Worst of the worst?

October 11, 2012

Worst venue?Overheard at a conference over summer: a poster session at another institution that decided to hold a poster session outdoors. in the height of August.Apart from uncomfortable heat, unpredictable weather, wind catching posters... What could possibly go wrong?Worst poster?On Twitter, RuthFT shared “the worst conference poster I have ever seen.” It graced(?) the halls of the International Symposium on Archaeometry.

In fairness, Ruth noted:

It is very hard to do a poster for a heavily interpretive subject. Always too much text, but how else to explain/justify interpretations?

True. But even this could be improved by:

  • Putting the title in the upper left corner instead of the upper right.

  • Separating the rows to indicate that you were supposed to read across instead of down.

  • Better still, making the reading order go up and down instead of across, with space between each set of columns.

  • More careful proofreading to fix things like “objetives” instead of “objectives” in headings.

  • Keeping the type consistent; in particular not switching to italics in the Results section. 

Several of those changes only required paying some attention when hanging the poster. I almost wonder: