Holding the center
Next time you walk past a bulletin board or message board, have a look at all the various notices that people have posted on it. They will probably be on different colours of paper. They will almost certainly have a dizzying array of typefaces – sometimes on the same piece of paper. But there is

Does embellishment improve graphs?
A new article on the Science Daily website (seemingly based on this press release) provocatively claims:Those oft-maligned, and highly embellished, graphs and charts in newspapers and other media outlets may actually help people understand data more effectively than traditional graphs, according to new research from North Carolina State University.Unfortunately, some people will take this article to mean that those who have argued against such embellishments, notably Edward Tufte

Critique: Ape scapula
I stumbled upon this poster while reading the blog Anna’s Bones. She described as being finished “just in the nick of time.” A few more hours, and a stronger editorial hand

Review: Scientific Poster Design
Scientific Poster Design is a PDF from LiLynn Graves at the Cornell Center for Materials Research. At first glance, its 69 pages make it look quite substantive. Unfortunately, the PDF is exported from a PowerPoint deck, with lots of one sentence pages complemented with low resolution clip art.Fortunately, the advice is better than the package it’s presented in. There are good reminders of basic advice. Keep the text simple and large, use lots of pictures, and more. One of the most useful features

Do you need to go to that conference?
Today is Blog Action Day, when bloggers are encouraged to write about a single topic to spark debate. This year, the topic is climate change.Research posters are created for research conferences, particularly the big, international conferences where there are more people than you could possibly have opportunities to give talks. I love those conferences. Attending conferences and presenting at them is one of my favourite things about being a researche