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 (
- 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)