Riginica

Your blogger is extra busy this week, and only has time to steal this cartoon from Red Pen / Black Pen on Twitter . Click to enlarge!

If I may be permitted a moment of self-indulgence, I would like to share this: This is a T-shirt design I entered into a contest for the International Association of Astacology . And it won! First place: “ Astacus fluviatilis ” by Zen Faulkes Second place: “ Euastacus …

It’s nice when people spread the news of good work: Emily Jones, grad student at University of Dayton, presented a poster on her field work plan for exotic species interactions in a Texas coastal prairie. This got sent my way on the twittersphere (hat tip to Meghan Du…

When I wander through department hallways and professor offices, I often see posters like this, from Rottner and colleagues (2017; tweeted by journal here ). Click to enlarge! These sort of posters often feature cellular processes or biochemical pathways. They are ofte…

Last week , I showed a sweet poster from Desi Quintans . Desi added a great question in his email that I thought deserved its own blog post: I noticed that the posters that did well in real life were made with strong, almost gaudy colours. In particular, the ones wit…

The National Academy of Sciences of the US regularly sponsors the Sackler symposium on science communication. I’ve had gripes with them in the past. I have another this year: Increase of poster sessions, at the expense of actual speaking opportunities, has a negati…

Here are two posters from the same conference, photographed at roughly the same distance. (Identifying information has been slightly pixelated.) This poster is not using its available space well. The board is half empty. But although I cannot read virtually anything at…

More and more academic projects are collaborative . This means more contributors, and more authors to list on posters. I’ve been thinking about how long author lists might be best displayed on posters, and have a few attempts here. You can click to enlarge any picture!…

I recently got the chance to rewatch one of my favourite movies of the last few years on Blu-ray: Pacific Rim . It has a fantastic commentary track by director Guillermo del Toro . There is a lot of interesting stuff in the commentary (for a film buff like me, at leas…

Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ. I recently learned that something I’ve called “ the Cosmo principle ” on this blog is an actual thing that proper designers talk about, except they have a different name for it. They call it “reading gravity.” The picture …

I’ve been catching up with a show called Skin Wars on Hulu (new season coming on Game Show Network in April). It’s a competition reality show along the lines of Project Runway , Top Chef , and FaceOff : make something really cool, really fast. The cool thing they’re m…

This week’s contributions come from Martin Rolfs. He’s kindly permitting me to show not one, but two posters. Click to enlarge! This one was presented at the 2014 Vision Sciences Society meeting in St. Pete Beach, Florida. There’s a few notable elements here. First, t…