A Better Deep-Sea Poster

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Speaking of deep-sea posters, Dr. Charles Messing (Nova Southeastern University), who ordinarily works on crinoids and deep-sea corals and just generally a renaissance man, has left the benthos to offer this 25×36-inch wall poster that includes 109 of his pen-and-ink illustrations of pelagic organisms from bacteria to whales and from the surface to the abyss. The drawings are arranged by ecological grouping and depth, with names, taxonomic affiliation and maximum known size. The short is you can be sure the information is accurate and the drawings exceptional.

The poster is available on www.ebay.com (search Pelagic Realm poster) for US$25.00, which includes USPS Priority mail shipping with tracking. You can get in touch with him at [email protected] for international shipping.

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10 Replies to “A Better Deep-Sea Poster”

  1. I like the way Dr. Messing’s poster illustrates a wide variety of life forms, placing larvae next to medusae next to billfish and whales. This poster would look best hung low on the wall, I think, so you could see and read the illustrations and the text. It’s a very nice piece. Might look great in a classroom.

  2. Dr. Messing– you are off to a good start on your art and poster.

    Perhaps we can help get it redesigned and printed on green paper — even distribute in US?

    I would recommend another font, and perhaps another way to handle the text graphically.

    Print on Endeavor or some other green Forest Stewardship Council Paper.

    best fishes,

    Timothy Colman, publisher

  3. It is no easy task self producing and printing a poster so lets all give Chuck a break. Picking apart the text and font on this is bit of splitting hairs. The font and text are readable but not formal. The illustrations and time spent are no less than amazing. Printing on green while ideal may not have been available nor allowed for a poster that was affordable by many.

  4. splitting hairs

    I respectfully disagree. There is a great discipline and tradition of scientific illustration with guilds devoted to splitting those very hairs. It is clear that Dr. Messing is a gifted draftsman. But the readability and function of the text on a work like this is as important as the images themselves. That is, if they are meant to convey information and not just be a collection of pretty pictures. It is incredibly frustrating to realize how much time, energy and effort went into those images and then see them juxtaposed against a font originally meant for use only in a cartoon-based Internet chat space. I find it baffling.

  5. Stop your damm belly-aching. At least you can buy it. I can’t get any joy with the international shipping link. We may as well be on the far side of Mars for us deep-sea fans outside of the US of A :-(

  6. Dear sir,
    I am a students in biology department can you please send me a poster contains spore structure of bacillus.
    Yours Sincerely
    Othman

  7. Andrew, the international shipping link is the email address for Dr Messing, I believe. He created the poster.

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