[HN Gopher] Make Scientific Posters Easier Than Using PowerPoint
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Make Scientific Posters Easier Than Using PowerPoint
Author : flybrand
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-04-15 12:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (app.biorender.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (app.biorender.com)
| open-source-ux wrote:
| If you're creating a scientific or research poster, this 20
| minute video is full of excellent advice on creating effective
| posters:
|
| > "The traditional approach to research posters is ineffective.
| Watch this video to learn how to create new, evidence-based
| poster designs that get you more visitors and transmit your ideas
| to more people at the conference."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYk29tnxASs
| tomcam wrote:
| Thanks. I'm not a scientist nor do I need to create posters but
| I love me some information presentation literature.
| gammarator wrote:
| #betterposter is a great format. Really helps folks get the key
| message across in a crowded poster hall.
| hammock wrote:
| Is this a skin on tableau?
| lyaa wrote:
| Inkscape with a Latex extension is the best tool for making
| scientific posters imo.
| spullara wrote:
| Why do these still exist? Is this really how academics find out
| about the paper and not just read the paper? I'm flabbergasted
| conferences are like middle school science fairs.
| rsfern wrote:
| To add some complementary points to what others have posted,
| poster sessions are great for undergraduate students and junior
| grad students to cut their teeth on presenting research in a
| lower pressure environment. Plus networking -- the poster
| sessions can be great for established researchers who might be
| recruiting students and postdocs
| PeterStuer wrote:
| The poster session is a social occasion. Besides, there's not
| enough time in the conference to let every attendant present,
| and most participants need an accepted paper to be granted the
| funding to attend.
| molbioguy wrote:
| Work presented in a poster doesn't have to be published. And
| the biggest benefit is you usually get to talk to a person
| standing with the poster that did the work. Lot's of
| interesting information comes by that route, not to mention
| connections.
| lqr wrote:
| The poster is an advertisement for the paper. Same goes for
| oral sessions. Almost all talks include the phrase "for
| details, see our paper".
|
| Posters are a nice middle ground between an abstract and a full
| paper. Spending 5 minutes at a poster talking with the author
| is almost always enough information to decide if you want to
| read the paper carefully. This is especially important in
| theoretical fields where it can take hours/days to fully
| comprehend difficult proofs.
|
| Poster sessions are also important for meeting people in your
| niche.
| vibrio wrote:
| There is tremendous value in poster session. Most data is
| prepublication, and getting candid 1 on 1 discussion with
| others in the field, including potential reviewers, is great.
| Also, the networking is valuable- many next jobs start in
| Poster session discussions. And also wandering through rows of
| posters and having the investigator walk you through the study
| us a great way to broaden knowledge. In my day some meeting
| used to have beer/wine at poster sessions. Good stuff.
| ta988 wrote:
| Diagrams.net works great. Just needs more shapes for bio, chem
| and physics and it would be a perfect tool.
| staindk wrote:
| I like the site too, and use it often.
|
| But I find that with more complex "diagrams" (my attempts at
| somewhat "technical drawings") it can often feel a bit clunky.
| Small imprecisions add up quick if you e.g. need to snap a
| bunch of different shapes together and have them meet back up
| again. Also I found it impossible to create regular
| pentagons/hexagons/etc-agons - maybe I missed something though.
| flybrand wrote:
| As someone who attends a lot of poster sessions - saw this and
| wanted to share. PPT is a terrible tool, anything is an
| improvement.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I use PowerPoint a lot. It's pretty powerful; I wouldn't call
| it terrible at all. It can be frustrating, sure.
| azalemeth wrote:
| In my world, people either use LaTeX or PowerPoint for making
| posters. I know it's unfair to suggest that the LaTeX ones are
| better de facto, but honestly, they are -- it's a pretty big
| signal that there will be more mathematical content and as a
| medical physicist, I really enjoy being able to scan things
| quickly.
| amelius wrote:
| The LaTeX ones are better because they require you to pour in
| way more time, thus making it more important that the message
| comes through.
| jabl wrote:
| When I started out in science I used LaTeX with the a0poster
| package. Which gets the job done, but produced a bit boring
| posters.
|
| At some point I used Scribus but wasn't entirely happy.
|
| If I'd still be in academia, I think I'd look into Inkscape,
| heard mostly positive experiences from people using it.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Every scientific poster presentation I ever did was QuarkXPress.
| I still have it in SheepShaver for opening up my old ones.
|
| I hit save a lot.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| You can do it with LaTeX (using baposter or another template) and
| in my experience it worked well for the kind of things Beamer
| works well for - that is, text, equations, and simple images.
| Positioning and resizing things is as annoying as you'd think,
| but using something with an auto-updating preview (latexmk -pvc
| or Overleaf, etc) makes it a little more tolerable.
| NmAmDa wrote:
| This looks interesting, but as someone working in academia, I
| find the pricing for individuals not realistic. 35$ per month (if
| paid annually) is too much for a tool that would be usually be
| used a couple of times per year. You don't design a poster each
| month. I think a better pricing model would be per usage. Even
| the subscription price of ~40$ (if paid monthly)is too much for a
| poster or two.
| ray__ wrote:
| Agreed on the pricing, and IMO nothing can compare to a real
| vector graphics editor for posters (either Illustrator or
| Inkscape). How would you standardize fonts in figures or do
| true alignments with this tool (or PPT)?
|
| BioRender is cool for premade vector images, but their license
| (and cost) is still too prohibitive for that, especially for
| grad students. Bioicons (https://bioicons.com) is a nice FOSS
| alternative.
| fabian2k wrote:
| The price is quite insane, and a subscription is not really a
| good fit for something you do not that often. Making posters is
| not a core activity for scientists, and while Powerpoint is
| really not a good tool it actually works well enough for the
| purpose.
|
| Edit: Looking closer the title is deceiving, making posters
| seems like a new feature, but not the core purpose. Making
| figures seems to be the main purpose of this product, and that
| is a lot closer to a core activity for scientists than posters
| are. Still very expensive, but I could see a lab buying a
| license or two, mostly for the large library of
| icons/components.
| andi999 wrote:
| I have never seen a landscape format poster. Is this normal in
| some scientific communities?
| arjvik wrote:
| Frankly, I've never seen a portrait format poster :)
| gs17 wrote:
| I've mostly seen posters in portrait, just not the academic
| kind of poster.
| arbot360 wrote:
| In Machine Learning / Computer Vision I've only seen landscape
| posters.
| jhbadger wrote:
| You mean wider than it is tall? That's pretty much the standard
| format at least in biology -- it's weird when they want the
| other way. For example, the ASM (American Society for
| Microbiology) wants things 8ft (long) by 4ft (high)
|
| https://asm.org/ASM/media/Events-PDF-s-2/Poster-Presenter-Ch...
| kingcharles wrote:
| In the UK all movie posters are "widescreen", which I prefer
| compared to the US format:
|
| https://www.originalfilmart.com/collections/british-quad-mov...
| dangom wrote:
| Are scientific posters still a thing in all conferences you guys
| attend? I see many communities transitioning to "digital
| posters", by which they mean PPT slide decks... I sure miss
| traditional posters, but curious what the future holds for them.
| rsfern wrote:
| Yes (materials science) - my absolute favorite poster sessions
| are at Gordon research conference in my sub field, but the big
| meetings still do the arena style poster sessions, mostly with
| conventional printed posters
|
| The worst is trying to have remote poster sessions though,
| haven't seen one that was worthwhile yet
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes still seeing them in photonics. Conference organisers are
| still a bit ambiguous about how to make the online compatible
| as many conferences run hybrid, as someone else said it
| typically doesn't work well, although I think it could work
| with some of the platforms that are available (like gather
| town), but typically the conferences are so entrenched with
| zoom that they don't really try other options.
| mbreese wrote:
| Yes. I was just at a cancer biology conference with thousands
| of posters (multiple days). This year, it was also hybrid,
| where posters also had to uploaded to be viewable by virtual
| attendees. But these were still full posters, not a slide deck.
| However, physical posters were still there and much more useful
| than a digital equivalent would be.
|
| When walking the isles with that many posters, you're not just
| looking for ones that you flagged because of the title or
| abstract. You're also looking for new work, or things that
| catch your eye. I stopped and talked to a person who's poster I
| just happened to walk by because it had the words "Shannon
| Entropy" on it. Turned out, I learned something because of it.
| dangom wrote:
| This. Being able to walk and discover new work or see a
| poster that draws your attention is so much more engaging
| than scrolling through slidedeck titles on a screen.
| joshvm wrote:
| Yes. At NeurIPS (big AI conference) the _vast_ majority of
| papers are presented as posters. Getting a paper accepted into
| the conference proceedings is considered a good achievement,
| the presentation format doesn 't matter so much. Many people
| prefer going to the poster sessions because the spotlight talks
| are very short (10 mins) and there are so many attendees that
| it's difficult to speak to the author. (Though there was
| serious overcrowding last time because the poster sessions
| weren't staggered).
| medimikka wrote:
| The day I or any academic on the poster circuit have $35/month to
| spend on a freaking POSTER, I question the very fabric of
| reality. Which, admittedly, I do at most biomed conferences.
|
| But for $35/month I can get Illustrator and a bored CS undergrad
| trying to get some actual impact points in.
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