text: Assuming that the story line doesn’t suck, and the characters are people we care about, the first thing we notice about a space thriller is the ships themselves. Do they pass the cool test? Do they make us yearn to be in that world just so we can get our clumsy paws on one of these sweet rides?
  In keeping with Internet Rule #34 (“if it exists, there is porn of it”) , we stumbled across what you could only call a space ship porn site. Concept Ships is full of really nothing but amazing concept art that just makes you want to climb right into the screen and seize the controls for yourself. Visit this site and the first thing you’re treated to is a Flash animation of a guy on a small podracer. It looks insanely dangerous, and insanely fun.
  There are new posts pretty much every day, and artists are encouraged to submit their own work for display. What appear to our eyes to be the finest concept artists in the world submit their work to these sites for everyone to enjoy. If you’re an artist or a designer yourself, you’ll find endless inspiration in these sites. If you’re a fan, just look through the sites and enjoy the eye candy.
  
  We’ve been slowly building our posters to have maximum visual impact, while at the same time maximizing poster readability. The poster layout gives the clean aesthetic feel of professional design. Your figures draw attention and tell a clear and concise story. Now it is finally time to incorporate the readable part of your poster, the text!
  In week one, we asked people what they disliked in posters they had seen. Probably the most common answer was, “Too many words.”
  This gets back to the message box from week one. We asked who the audience was, and what the key thing for the audience to learn was.
  If your audience are fellow professionals with technical expertise, you can use some technical terminology. Technical terms can be very concise, which is an advantage on a poster. Similarly, you may be able to leave out definitions and basic information that people in your field will be familiar with. But if your audience aren’t pros, help them out! Spell out words that you might normally abbreviate. Use short, plain English words instead of digging out the thesaurus.
  Keeping your key message in mind can help focus your text to be as lean as possible. Unfortunately, there are not many shortcuts to cutting your text short, so to speak.
  Walk away from your text for a few days, then come back to it. It’s amazing how often problems that escaped your notice suddenly leap out at you when you return.