment with different ways of incorporating references. Instead of having Harvard style references with all the compiled references at the end, how about having short references in the main body of the text? Instead of putting (Faulkes 2006) in the main text and sticking the full reference at the end like this:

Faulkes Z. 2006. Digging mechanisms and substrate preferences of shovel nosed lobsters, Ibacus peronii (Decapoda: Scyllaridae). Journal of Crustacean Biology 26(1): 69-72.

Try something like this in the main text: (Faulkes 2006, J Crust Biol 26: 69). It’s enough information that anyone can locate the reference if they really want to.

One of my favourite sayings is, “Science is what you can get away with.” This is particularly true of poster presentations.

Poster presentation tools

PowerPoint presenters get wireless remotes with laser pointers and built-in timers to to help them give their talks. What do poster presenters get?

We get a stick.









If you think a telescoping pointer is just a little too nerdy, you can always fall back on the old standby...

Ask E.T.

Edward Tufte is rightfully famous for his books on graphics. There is thread on his Ask E.T. forum that specifically deals with poster presentations. There are many good thoughts and links contained within. (And I say this not just because I wrote a couple of the posts in that thread!)

I have no doubt that Tufte’s name will come up in many subsequent posts in this blog when the matter of designing graphs for posters comes up.

Critique: Turbine tips

The following poster comes from Design of Scientific Posters, where it is billed as “well designed.” (Click to enlarge.)


Indeed, there is much to like about this poster. There’s not a lot of text, and the layout is straightforward. There is, however, room for improvement.


I appreciate that the authors attempted to lay the poster out in a grid. But the columns are uneven, with the middle slightly wider than the outer ones.

The spacing problems are vertical as well as horizontal, notably in the left column. The text threatens to intrude upon the bottom figure, which is puzzling given the conspicuous gap after the first figure. It would have been very easy to move the text between these figures up. thus evening out the space.

The text describing Figure 4 at the bottom of the middle column is separated from the actual Figure, at the top of the right column. This is one would be quite hard to fix. If the small bit of text goes into the right column, a gap is created at the bottom of the middle.

The authors have tried to enhance the distinction between the headings and the main text by colouring the headings. The concept is good, but enhancing the typographic differences between the two would be more effective. This could be done by making the sizes more different, making the headings bold, or even set in a different font.

Some of the text could be tightened up, too. For instance, one heading says, “Tip size dramatically affected cooling.” “Affected” is vague. Why not, “Tip size dramatically increased cooling,” or “Tip size dramatically reduced cooling.”

The composition of this poster is solid. It just would have benefited from one last, final tweak. It is a little frustrating, however, that a poster with these sorts of problems is put up as an exemplar. Even if it is much better than most.

Set your own

Most posters for presentations are made by amateurs. They are made by researchers or students or other professionals who have never learned how many picas to an inch.* That’s perfectly understandable, and I don’t expect every poster presenter to embark on a detailed study of typography before drawing up a poster. But recognizing that there is a body of knowledge, a discipline of serious craft around typesetting and layout created by disciplined practitioners must only help.

Here is a list of things that make professional typesetters cringe, over at FontFeed. This list includes capitals for emphasis, incorrect dashes, dumb quotes (smart quotes shown), and more.

The one guideline that is contentious for poster layout is whether or not to justify the text. On a large poster with multiple columns, there may be advantages to the crispness of justified text. The trick becomes finding a good balance in column width and font size. More on this later.

* Six.

Break from the herd

If you’re looking for a way to set your poster apart from the pack, splurge on a font.

The vast majority of computers, particularly Windows machines, come with a standard set of fonts. People rarely change them. When I grade student papers, I can guess with pretty high accuracy whether they use Windows Vista or XP by what font they used, since the default changed between those two versions of Word. This means that if you use something other than the fonts that came with your computer, it will give the poster a slight, subtle distinctiveness that can serve well.

For example, the font Helvetica was widely used for decades. There was a point were it was overused, and became nearly synonymous with standardized, depersonalized corporate imagery. But when TrueType fonts were added to Windows 3.1, Microsoft chose a different sans serif font as its standard, namely Arial. Personally, I think Helvetica is the more elegant font of the two. Among graphic connoisseurs, Helvetica’s reputation is undiminished, albeit controversial. It may well be the only font to ever have a feature length movie made about it

Since Helvetica isn’t a Windows standard font, you don’t see Helvetica as much any more. And there’s the opening for making a poster that is clean, readable, but ever so slightly distinctive. You can easily buy Helvetica online. (Other fonts providers are available.)

If you’re one of those who thinks Helvetica is too clinical, there are many other sans serif fonts to pick from. How about Univers or Futura?

Of course, I’ve used Helvetica as just one example. If you like serif fonts, how about trying something like Garamond or Baskerville instead of Times New Roman? (Actually, Alley recommends against Garamond, arguing it is too fine. I generally agree that san serif fonts generally suit posters better, but that is a topic post for another time.)

There are thousands of fonts out there to choose from. Picking one good, solid, simple, readable font that 95% of the other presenters won’t have on their computers might be a good investment and one of those little subtle tweaks that helps to move a poster from good to gorgeous.

(Additional note to typography purists: I just learned that I am probably using “font” in this article when I probably mean “typeface,” or vice versa. I'll try to do better in future.)

References

Alley M. 2003. The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid. Springer: New York. Website.

Related links

Cure for the Common Font, a Flickr photostream of How magazine article