A New World Unfolding conference

In 2001, a scientific milestone of enormous proportions—the sequencing of the human genome—impacted humanity in diverse ways, from our views of ourselves as human beings to new paradigms in medicine. This scientific announcement of the human genome’s sequencing and genomic data changed our lives forever. Five years later, A New World Unfolding—The Genome and the Computational Sciences: The Next Paradigms conference at Brown University gathered distinguished lecturers to discuss the emerging research and development in genomics and biotechnology. The conference engaged in scientific dialogue and rigorous questioning with the next paradigms’ builders—influential entrepreneurs, leaders, academic visionaries, industry, and students—as they witness a new world unfolding.

For the design, I explored multiple tropes to start. When developing the concept, I was intrigued to exercise the word “unfolding.” The largest poster (20" × 30") used an un-equal 6-panel accordion fold with a french fold finish, allowing for graphics and text to interplay as the poster unfolds for the first time. The sequence of the reveal at each stage of unfolding is part of the experience.

However, more essential to the design was the reference to Celera’s original graphic mapping of the human genome; the conference poster is a direct reference to their gene map. The linear treatment for the three-day conference schedule swaps increments of time for Genome Nucleotide Scale, places lecture title and speaker in Reverse- and Forward-Strand locations, and utilizes colour coding in the G+C Content and SNP Density positions. Surprisingly, the client approved the unconventional vertical typographic presentation; not surprisingly, guests immediately understood the reference.

I typically can’t entirely agree with designs that are “copies” of an original, but this overt reference seemed highly appropriate given the audience. To acknowledge this, the poster’s credits reference, “An homage to ‘The Sequence of the Human Genome, ‘J. C. Venter et al. Science 291, 1304-1351 (2001), February 16, 2001.”

PHOTO (above): Detail of Celera’s ‘The Sequence of the Human Genome’ poster. Martin Shields, Alamy Stock Photo