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Gallery – Making Molecules

makingmolecules.com

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Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#31

Post by jamesash »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #28
kipukun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not explain that POV?

Not a garphic designer, but someone who is anal about graphics in papers. I don't want to detract from how great this is! But, if you want to be anal about graphics... There are a lot of little mistakes that could be improved on. The text isn't justified and sort of meanders left and right. Nothing is quite correctly centered. Little bugs like stray lines (in the middle top one, TLC). Capitalization is really inconsi…

On one hand I love this level of nitpicking.

On the other hand, by the standards of what an undergraduate organic chemistry student is looking for from a free online resource, and given that it is just one guy doing this, in his spare time, I think this is absolutely fine.

(I have a competing website on organic chemistry and I think this guy does a much better job on graphics than I do.)

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#32

Post by quickthrower2 »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #28
kipukun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not explain that POV?

Not a garphic designer, but someone who is anal about graphics in papers. I don't want to detract from how great this is! But, if you want to be anal about graphics... There are a lot of little mistakes that could be improved on. The text isn't justified and sort of meanders left and right. Nothing is quite correctly centered. Little bugs like stray lines (in the middle top one, TLC). Capitalization is really inconsi…

I am not a graphic designer nor really care about it too much but I can spot a few things that look less than ideal. Of course I might make the same mistakes (that is why we have code reviews etc.)

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#33

Post by jamesash »

solardev wrote: post #6

Out of curiosity, what do professional chemists refer to when they need a quick reference for something like this? Is it all in their heads by that point, or is there special software that they use every day (some sort of knowledge base type thing...?) or how does it all work? As a software dev I think I take it for granted that I can look up anything I need to in a second or two. How does it work for other professio…

This would be primarily aimed at the large number of students who have to take organic chemistry as a requirement.

For organic chemistry graduate students and professional organic chemists, all this stuff will largely be so ingrained as to not to require these kinds of resources.

There are, however, a large number of people who are in chemistry fields who need occasional refreshers on introductory concepts and for that purpose, these are excellent.

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#34

Post by Domenic_S »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #28
kipukun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not explain that POV?

Not a garphic designer, but someone who is anal about graphics in papers. I don't want to detract from how great this is! But, if you want to be anal about graphics... There are a lot of little mistakes that could be improved on. The text isn't justified and sort of meanders left and right. Nothing is quite correctly centered. Little bugs like stray lines (in the middle top one, TLC). Capitalization is really inconsi…

In the first handout, any idea what this sentence means?:

> For organic chemistry is NEON or 8 valence electrons is key.

I can't tell if I just don't know ochem or what.

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#35

Post by photochemsyn »

solardev wrote: post #6

Out of curiosity, what do professional chemists refer to when they need a quick reference for something like this? Is it all in their heads by that point, or is there special software that they use every day (some sort of knowledge base type thing...?) or how does it all work? As a software dev I think I take it for granted that I can look up anything I need to in a second or two. How does it work for other professio…

All of the topics in these handouts are the kind of general knowledge that you'd get in a college undergraduate chemistry program, so it would all be familiar, i.e. if you encountered it you'd know where to look up more specific information on your particular problem.

However, a lot of the databases and tools needed to do analysis, say of an unknown compound, aren't readily available to the public, it's often curated proprietary libraries of things like spectra data, for example this is a short interesting discussion of the software used to match an unknown sample to a reference in a library, which I think might now be applying AI approaches as well:

https://youtu.be/_BHhbg9Bv9Q

Usually you're working on some specific problem, and thus you need access to the historical chemical literature on that problem, which as often as not is hidden behind paywalls and not available on sci-hub or similar, so you need access to a university library or similar to get all the old papers (especially their materials/methods/results) on the topic. Industrial chemistry advances might not even be published over IP concerns, which I guess is somewhat like Nvidia proprietary GPU drivers.

Highly specific software and programming information is certainly a lot more accessible, everything that's highly specific in chemistry is often harder to find and/or costs money to access.

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#36

Post by light_hue_1 »

jamesash wrote: post #31
light_hue_1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a garphic designer, but someone who is anal about graphics in papers. I don't want to detract from how great this is! But, if you want to be anal about graphics... There are a lot of little mistakes that could be improved on. The text isn't justified and sort of meanders left and right. Nothing is quite correctly centered. Little bugs like stray lines (in the middle top one, TLC). Capitalization is really inconsi…

On one hand I love this level of nitpicking. On the other hand, by the standards of what an undergraduate organic chemistry student is looking for from a free online resource, and given that it is just one guy doing this, in his spare time, I think this is absolutely fine. (I have a competing website on organic chemistry and I think this guy does a much better job on graphics than I do.)

Oh I agree entirely. I totally don't want to detract from the work!

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#37

Post by light_hue_1 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #34
light_hue_1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a garphic designer, but someone who is anal about graphics in papers. I don't want to detract from how great this is! But, if you want to be anal about graphics... There are a lot of little mistakes that could be improved on. The text isn't justified and sort of meanders left and right. Nothing is quite correctly centered. Little bugs like stray lines (in the middle top one, TLC). Capitalization is really inconsi…

In the first handout, any idea what this sentence means?: > For organic chemistry is NEON or 8 valence electrons is key. I can't tell if I just don't know ochem or what.

Not a chemist, but yeah, that's just a typo.

> All atoms are reactive except the noble gases (group 18). These are stable due to a full outer shell. For organic chemistry is NEON or 8 valence electrons is key.

It should probably say something like. "For organic chemistry, what you see in NEON, attaining those 8 valence electrons, is key." Atoms want to participate in bonds to reach what Neon already has going on, 8 valence electrons. A full valence shell.

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#38

Post by ampersandy »

_m8fo wrote: post #5

For: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62185f3b81809a6fd03dd... Is there supposed to be a line through some of the center?

It looks like they've copied the template/page from a previous diagram file and forgot to remove one of the lines, probably just an accident.

Re: Gallery – Making Molecules

#39

Post by sdfsdfsfds »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #36
jamesash wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand I love this level of nitpicking. On the other hand, by the standards of what an undergraduate organic chemistry student is looking for from a free online resource, and given that it is just one guy doing this, in his spare time, I think this is absolutely fine. (I have a competing website on organic chemistry and I think this guy does a much better job on graphics than I do.)

Oh I agree entirely. I totally don't want to detract from the work!

I don't think we need to bend over backwards to avoid any kind of criticism of this project. It's clearly a personal passion project and nobody is saying it is less than "fine". I guess it's an American norm to be very circumspect about any kind of negative appraisal.

It takes time and training to pull off design like this, and while it might work as a fun infographic, it is not as polished or beautiful as it could be. There is room for improvement.

As far as the "graphic design POV" goes, that involves intuitive assessments of things like negative space, colour, and density of graphic elements and text. It involves things like the five Gestalt principles, or the CARP principles, although these are not prescriptions that anyone can follow. They're more like rationalisations of what has been found to work.

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