Use of text can make or break a science picture. You can easily apply the Goldilocks Rule to text, just like you can with color: “Avoid extremes—except for a good reason!” With text, the best way to avoid extremes is to always keep in mind that legibility matters most. Text has no purpose in a …
Category Archives: Graphic design strategies
Case study – Immunogenicity infographic from Beatriz Inglessis
A few weeks ago, we offered to give feedback to S.P.A.R.K. enrollees who put our 5 strategies for the visual communication of science into action when making their own pictures. Enrollees sent over many wonderful examples of their work. In this post, we’ll walk through some of the feedback we gave to enrollee Beatriz Inglessis. Beatriz …
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Misconceptions in the visual communication of science III: More color is better
*Note* This post is part of our ongoing series “Misconceptions in the visual communication of science.” You can find other posts in the series here. As a team of scientists and scientific illustrators, we’ve worked alongside many researchers who try their very hardest to communicate through pictures. Yet, despite best intentions, we often see common …
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The iterative design process behind the makeover of a picture
This blog post was written collaboratively by the Picture as Portal team. Illustrations by Tami Tolpa. In our S.P.A.R.K. online course we stress that creating a great scientific or technical figure is an iterative process. Like great writing, all great pictures go through an “ugly” phase. Only after rounds of modification and editing–ideally with the …
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Path pattern make over – contact tracing
This post was contributed by Picture as Portal® cofounder, Tami Tolpa. Tami has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Medical Illustration from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Greetings from Seattle, Washington! By now, we’ve all seen many pictures of the novel coronavirus, and that includes visual communications about how to protect ourselves from infection. The slide …
Case study- Infographic for the Journal of Biological Psychiatry – Before and After
This post was contributed by Picture as Portal® cofounder, Tami Tolpa. Tami has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Medical Illustration from the Rochester Institute of Technology. I was trained as a medical illustrator, but I‘m often called upon to perform a role that’s less about illustrating cells and tissues, and more about the design …
Case study – Infographic: Discoveries from metagenomics
Our Science Communications Director, Tyler Ford, also creates written, visual, and social media content for biotech companies and researchers. As you might imagine, Tyler often makes use of the visual communication strategies he’s learned from our S.P.A.R.K. online course. Below, we walk through a few of the strategies Tyler applied to the creation of this …
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SPARK strategies in action: COVID-19 Infographic from Graphics Editor Emily Eng
This article discusses design strategies used in the infographic accompanying this article in The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/facts-about-novel-coronavirus-and-how-to-prevent-covid-19/. Many thanks to Graphics Editor Emily Eng for allowing us to discuss her work! Science researchers and communicators are stepping up to the plate in this time of need. We see many examples of great scicomm surrounding COVID-19 …
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Protected: Cross post: How to approach layout design for medical illustration
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Make comparisons easier by following best practices in data visualization
This post was contributed by Picture as Portal® cofounder, Tami Tolpa. Tami has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Medical Illustration from the Rochester Institute of Technology. In this, the last of my three blog posts about data viz, we walk through another data visualization I developed for Cultivate Learning at the University of Washington. …
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