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Welcome to Earth on the Rocks, a show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. Each episode will highlight a new scientist in the earth and atmospheric sciences to learn more about their journey, what interests them, and who they are outside of their science.
Host: Shelby Rader
Producer: Cari Metz
Artwork: Connor Leimgruber
Board Operator: Kate Crum, Betsy Leija
Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR-2422824.
Hi, folks, and welcome back to Earth on the Rocks, the show where we get to know the person behind the science. As always, I'm your host, Shelby Rader, and joining us today is Ruth Droppo. Ruth, thanks for coming on. Thank you. And so, Ruth, we're gonna get to know you over drinks today.
Shelby:And so what would be your drink of choice?
Ruth:My drink of choice I used to be really addicted to Diet Verner's. Have you ever had it? No. Ginger ale? No.
Ruth:I was born in Detroit. And so it's a Detroit drink.
Shelby:Does it sort of spread out? Are there places outside of Detroit that you can get it?
Ruth:Yeah. Can get it
Shelby:here. Where?
Ruth:At Kroger.
Shelby:Okay. I need to try
Ruth:it It's really good. I mean, I think it has vanilla in it.
Shelby:That sounds delicious.
Ruth:It's really good, but I can't drink it anymore.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ruth:No. I had heart surgery, so anything carbonated is Yeah. Forbidden.
Shelby:So have you moved to a new
Ruth:Water. That's it. Water would be it.
Shelby:It's always great. Room temperature or cold?
Ruth:No cold, of course. Okay.
Shelby:I don't know. We've got mixed reviews on that. Claudia was on, and I think she preferred room temp water.
Ruth:Well, different people have different terms doing things.
Shelby:Ruth, if folks were to sort of ask you what do you do, how would you answer that?
Ruth:I am, I think, formally in marketing and communications for Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Actually, what that means is I do graphic design. I manage 15 websites, I think. A little bit of social media, not much. And I do posters.
Ruth:I do display cases. I do digital and print media. Anything you could think of as far as telling a story.
Shelby:Yeah. I'm so excited to have you on because I think being able to communicate the work that we do and the things that we teach about to students, to people across campus, to community members is such a critical role in, like, being an effective scientist. And I think a lot of times we're not the greatest at knowing the best ways to communicate that because we're not we're not really trained in those sorts of things. And so you are such an integral part of what we do in the department, I feel like. And so I'm really happy to have you here to sort of talk about that intersection a little bit because it's such a critical part of being able to tell the story of what we're working on.
Ruth:Well, storytelling has always been kind of close to me. It follows me around everywhere. When I was little, I used to sit on my dad's lap and one of my favorite things was to have him read a story. Listening to a voice, listening to it come through another person is, I think, it strengthens it and it makes it a lot more powerful. Working with scientists though, I got my MFA here in printmaking and luckily I was able to do it while I was working so I don't have any burden trailing me around.
Ruth:But when I was doing my MFA, I decided that one of my projects was going to be interviewing women with their cookbooks. I was also doing pinhole photography.
Shelby:Can you talk a little bit about what that is?
Ruth:It's a really primitive method of getting an image on paper. Well, you take a substrate, light sensitive substrate, and you put it in a light tight container and you put a hole in whatever this container is and then you put a little pinhole. You can buy them or you can make them so little pieces of metal and then you tape them on the inside of the container. Anything that can be made light tight can be a pinhole camera. People have been known to do it with their mouths.
Shelby:Yes.
Ruth:Yes. And so I made a bunch of pinhole cameras and I got one from one of my instructors, Wendy Kalman. I set up this series of interviews with women in three different generations and I brought my cookbook in, my old, old cook cookbook. Cookbooks are kind of like diaries.
Shelby:Yeah, they are.
Ruth:I write in mine and I've got food stains all over it. Know, it's been through the through the mill through all the years that I've been alive. It's it is a story in itself. So I sat with these women and I put a pinhole camera in front of them while they went through these cookbooks. Pinhole photography is slow so the exposures are one, two, three, five minutes sometimes.
Ruth:So the images that you get are gestural.
Shelby:You see motion in them, basically.
Ruth:Lots of motion. And I like black and white photography, so that's what I stayed with. I did a gallery presentation, I think, on this too. It was part of my thesis show. Anyways, it was a lot of fun to do.
Ruth:I had women Erika's mom, in fact, sat for an interview.
Shelby:Erika, who's been on the show earlier.
Ruth:Yeah. And they told stories and then they went through their cookbooks and we reminisced about different you know, because going through this diary brings up memories. So that's one aspect of of storytelling that I I really, really did like. I put it together in a video, and it won a prize at a a film festival they had here.
Ruth:Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. It was.
Shelby:Is is that video available online? Do you know?
Ruth:Not yet. Okay. I have to I have that's one of my projects I'm gonna do if I ever get to Mitchell.
Shelby:Yeah. If it gets online, when it gets online, let me know because I would love to see it. I think the listeners would probably love to see it.
Ruth:Okay. Actually, you know Sarah Petrzak
Shelby:Yeah. Matner?
Ruth:Yeah, yeah. Her husband, Mike Metner, he wrote the music for it.
Shelby:Wow. Yeah. Thatis incredible.
Ruth:It was a lot of fun. Yeah. Anyways, so storytelling, thatis really kind of how I approach working with scientists too because the things that you do I am in awe of scientists because I am not one. And I point that out to them all the time. Not a scientist.
Ruth:Designer. Different. They don't really seem to mind that. A lot of the people that I work with, theyire happy to kind of tone down the scientific language and bring it down to my level. And I like that because the work that Iim doing, I think it speaks to a wider audience.
Ruth:I think it has to speak to a wider audience.
Shelby:Yeah, I agree. And so I am in awe of you and the things that you do because you are so good at sort of putting things together in a way that the story is much more accessible, which is what you were sort of getting to just now. I think, again, sort of as scientists, it's good for us to remember that effective communication is meeting people where they're at. And so having that back and forth where you know you offer your expertise and help us better formulate what we're trying to tell makes it so much more effective and so I feel like you know this intersection of art and science is to me such a fun part of of, like, what we get to work on because it it gives you so much flexibility and creativity Mhmm. That a lot of times for me personally, you kinda have to sort of box out.
Shelby:And and so I always enjoy the times that that we get to work together, we get to incorporate some of those things in what we're doing. Right. So you got your MFA in printmaking. So can you talk a little bit about what the process was of getting an MFA in printmaking?
Ruth:Well, for me, it was really roundabout. IU was my sixth school. I lived a lot of places and I really didn't know what I wanted to be until I was about 52 And I came here and before that, I had a company. I had a little escort where I made children's clothes. I designed and made them and pedaled them all over.
Shelby:I didn't realize this. That's amazing.
Ruth:It was fun. The best part about it was selling them, going to craft shows in Tennessee and Virginia and yeah, I was building up quite a clientele. And then ran into some trouble and I had to get a job. I needed a paycheck because the company was still tiny. So I applied at IU and got a job right away with John Hayes and Lisa Pratt.
Shelby:Who were former faculty in our department in EAS.
Ruth:Yeah. And I was so busy with that, It took me a couple of years before I got interested again in maybe going back to school because I wanted to keep my company but part of me lost the ability to see. Before when I was designing things, I could take a piece of fabric and know exactly what it was going to be. And I knew how much time it was going to take to make it, what it would sell for, where it would sell, everything about it. And I lost that.
Shelby:So you could sort of envision in your head in advance sort of this whole trajectory of this piece of fabric.
Ruth:Right. So I thought if I took a course, a design course at night here, then I could get that back. Printmaking was offered at night and so I took some printmaking classes.
Shelby:And what does printmaking entail?
Ruth:Printmaking is like a candy store.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ruth:Yeah. Intaglio, which is etchings. And then there's alternative processes and woodcuts and lithography. These are things that people use to get images on paper.
Shelby:So physical processes that that There's
Ruth:there's a printing press. Yeah. Yeah. It's there are a lot of smells and yeah. So I took a couple classes and I just I liked it.
Ruth:I really liked it. I was going in a different direction but I didn't realize it. And after about six hours of that, Ed Bernstein said, why don't you do I hadn't finished my bachelor's. He said, Why don't you do a part time BFA? And I said, I can't.
Ruth:I'm working full time. I have to make money. He said, No, no, you can do it. We've done it before. And so he gave me a studio and it took me about three years, I think, to finish up.
Ruth:But I did it part time. And sometimes I took three studios a semester, which was stupid because studios take twenty hours each So a I did. I graduated. I finished my BFA and then they said, Well, would you like to do your MFA? And I said, Well, how can I pay for that?
Ruth:And they said, Here, hereis a scholarship for you. So they gave me a scholarship and I started my MFA and it was a big different ride. I donit know if youive had critiques. Yes. In printmaking, you make something and then you put it on the wall and you stand back.
Ruth:And then everybody comes forward and tells you, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no.
Shelby:In real time while you're there. Yeah.
Ruth:Lots and lots of that. Hours and hours of that.
Shelby:Did you feel like going into that, you had a personality that would embrace that feedback? Or was that something that you had to sort of develop? Because I can imagine that that could be hard for a lot of people to be able to take that sort of critique.
Ruth:No, because coming from making clothes, you know, doing that physical three d stuff that I was doing to two d art, I needed a lot of guidance. I knew that. And I was enjoying myself so much working with the people that I was. I didn't mind that at all. I really didn't.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ruth:I needed it.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ruth:And as it turned out, I finally figured out that I'm really more of a maker than an artist.
Shelby:Can you elaborate a little bit on the difference you see between a maker and
Shelby:Between an those two?
Ruth:Yeah. I like physicality. I like stuff. So I like putting things together, right? Makers areO you've heard of makerspaces.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah.
Ruth:So they're like three d printing. They put it's it's more of a three-dimensional thing. Not that art isn't, but makers are more I feel more comfortable calling myself a maker than an artist.
Shelby:Does it feel more tangible? This is me asking as someone who is not an artist and I would not consider myself a maker.
Ruth:No, Iim thinking the difference between design and art.
Shelby:Okay.
Ruth:Right? Design is, to me, is simple. I know once I got through color theory and composition and everything, you know, having to do with doing things right and figuring out how colors work together and don't work together and what really gave me a rush when I was doing working with color, that's what I was after. Design is is easy. It's just taking different things and putting them together and learn learning how to do that and knowing instinctively that it makes you feel good seeing them together.
Ruth:So that's why I like I like working with scientists that way. I like I like the job that I'm doing because I get to make stuff.
Shelby:Right. And, you know, I think sometimes maybe on on the science side, like, we might have a really vague I wouldn't even say a vision, but some idea of, like, this is what we need to communicate. And we can come to you and you can pull these pieces in a way where you put them together that makes them so much more accessible and appealing, and you just are really skilled at that, and and, like, we all benefit from it. So it's interesting to sort of hear a little bit about how you view it in this sort of process.
Ruth:Well, that's what I appreciate about working with Earth and Atmospheric Sciences because the visual part of that is just outstanding. IU has given designers or, you know, people who work in design access to a huge suite of images that you can use for free that, you know, they're copyright. No no problem with copyright there. And some of them are really compelling. And some of them, I know how to use them to advance the story.
Ruth:And I really like images that are dramatic and pull the audience in. That's what you really want.
Shelby:And the earth is full of great examples Yes. Of dramatic Can you talk a little bit about sort of the structure you just alluded to? So you collaborate with folks in EAS, but you're an IU employee. And so what does that look like in terms of your creative breadth for when one of us comes to you and says, hey, we need a poster for a classroom, for example. What sort of the process of of putting that together and and what constraints do you have about being part of this larger organization?
Ruth:Oh, living in the IU. Yeah. IU marketing and communications, they are really, really protective of the brand. That is what they want to protect.
Shelby:Of the IU
Ruth:brand. Color and typography and tone and everything. I know all of that. It's running in the background every time I make a decision. And a lot of times I need to kind of gentle people into the idea this is a university and there are standards we have to.
Ruth:But everybody cooperates. It's no problem. What I like to do when I start a project is to gather all the pieces, everything that I know. I don't know anything about the science that I'm dealing with so that's the scientist part. But I do know and as we're talking, as we're talking to each other and talking the project through, I have ideas about how this would work in terms of color and shape and sort of drama.
Ruth:How is this going to appeal to everyday people, to the general audience? Like saturating color. I like using big dramatic things like that one I did for Claudia with the I think it was a snake. Yeah. The vertebrate one.
Ruth:I found that image of a snake and it just spoke to me that this is going here and it's going to be big and it's going to be the centerpiece of this thing and it's going to talk about what vertebrates are and were.
Shelby:So like in that example you gave Claudia who also has been on the show, can you sort of talk about that process? Claudia comes to you and says I need a poster, a backdrop, what have you for this sort of thing? And then where does it go from there? What's it like on your end? You say you pull these pieces together.
Shelby:What are those pieces?
Ruth:The pieces are the text, the context, all of the content. If there are going to be any kind of three-dimensional things in it, like fossils or what kinds of things are we talking about.
Shelby:And this is a conversation you're having with, in this case, Claudia or anyone else in the department that maybe comes to you and you're pulling those pieces.
Ruth:Right. And then, I mean, one of the constraints is the size of the display case. So we have to design the story around that too and make sure that everything fits. And there's one case that I really, really enjoy doing. It's the one about climate change.
Ruth:I did that last year. And actually, I saw an image and I never use AI imagery. I do not like that because I feel like if I'm going to send people to a place that is beautiful, I want it to be real.
Shelby:I want them to be able to experience it. Yeah. Yeah.
Ruth:But this image was an image of it was sort of a filming kind of image of refugees and they were climate refugees. They were walking in a sort of a smoky environment and they were carrying things. And so I thought I would put that on the background of this climate change one. And on top, I would run all the data from NASA and NOAA, the climate data from 1930s or 1800s all the way up to 2000
Shelby:and Right, where you can visually see that
Ruth:sort of
Shelby:uptick in CO2 or in warming or whatever the curve would be.
Ruth:Yeah, it's all around globes and so they're getting hotter and hotter as the time progresses. And I really liked doing that, but I didn't ask anybody about it. Yeah. And Cody came in and said, I really like that. It's a good idea to do that.
Ruth:And I wondered in this environment how that would go over if anybody would walk through and say, maybe that's not such a good thing to do in this in this political environment. But I thought we're going to be looking at that as time goes on.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ruth:So bringing things together, figuring out what is going to go into this, like the one I did for Juergen. He works on Mars or he works on not on the planet, but he works on
Shelby:Things related to Mars. Mhmm.
Ruth:Things related to Mars. Right. In fact, he has an instrument on one of the rovers.
Shelby:Yeah. So this is sort of an interesting side story, and I have multiple connections to it even though I've never done any sort of planetary work. But there our department has historically had some pretty deep connections with the development of instrumentation that has gone on Dave Bish. These Yes. So I'm here at IU now.
Shelby:I did my graduate work at the University of Arizona, which also played an integral part. Arizona was on mine. Yeah. And and and so that connection is is sort of yeah. A different view of some of the stuff that we do.
Shelby:But, like, geologists were heavily involved in designing basically small versions of instrumentation we use here to characterize geologic materials that we're gonna shoot up to Mars. It has to be really durable. It has to be as lightweight as we can make it, but still get really high quality data. And so that's, I think, this nice combination of science and engineering and ingenuity. And yeah, we have had a connection with that quite some time and Juergen was involved in that as well.
Ruth:Right. And he was really particular about how it was going to come across and how it was going to be designed. And it was easy to do because Mars, just the rover images are all over the place. I think rovers can take pictures of themselves.
Shelby:They can. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the ways that NASA has sort of tracked the degradation of some of the rovers there that have lasted longer than they ever anticipated. But yeah, they sort of will be able to take images of themselves and see what the damage is.
Shelby:So talked a little bit about sort of this process and I can imagine that you have folks that come to you on sort of both ends of the spectrum. Some people that say, here's an idea, it's very vague, and then they step away. And then other people who are maybe a little more involved with some sort of vision. Do you have a preference in terms of your workflow of whether you like for folks that are a little more hands off and give you full creative control or or folks that are a little more engaged and, you know, ask questions or or sort of where do you like to to work on that spectrum?
Ruth:I know what I can do. I don't know what the scientists can do. And so there has to be a conversation. There has to be. We have to work together, period.
Ruth:I'm happy to take suggestions about composition and color and that sort of thing. And I can work things like that into the design, into the composition. But I'm really lucky that people who come to me for a big project like a display case.
Shelby:And just for folks listening, if you've never been in our building, lots of buildings have display cases sort of in the main lobby areas that are meant to sort of describe what's happening in different research groups or or in the department, like things that can communicate the work that's ongoing but in a really exciting way.
Ruth:Yeah.
Shelby:And I think you are excellent at being able to convey that in these display cases. So, again, if you're ever on campus, you need to come to our and see these and know that Ruth is the one that makes them look the way that they do and be so useful. They are sort of a very visible portion of what we're working on. The idea is to try to reach a broad audience of people that happen to just walk through the space.
Ruth:Yeah, so that they come away with maybe other ideas about and also maybe bigger interest So in what's going I take everything into consideration because nobody has come to me and said, I don't like the way this is designed, ever. Everyone I think we just we know what what we're good at and we know what where the talents have to be in this process. Yeah. And everything kinda meshes together. However, there is one that I'm working on.
Ruth:I'm gonna have to work a little harder with her. Think she's a student. And so she's she's busy.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ruth:And what she did was she decided that she was going to ask for samples from every geological survey in every state. And so she got a whole bunch of samples from everybody. And what I want her to do is go back and say, what are these? What are they good for? Where they come from?
Ruth:And la la la. I can't make that up. And it's her work. And I don't want change that.
Shelby:Yeah. And that would be such an interesting approach and sort of display of that information
Ruth:Or a student. Yes.
Shelby:Yeah. That'd be incredible. Mhmm. And so, you know, I know now a lot of what you do is computer based.
Ruth:And
Shelby:when you were talking about sort of your trajectory through the MFA program, it was a lot of physical media. And so was there were there classes that you took for things like, you know, Photoshop and Illustrator, or were those things that were self taught or that you picked up along the way? Or or sort of how did that that aspect evolve when you started with EAS? Was it Did it start like that or did it start as more of this physical media that over time has turned into this more digital form?
Ruth:I don't remember ever taking any formal classes. I might have for Photoshop and Illustrator. I think I just worked on it. I just taught myself. A lot of what I do, just teach myself.
Ruth:That's always the way I've ever done anything, Just get the skill and go ahead and make something and make the mistakes that I have to make and refine it and refine it and refine it and refine it over and over and over again. And I guess I like working in those programs, and I like what I can do with them. I don't really rely heavily on them. They're a tool. And you're only as good as your tools, I guess.
Shelby:Yeah. I teach some well, both undergrad and graduate classes. I talk about these, but especially in graduate classes, we spend a lot of time, you know, like, looking at papers and figures that people have in papers. And I harp on this, and if if other people have listened to the show, I've mentioned this many times. But, you know, like putting together a scientific poster for a conference or putting together a really nice figure for a paper can be so impactful.
Shelby:But again, we're never really trained in the sort of artistic side of that. So we don't take classes in color theory, and we don't take classes in design or layout and I always think and I even tell the students I so wish that there were courses like that that were geared specifically towards science related things like figure making and poster making because I I would love to take one of those. And I think, you know, having that sort of skill set or even just the context to be able to to think about better ways to lay some things out would be so useful, which is part of why I'm you know, like, all of the the work that you do and the collaborative nature of it and yeah. Like, maybe you can teach us a class sometime as a department about those sorts of things when thinking about
Ruth:I have critiqued posters before.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ruth:Only under duress because I do not I don't like critiquing other people's work.
Shelby:But
Ruth:then when I was pressed into it, then I figured out a way to help them use color in different ways. Emphasize one thing here, one thing there, color and use a different typography and maybe don't use colors that scream at each other.
Shelby:Yeah. And I think a lot of times, you know, figure making for for scientific purposes, a lot of a lot of it is geared towards publication.
Ruth:Mhmm.
Shelby:And now especially there's a lot of pressure on on publishing things efficiently. And so sometimes it's just a matter of of here's sort of the figure I wanna make. Let's make it. When really taking some extra time to think about those things you just mentioned. So what what color palette goes well together but in a way that's gonna emphasize the story that this figure is trying to tell?
Shelby:Or are there ways that I can highlight just in the figure without text, you know, without a figure caption, the things that I want the reader of this paper to really draw attention to and just considering those can be so useful. But yeah, having the sort of context to know how to go about that is really important.
Ruth:I cannot tell you the number of figures I have redrawn over the years. In fact, there are some in the field station. All of that that collection, I would love to be able to redraw them, but they are there's no time.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. You've got a full full load. This might be, you know, akin to asking a parent who their favorite child is or or a pet owner which pet is their favorite. Do you have a project that you've worked on within the department and then outside of the department that have really stood out to you as ones you have particularly enjoyed?
Ruth:Oh, well, when I was working with Lisa Pratt, we did a lot of education and public outreach, so it's EPO. We worked a lot with NASA EPO and we worked a lot together on a couple of things. She did some research in South Africa and some mines there And we put together some teaching teaching material for that. We put together a CD. We put together, workbooks.
Ruth:And we did a whole suite of really beautiful things because the photography from there was just stunning. Yeah, that was a project that I really, really enjoyed working with her. Outside, like I said, Iim trying to sell my house and Iim trying to build a house and thatis one of the biggest things I think Iive done in my life. Iive never built a house from scratch.
Shelby:Did you design it?
Ruth:No. Mean, a builder isO they give you a house and then you say, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this and they say, No,
Shelby:you can't afford that. I
Ruth:say, Oh darn. Well, all right, back to the drawing board. Anyways, it's a fun process but it's a little intimidating because Mitchell's forty minutes away and I would be leaving a community that I've built for like thirty five years living here. But I would be going toward my daughter and my grandsons so
Shelby:That's worth it.
Ruth:That's the pull.
Shelby:And when you're sort of thinking about your career here and the amazing things you've worked on, are there any things that are sort of lingering ideas that you'd still like to do? Any white whales of design that that you're looking forward to maybe having time to work on at some point?
Ruth:I don't really approach it that way. The project always begins with a scientist. Always. I don't think about it in terms of my work. I think about it in terms of your work.
Ruth:And how can we make it dramatic? How can we make it powerful? How can I know it's powerful work, express that? How do you tell a general audience that this is really cool, what you're doing and here's why it's cool and why it should go on, why we should fund it?
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. And that's a big thing now, too, is the funding landscape for science is really in a rough spot right now. And so being able to communicate why this is important, not just for science, which I think has its own merits, but why is this something that's worth investing in for the general population is such a critical it's always been a critical aspect but now even more so. And so that's where these ideas of how do you frame this in a way that really shows the impact
Ruth:Right.
Shelby:In a way that's approachable can be so vital.
Ruth:Right.
Shelby:For folks that are listening, this is gonna be a sort of two part question. What advice would you have for somebody that's interested in sort of this intersection of art and science? And for folks that are in science that are listening, what are some things that you feel like they should keep in mind when they're thinking about how they want to try to communicate their science?
Ruth:Well, for people who are interested in things like I do, I would say you need an education. You really do need that background. Because if you don't have the foundation, then things won't come easy to you. You won't be able to work fluidly, and you really won't be able to work along with scientists who are teaching and learning. So that part is easy.
Ruth:The second part, what advice do I have for scientists? I am really reluctant to critique someone's idea of how things should be because if you come to me with a poster you put together, I know exactly what I would do with it. And I donit really want to tell you how to do that because itis a learning experience for you as well. You can ask me, does this look good to you? And I can say, well, I would suggest this and this and this and this.
Ruth:And maybe move this over here and maybe too many publications. Maybe you could move that off and open things up and use some color and make some backgrounds and emphasize things with text. With typography, you can do that. There are ways to take what you're working on and bring it out of the the everyday. Right.
Ruth:People come to me and say, I had a template. And I just, ugh. Please don't do that. Please just please just learn. Ask me.
Ruth:I'll show show you how to learn the how to how to work the program. You can I can definitely help you with that? But don't use templates. You don't know where they've come in. You don't know where they come from.
Ruth:You don't know who's made them. You don't know what's your shiver?
Shelby:You know, since you mentioned this, this is curiosity I have to ask now. You know, there's really sort of a prescribed way that scientific posters are almost always laid out. And a few years ago, there was this big push for an alternative version of a scientific poster where usually they're split into two or three panels.
Ruth:Mhmm. And triptych.
Shelby:And this one, the middle panel was quite large. Mhmm. It had one solid color text. And so that was supposed to be the main takeaway of this poster. But there were no figures in it.
Shelby:The text was very large, but that middle section was mostly a colored block. And that was really popular for a few years and then sort of fell out of fashion. And so as someone who understands these design concepts in ways that those of us that are putting these posters together do not, is there a part of you that sort of hates this prescribed triptych outline for scientific posters? Are there parts of those when you look at them where you think, oh my goodness, this could be so much more engaging if this wasn't the way that everybody defaults to laying these sorts of things out.
Ruth:Well, when you come to a new idea that is making the rounds and people like it, so they copy it and they make it bigger or smaller or they adjust it to their own. I've never been adverse to new ideas and certainly not new new design ideas. But I think that all design kind of evolves. And as you say, it faded. But I'm sure that it's somewhere in some still.
Ruth:Ideas are never totally discarded. But I've never seen that particular thing, but it sounds intriguing.
Shelby:Yeah. And like you said, there's parts of it that still have lingered. I think the whole goal of it, which I was totally in support of, was to make posters more accessible and engaging. Because a lot of times, poster sessions at conferences, if folks have never been to one, they're incredibly busy. They're full of people.
Shelby:So you typically are sort of walking through a crowd and looking at these from from
Ruth:Right.
Shelby:Like, six to eight feet distance.
Ruth:Right.
Shelby:And, you know, if you have a very text heavy poster Mhmm. At that distance, you're not gonna be able to read it. And so the idea was, you know, how do we make something stand out so that if somebody's passing in a crowd, they at least know what we're working on.
Ruth:Right.
Shelby:And I do think that sort of mindset was persistent in parts of the scientific community where now there's a lot more intention with poster design than maybe there was before.
Ruth:Really?
Shelby:I think that can vary. There's levels to that. But yeah, so I think that that at least spurred a good conversation.
Ruth:It's just that you spend years and years and years working on something that you're passionate about. Years. And sometimes you fail and sometimes you don't fail. And hopefully, you put enough data together that it makes sense. And the work that you put into it is so much bigger than just this one poster, that bland poster in from a template.
Ruth:Like, ugh. I think it deserves a lot more. A lot more.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. And I think that's a good a good perspective to have about it is this is such a much larger body of work, so give it its due. Right.
Shelby:Ruth, thank you for coming on. This has been
Ruth:Thanks for having me.
Shelby:A great opportunity and and such a really unique perspective. We end each episode with our yes, please segment, where we each have one minute to talk passionately about something that's on our mind at the moment. Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?
Ruth:Oh my gosh. Okay.
Shelby:Okay. Let me pull this up. This will be Ruth Droppo's Yes Please. You have one minute. Take it away.
Ruth:I have that's going fast.
Shelby:It is going fast.
Ruth:House building, I donit know that itis a passion so much as like a direction. Iim coming to a different part of my life right now and I think every day, Where am I going to be in a year? Where am I going to be in two years? I mean I still think that way even though I'm at an age where most people are slowing down or doing things with the life that they've lived. I'm not, to my big surprise, I'm thinking about building a dark room and taking up pinhole photography again, making more cameras and going to graveyards.
Ruth:Did a study of a graveyard in Orange County. So maybe thatis what I will do. I would like that. You got a minute?
Shelby:Yeah, that's perfect. And also, I'm glad that you sort of talked about that because I wanted to ask, you started all of this journey and part of what we talked about was in this very physical media and then now have been working in something that is a little less physical.
Ruth:A lot less physical.
Shelby:And so I wanted to see if you were wanting to pursue that again and it sounds like you do.
Ruth:I do. The digital is okay. I mean it deserves a purpose. I think with the advent of AI, I don't know what's real and what isn't and that bothers me a lot.
Shelby:So
Ruth:if I make something, it's there. I can see it. I can love it or hate it. But if it's artificial, I don't know who made it. I don't know its purpose.
Ruth:I don't have any feelings for it. Don't you know?
Shelby:Yeah. It doesn't invoke the same way that physical media would. No. Of course not. Yeah.
Shelby:Well, I look forward to hearing about your darkroom and seeing some of the pinhole photography and getting to see the video from Right. The interview views that you had done because I think that sounds like an amazing project. Thank you. And I will do my yes, please segment now. So yes, please.
Shelby:Let's all tune in for the final season of Hacks, h a c k s. It is probably it's definitely one of my favorite shows. It's currently on the final season just started releasing a couple of weeks ago. This is the fifth season. If you haven't watched it, you should absolutely catch up.
Shelby:It is a comedy. I feel like, especially the last few years, comedies are really the only thing that that really speak to me in media. The the world is sort of a dark place, and so it's nice to have something that lightens it up. And this one is just fantastic, but it also has a lot of heart. Jean Smart has has won several awards for her portrayal, and it is such such a good show.
Shelby:And it's hopefully going out with a bang, and so I just wanna give it the credit that it's due and hope that other people can find it and experience it because it's a really, really good time. I don't know if you've watched it, Ruth, but it would be worth
Ruth:No. I haven't.
Shelby:Check it out if you haven't if you're in into to comedies.
Ruth:Okay.
Shelby:And for folks that are listening, we will see you next week when we'll have a new guest. Earth on the Rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR dash 2422824.