Science Communication Tools & Resources

Science Graphic Design and Visual Communication Tools & Resources

Links to useful visual communication tools that researchers use to improve how they structure and design their publications, grants, posters, and slides.

Color for figures

• ColorSchemeDesigner (color palette tool)
• Adobe Color (color palette tool)
• Color Explorer
• Colors for User Interface design (Material.io)
• Color blindness simulator

Color for data visualization

• Color Brewer (color palette tool, great for data visualization)
• Cubehelix (color scheme for data visualizations – grayscale print friendly)
• Cubehelix Tool
• Many color palettes (for data visualization)
• Data Color Picker (similar to ColorBrewer – has an option for dark background)
• Testing color palettes (including color blindness)

Typography

• Google Fonts (free fonts with many styles)
• Better font finder (tool to compare Google Fonts by style)
• Font pairing (recommendation tool for how to pair fonts)
• ModularScale (calculator for font size ratios)

Further reading/watching

• (Book) Point of View : A series of articles on visual communication from Nature
• (Book) Designing Science Presentations : comprehensive, synthetic examples.
• (Book) Visual Strategies : not comprehensive but many redesigns of scientific figures
• (Video) Adobe Illustrator for Scientist : video tutorials (free YouTube channel)
• (Video) “The Dress” illusion explanation
• (Article) Parsing and transmitting complex ideas (Tim Urban from WaitButWhy)

Stock photographs/illustrations ( creative commons)

• https://graphicsurf.com/ (Medical, science, anatomy vector free icon sets)
• https://smart.servier.com/ ( medical & life science images)
• https://scidraw.io/ (free scientific illustrations)
• https://www.flaticon.com/ ( icons)
• https://openmoji.org/ (emojis and icons)
• https://freerangestock.com/ category/69/illustrations/ page1.html (illustrations)
• www.flickr.com/creativecommons (free photos)
• www.everystockphoto.com (free photos)

Software and tools

• InkScape (vector graphic editor – free)
• Affinity designer (vector graphic editor – inexpensive)
• Autodraw (browser-based tool for drawing that uses machine learning to autocomplete)