20 February 2014

The excellent, the bad, and the generic

Jillian Deines went looking for inspiration for her posters the way most of us try to solve problems now. She searched on Google. Because Google customizes search results, my hits might not look exactly like hers, but this is what I got when I looked for “scientific posters” (click to enlarge):


Not exactly an inspiring collection. Then, up in the corner, it offers hope!A collection of related images on excellent scientific posters! I visiting those images, and...


Um. I can’t say these stand out as particularly stunning. At the least, most look far too dense.

The first image also offered me a chance to look at bad scientific posters. I went and looked at those, and...


Again, I don’t see a lot of differences in what’s on display in the excellent set of search results, the bad, and the generic.

The lesson here? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s that the difference between a good poster and a bad one is about the details, not the general layout. Maybe it’s that there are very few truly expertly designed posters, for reasons that I’ve discussed on the blog (scientists are amateurs at design, short time frame, and so on).

4 comments:

kristin said...

I would love it if you would do a sticky post to replace all these google searches! "Inspiration for great poster design." That would be wonderful!

Anonymous said...

Hello.

Great blog, but why don't you have a search function? I came here from a Google image search on "geological time scale poster", "earth early history poster" et.c... Clicked "visit website" on the image options, and then I can't actually find the poster because apparently is has been pushed into the archives by newer posts and there is no search field.

(That, or I may be blind...)

Anonymous said...

There is this quote: "Don’t try to be original. Try to be good". I think a lot of people (scientists and designers) try to come up with something original. Good posters are simply based on what really matters: information and the way we perceive it.

Zen Faulkes said...

Mados: At least on my web browser, the "Search" for the blog is in the upper left hand corner. Maybe this is not visible in some browsers, like mobile devices?