IMPRS workshop 'Graphic design for scientists'
- Start: Feb 8, 2024
- End: Feb 9, 2024
Time & place
February 2nd from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and from 13:00 to 16:00 pm
February 3rd from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and from 13:00 to 14:00 pm.
B2.021 at the MPI-CE
Credit points: 0.4
Category: Transferable skills
The instructor
Dorothee Post
About me
I studied geography with a focus on natural risks and geomorphology at the Universities in Bonn and Vienna. After finishing my master’s degree, I followed another passion for my pro- fession and started to work as a graphic designer and illustrator. Now, after working several years with both, scientists and companies on communicating projects with geoscientific background, I want to share my knowledge with fellow scientists on how they can improve their skills in graphic design.
The class: Description
Graphic Design is all around scientific work! Words, forms, colors and pictures are the key elements of graphic design and are used to com- municate research. Therefore, they make a huge impact on whether people are interested in your work or not. In this workshop you’ll start to learn about how a good design builds up and how to improve your workflow when designing for your research.
The workshop can take place in an online format, but also as an on-site workshop. Both formats do have their pros and cons: an on-site workshop will be a blocked workshop which allows an intensive learning process for the participants, while an online format can be held on a more regular basis which allows the participants to work on their ideas in between and discuss them in the following session.
Understanding how to communicate a topic to an audience needs a lot of empathy. This is why the style of the workshop is interactive. The partic- ipants perform exercises in small groups, get a feedback on how their fellow scientists perceive their work and discuss about it. To receive the best results, the group size should be a maximum of 12 participants.
This workshop about graphic design will offer an introduction of the design process and the different elements of graphic design as well as the laws of Gestalt. Afterwards you will be able to understand how to arrange elements in a space to convey the right message.
Learning goals: You’ll be able to follow the design process, to identify visual messages and learn about resources which help you to continue to work independently on your next project.
You’ll learn about the laws of Gestalt which are a theoretical basis to understand how we visually connect elements to structure information. Moreover, the group can decide whether to add a theoretical part on color theory or typography. Practice: Your fellow workshop participants will evaluate your design which helps you to understand how your audience perceives your design.