Image Ethics & Poster Design

In this training course, we want to teach the basic ethic aspects of image editing and design appealing and modern scientific posters.

The image ethics part handles on the theoretical aspects of image manipulation, the mistakes people make and how to avoid image fraud. VIB has guidelines for acceptable scientific image manipulations. Not all manipulations are scientifically correct. There are manipulations that fall within the scope of scientific misconduct, because they result in misrepresentation of the data. Such misrepresentation makes it impossible for others to interpret the data correctly, or worse, leads to conclusions that are not correct.

The second part of this course deals with poster design. Scientific posters are a resume of a piece or timespan of research on one square meter of paper. They are best compared to slides for oral presentations, not a written document. Posters can’t convey detailed evidence like scientific articles, it must visualize a message on its own. When standing a meter away from a poster you hardly feel like reading much text, especially when the author/designer stands next to it. A poster must bring that message without requiring oral explanation, but with as little text as possible.