The Visual Elements?Design: A Handbook for Communicating Science and Engineering

With insights and examples from designers at publications from Nature to the New York Times, an essential guide to creating figures and presentations.
 
In this short handbook, award-winning science communicator Felice C. Frankel offers a quick guide for scientists and engineers who want to share—and better understand—their research by designing compelling graphics for journal submissions, grant applications, presentations, and posters. Like all the books in the Visual Elements series, this handbook is also a training tool for researchers. Distilling her celebrated books and courses to the essentials, Frankel shows scientists and engineers, from students to primary investigators, the importance of thinking visually. This crucial volume in the Visual Elements series offers a wealth of engaging design examples. Case studies and advice from designers at prestigious publications and researchers’ own before-and-after examples show how even the smallest changes—to color, type, composition, and layering—can greatly improve communication. Ideal for researchers who want a foothold for presenting and preparing their work for everything from conferences to publications, the book explains the steps for creating a concise and communicative graphic to highlight the most important aspects of research—and to clarify researchers’ own thinking. The resulting book is an essential element of any scientist’s, engineer’s, or designer’s library.

Felice C. Frankel is an award-winning science photographer and research scientist in the Department of Chemical Engineering, with support from Mechanical Engineering, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Frankel is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At MIT, Frankel developed and instructed the first online MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) for edX addressing science and engineering photography. Working in collaboration with scientists and engineers, Frankel has had images appear in Nature, Science, Cell, TheNew York Times, National Geographic, PNAS, Newsweek, Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science, and New Scientist, among others. She is the coauthor of Visual Strategies and author of Picturing Science and Engineering; the Visual Elements series of handbooks for communicating science and engineering (Photography, Design, and Abstraction), all published by the University of Chicago Press; and most recently, Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us.