Mike Pacchione at Duarte Design talks about how my wife created a powerful professional poster. Mike writes:

Let’s summarize so you can apply this to your work, whether it’s a poster, slides or something else:

  1. Figure out the story you’re trying to tell. You need to be able to do that in a short sentence, two at most. (The ABT template is helpful here. - ZF)
  2. Write down everything you know about the topic, then remove anything that does not directly help tell the story you’re trying to tell. (Writing down everything could take a while. Maybe just continually ask, “Do I need this?” - ZF)
  3. Group your content together.
  4. Use visuals to express those groups.
  5. Make sure there’s enough white space.

And here’s the makeover! Click to enlarge.


Duarte Design doesn’t date their blog posts, so I’m not sure how late I am to the game on this one.

• • • • •

A big guide to tools to help you use colour effectively in data visualization. An update of an older post. Hat tip to Lisa Roust and Janet Stemwedel.

I also liked this link out to this page praising grey for visualization.

• • • • •

Don’t be a ghost. Craig Maclean reminds everyone that if you’re not going to show up at a conference, inform the organizers.

So for someone to ‘waste’ a presentation slot by simply not turning up, you are being unthinking towards colleagues as well as the meeting organizers.

• • • • •

Are conferences worth is? This paper suggests yes:

he results of our study suggest that the annual symposium encouraged interactions among disparate scientists and increased research productivity, exemplifying the positive effect of scientific meetings on both collaboration and progress.