If you've ever been to a scientific conference, you proabably know that the posters aren't usually designed to attract attention. In fact, many presenters merely post the individual pages of a paper onto one or more big sheets of grade-school poster board.

Realizing that their presence at the conference — and how their research would be received — would have business implications for their company, the Convatec (now part of Bristol-Myers Squibb) team engaged us to produce posters that would stand head and shoulders above the posters of other presenters.

Given the academic nature of the gathering, we left the admittedly turgid prose intact — but greatly enlarged the title to give viewers somewhere to focus as they decided whether or not to come closer to read the full text. Adding color and illustrations also helped draw people in from a distance.

The result: our R&D team came to us for posters from then on until they disbanded in the wake of their corporation's sale to Bristol-Myers.