Visual communication for scientists resources- Updated!!
- Maayan Harel
- Mar 21, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 15, 2025
I am currently offering lectures and workshops focused on Visual Communication for Scientists- online and in person! I ran a quick Twitter poll and it seems that this kind of training is badly needed.
If you think your institution or lab would benefit from a talk or workshop please contact me via email, or social media. Thank you so much to everyone who attended these events at Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University, Heidelberg University, and the Weizmann Institute.
Art prints of the graph are available for sale here.
This post will be updated from time to time with resources I think can be helpful to you for designing your scientific figures! I also offer consulting services starting at $50 for a 30-minute session. I find that in 30 minutes I can give clear feedback and provide step-by-step guidance for how to achieve your desired results! I also share some tips and resources on Twitter and  Linkedin so please follow me there!
Resources
General Design for Scientific Figures
by Marc Vandemeulebroecke1, Mark Baillie , Alison Margolskee and Baldur Magnusson
Design Strategies for Scientific Figures, the University of Texas at Austin
Aiora Zabala's courses https://bioinformatics-core-shared-training.github.io/effective-figure-design/
Scientific Figure Design
Graphical Abstracts
Picturing Science: Design Patterns in Graphical Abstracts, Jessica Hullman and Benjamin Bach
Posters:
Data Visualization
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward Tufte
Graphics Principles Cheat Sheet
by Christopher Cabanski, Houston Gilbert, Sofia Mosesova
The Financial Times Visual Vocabulary Guide
DataWrapper Blog has lots of fantastic posts that are really applicable to different software.
A designer's Perspective on Data Visualization, MIT Communication Lab.
Color Palette Design
Paul Tol
GeoDataViz has some very nice accessible qualitative and sequential palettes (I'm not as keen on the diverging ones).
Colorblindness Simulators: These also simulate grayscale.
Coblis (image upload)
Color Oracle full desktop simulator (Mac, PC, Linux)
Sim Daltonism Resizeable window - my favorite! (Mac)
BONUS*
6 Steps to Making a Good Figure, along with my graph of Forms of Visual Representation and the Graphics Scientists Make.
To receive a free high-resolution, printable pdf version, click the image!
