Diagrams

Often, diagrams used in scientific literature are complex and hard to discern, cramming as much information into a space with little thought of the aesthetics of the figure. What they often fail to realize is that aesthetics can help to convey information far more effectively than any jargony mess. I sought to break through this and convey my research through aesthetically pleasing means. Below are a series of diagrams I designed for my Biology Capstone this term. I use simplified shape and color palettes to give my figures a sleek look that is not distracting from the information they convey. The first figure has plenty of open space for description; this description is not in depth, and rather serves to convey the most important aspects of the environment - figure captions and the body of the paper will go more in depth. The next two figure again have lots of open space, and actually no text over the image at all. The second figure seeks to create a comparison between the Martian and Oceanic environments. This may not be evident just looking at the image, but the captions explain this. Rather, the image provides a sleek and easily comprehensible/memorable representation. Although the two halves of the image are structurally similar, just by looking at the color, you can easily tell which environment is which. I also differentiate the different lifeforms in each layer by color and size, rather than a detailed image or any textual description. This conveys information about different communities and stratification without making the image busy. I am most excited about the final figure; it describes my experimental set up. I could have just used a table, or black and white image with text - in fact, I was encouraged to - but I decided to have more fun with it. I used a pleasing, soft color palette to give it some life without being distracting. I avoided using text on the image as well, opting to use the figure legend and caption to describe how to interpret the figure. I also include an image of a plate from my research as well, in order to give a concrete visual of what the figure represents. I made space around the photo transparent to avoid having a block of countertop that doesn't matter and is not aesthetically pleasing.