Month: April 2017

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Science, outreach and coding galore in April

This April has been full to the brim with everything I love about science and academia – an art-science collaboration to give science outreach a creative spin, a conference to learn about cool research and meet new people, a coding workshop to spread our love for efficient coding practices and start new collaborations, a drone symposium to learn about the role of drone technology in advancing ecology, and finally fieldwork across beautiful woodlands in Scotland.

Team Shrub at the Edinburgh Science Festival

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I was very happy to help with the awesome outreach events Team Shrub organised for the Edinburgh International Science Festival. A great collaboration between scientists, science communicators (James Howie and the ASCUS Lab) and artists (Simon Sloan and Archie Crofton) resulted in a wonderful collection of photographs, data visualisations and fieldwork artifacts under the theme of “Arctic from Above” – Team Shrub’s first exhibition! You can still check out the exhibition in the Summerhall War Memorial Library before it closes on the 12th May!

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Graphic design tutorial (InDesign)

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Graphic design skills are a great addition to a scientist’s skills set, and making posters / slides / diagrams that are both informative and beautiful is super fun (and potentially a time sink if you get too carried away perfectly aligning images, but I think it makes a difference)!

Last week I lead a workshop for the Geoscience Outreach course on using Abode InDesign for science communication, and in particular, for making posters. As part of the assessment for the course and general promotion of outreach projects, students make a small poster that conveys the key messages of their outreach work.

What makes a good poster? We covered this topic by going on a beautification journey – first by looking at a poster from last year at different stages (bad, good, better), and then by working away on choosing colour schemes, layouts and making diagrams. The workshop was very fun, as usual I loved teaching, and I’m very happy to have contributed to the Geoscience Outreach course!

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How can we use Adobe InDesign to make beautiful and informative posters? Check out the tutorial online to find out!