Creating Art for Journal Covers

[Music]

[Alberto’s presentation: Title slide]

Alberto Curdra:

… for those in a compelling and understandable way, applying what we know about how visual information is going to be consumed and processed by our viewers. I hope that after this talk, all of you will have some new tools and ideas to use in your next visual project.

[Second slide: Science covers and graphics]

I created this little potpourri that kind of shows the scope of our production.

But I would like to start by introducing the Science graphics team, which I lead. We're a group of seven scientific illustrators and graphic designers, which are responsible for creating a large array of visuals: illustrations for our covers, section openings, graphics and data visualizations for the news section, animations for social and video, and figures for our research sections and online journals, to name some. The graphics team was formed in 2015, and since then we have made the conscious effort to establish a consistent look and style across every visual element that we create in our shop.

[Third slide: Venn diagram]

Our team is part of the larger visual group that also include design, photo, and web content. The graphics team production is a deeply collaborative effort within the group. All of the visuals we create at some point are touched, edited, or perfected by somebody else belonging to another team. This close collaboration is paramount when you're tied to strict publishing deadlines and large outputs of visuals that the magazine and site demand.

[Fourth slide: Science covers]

The bulk of our production is destined to the AAAS flagship weekly journal Science, but we also are responsible for creating visuals for all our online journals: Immunology, Signaling, Translational Medicine, and Robotics. Alice Kitterman, who is going to talk a little bit later, has been in the front of this segment of our production. She will be talking a bit about all their nut and bolts in her work.

[Fifth slide: Spectrum from Reviews and summaries to News]

Our team has to cover the needs at two levels of coverage and also some spaces in between. On one side of this bar, there are visuals we create for a very special audience of the publication related to papers and research with summaries and reviews. And on the other side is the coverage more targeted to a general public on science news.

[Sixth slide: Two graphics]

We create and edit a large number of scientific figures, which normally contain graphics, charts, diagrams with the objective of displaying data on information linked to a very specific paper. These visuals are very close to the reference material provided by the researchers.

For example, the figure on the left by Natalie Carey closely respects the content and general design by the author’s figure but has been styled to make a consistent look. The figure on the left is another example by Val Altounian showing molecular structures generated in 3D software with the data provided by the author.

[Seventh slide: Finished graphic vs reference material]

Some of these figures are hybrid. In our perspective section, we use graphics that live in between these two worlds—these two sides of the audience bar. These visuals are still targeted to a specialized audience in terms of content and topic but have the expectation of reaching across disciplines. Those graphics require lots of feedback from the authors and the expertise of our scientific illustrators interpreting correctly this information. The mantra or the general idea is that if we create a figure for a biology paper, a physicist could easily follow it.

Here you can see an example—also by Val Altounian. On the right, we can see the finishing graphic, and on the left the reference material that she used to create it with all her annotations. As I said, in these pieces there's a lot of back and forth between these two elements.

[Eighth slide: The hidden crater]

And finally on the other extreme of our bar, we have information graphics. We produce them for the news section of the magazine, and these visuals are targeted toward a more general audience. And because of that, have normally a lot more visibility. Information graphics use tools like illustrations, charts, pictograms, diagrams, and animations in combination with text to describe information about current scientific development. Information graphics have the same expectations of accuracy and usableness than other visuals we produce but are somewhat more open to the illustration to craft this narrative and flow to convey information.

In this example by Chris Bickel, the Hiawatha crater in Greenland having cut a hole to show its internal structure, giving a sense of the thickness of the ice that covers it. Secondary diagrams explain how the crater is explored with radar from the air. And also the viewer get a very good sense of the relative size to other impact craters and its location.

[Ninth slide: Science cover and solar wind visual]

Related to information graphics are data visualizations. A good portion of our graphics contain some form of data visualization in the form of charts and cartography. But in some cases, there's a crossover of categories like this cover illustration created by Val Altounian.

In this visual, the illustrator used some 9,000 points of data from the MAVEN probe to generate the trajectories of charged particles from the solar wind hitting the weak magnetosphere of Mars. Val, who is not a coder by the way, learned enough Python to code this visualization on Cinema 4D.

[Tenth slide: The Vaccine Wars]

At this point, you may have noticed that all our visuals, even the ones that follow closely the reference material provided by the authors, have a common feel and flow of information. The reason is that we try to follow certain basic principles, principles rooted in the world of design and the understanding of how our audience consume visual information.

Take, for example, this data visualization piece by Jia You and Meredith Wadman. The graphic uses the change inside of geometric-shaped circles to represent the number of cases in several diseases since 1949 and the color orange to highlight the moment in time in which specific vaccines were introduced. We can clearly appreciate the effect of vaccination in the decreasing numbers started on those choke points.

[Eleventh slide: Out of ashes]

But in some cases, the abstract representation of information is not adequate to relate the information we're targeting with our piece. We need tools like illustrations, diagrams, pictograms, etc.

This beautiful explanatory graphic by Chris Bickel explore the plans to restore Notre Dame cathedral after the 2019 fire. The graphics show the interior of the building, the exterior. It gives us a very good sense of scale thickness of the walls, and a whole set of secondary diagrams provide the reader with a vast amount of detailed information regarding how the fire maybe affected certain areas and structure.

[Twelfth slide: The Vaccine Wars and Out of ashes]

So the question is what those two visuals have in common. One is an abstract statistical piece and the other an explanatory graphic that is based on illustrations and diagrams. The answer, in my opinion, is that they are visual representations of data and phenomena—the real things that the bare eye will not be able to see. The circles in the first example show a pattern that tells the viewer how the introduction of vaccines dramatically reduce the incidence of cases. The second allows the viewer to explore the structure of the cathedral, its building materials, the impact of the fire.

They're both designed in a way the human brain can easily understand. The visual forms that are used to encode the data, the layout, the type, the use of size, color, has been carefully crafted to make the viewer understand what the story is about. The challenge these two graphics address is that we're not good at processing large amounts of data, complexity, or huge amounts of numbers.

We’re actually wired to identify patterns. We are a very visual-inclined species. That is why graphics—visuals in general—are so effective at communicating certain kinds of information. We in the graphics team try to take advantage of what the human brain is capable of and anticipate what our readers’ brains are going to do with this information.

[Thirteenth slide: Rows of black numbers]

Here's a very simple example of how this works on a very basic level. We have a sequence of random numbers in the grid. I'm going to give you 10 seconds to tell me how many zeros you can see.

[10 seconds pass]

All right, time. So if you say nine, you are right. And I must say, you have the eyes of a hawk. But for the rest of us, here's a little mind hack that could help.

[Fourteenth slide: Rows of black numbers with red 0s]

There you go. Try now. Just a slight change of color allows us to focus on the pattern of zeros almost instantly. Or even better:

[Fifteenth slide: Rows of gray numbers with red 0s]

How is this? If we set back the noise of color by emphasizing even more this contrast, the elements we want the viewer to concentrate on shine like a Christmas tree.

[Sixteenth slide: Unemployment rate table]

As I said, we normally have trouble processing complexity. Let me show you another quick example from my friend Professor Alberto Cairo's book The Functional Art. Imagine that you're working on the graphics on unemployment rates in the United States, and the goal is to display to your viewers what states in this specific moment in time have rates closer to the historical maximum.

Would you represent the data as a table? Can you answer the question you're seeking to present by just presenting this table?

So very quickly, tell me what two states have a current rate closer to the historical maximum?

With that question, I'm forcing your brains to do something they are not naturally prepared to do: scan the figures, read them, compare them, rank them. As I said, our job as designers is to anticipate what users will likely going to do with our graphic.

[Seventeenth slide: Unemployment rate chart with circles]

What if we encoded the data in a chart? Now we can easily see that Florida and California are actually the two states closer to the historical maximum. With just a gaze, this example illustrates one of the very principles of our work.

If you have to design a visual piece, one of the first things you need to do is ask yourself, “What is your graphic will be used to do?” and “What kind of questions will your graphic help to answer?” And then use the best form of visual help so the viewer can understand this information.

[Eighteenth slide: Wanted: super corals]

Another principle we originally apply is to establish a clear hierarchy in our graphics. There's an order in which we're going to scan with our eyes. Our vision tend to prioritize certain features before we move into other areas. We use that behavior to our advantage to craft a certain flow in the narrative of visuals.

Take, for example, this graphic by Chris about breeding corals to make them more resistant to temperature changes in the environment.

[Nineteenth slide: “Wanted: super corals” with red box]

The graphic has a dominant visual element in the upper right corner—an illustration of the species of coral mentioned in the article. The viewer will most certainly start there before moving his attention to other sections of the graphic–

[Twentieth slide: “Wanted: super corals” with red boxes and arrows]

–and other chunks of information. This simple trick—establishing a great hierarchy on our graphic—allows us to direct how the information is going to be prioritized by the viewer.

[Twenty-first slide: “Wanted: super corals” with red boxes and large orange arrow]

We also take advantage of some cultural conventions like the West reading left to right and top to button combined to reinforce this rhythm.

[Twenty-second slide: Modes of attack]

Another design principle we like to apply to our production is a consistent use of color as a visual code. We often limit our palette to just two colors to limit the noise of contextual information. By muting with gray anatomy portions like in this graphic, the viewer can easily focus on information about the particles attacking the respiratory tract in red.

[Twenty-third slide: Liver-related visuals]

Of course, the temptation of depicting reality in a realistic way is always there. This extra layer of visual information don't really help our visualization to convey a clearer message. Here we have a figure from the author's paper on the left and the same one redesigned by our team. As you can see, limiting the palette of the piece the figure has now a lot less contextual noise.

[Twenty-fourth slide: COVID new cases per 1M]

Lastly, I would like to mention another concept we like to apply to our graphics—the data-ink ratio concept that was coined by Edward Tufte, the expert whose work has contributed significantly to designing effective graphic presentations. In his 1983 book The Visual Display of Quantitative Data, he talks about the proportion of ink that is used to present actual usable data compared to the total amount of ink or pixels used in the entire display.

The example on the left, based on this, will have a low data ratio: More ink is used for elements that don't encode data. The one on the left has a high data-ink ratio—less ink is used for elements that don't encode data. The idea is that graphics closer to a high data-ink are more effective in communicating information to the viewer.

[Twenty-fifth slide: Rise of the City]

Although there's no conclusive evidence that this hypothesis has merit, we like to keep Tufte’s assertion in mind when designing our graphics. It's always a good exercise to try to clean any visual for unnecessary elements that are not contributing to the understanding of the data that you're trying to communicate. Another consideration is that a minimalistic approach often allows it to pack a lot more information in smaller places.

[Twenty-sixth slide: Science covers and graphics]

Well, this is it, basically. And I hope this brief tour into how our sausages are made at Science will help you in future visual projects, whatever they are. Thank you very much.

[Screen share stops]


Robert Hornsby:

So our next presenter is Alice Kitterman. And Alice, will you share your screen and take us to the next bit?

Thank you all for posting questions in the chat box and a couple of people into the QA.

[Screen share begins]

We'll come back to questions after the presentations are over.

[Alice’s presentation: Title slide]


Alice Kitterman:

Okay, hi everyone. I hope everyone's morning is going well. I am going to start my timer.

As Alberto and Robert mentioned, my name is Alice, and I create the figures for the commentaries that are written by a third party about somebody else's research. And my main role is to create these figures for the sister journals, the online ones: Signaling, Translational Medicine, Immunology, and Robotics.

My role is unique in that I have to meet the needs of five different journals on five different publication schedules. So while I don't often have the time to develop the best graphic, what I can do is design a better graphic with a stronger narrative.

[Second slide: Visual abstract definition]

So what I create is similar to something that I think that you all are familiar with, and that is a visual abstract. And these types of graphics serve a very different purpose from a research figure and therefore should also look very different. So in this definition that I've put up here, the two words that I've highlighted in it are the key ones, and that is it has to be a summary and it has to be digested rapidly.

[Third slide: The typical story structure and the research paper]

So you may be wondering, “Where do you begin in creating this graphic?” And you can look to the structure of a research paper. The typical story structure has many parallels to each of the sections of a research paper, and the conclusion/discussion kind of serves as that overarching goal that answers the question, “What problem is your research addressing?”

[Fourth slide: What is your “story”?]

Telling this clear and concise story in a single graphic begins with the discipline to exclude information that shrouds that succinct summarization. Now, I like to think in flowcharts, as you see, and so I'm going to use this format to introduce some of the processes that I utilize to create my graphics. So the first thing that we want to do is to isolate the basic content of your graphic, and you can draw from your research paper. And then we're going to further curate or call this information in the graphic. And finally, we'll design it to incorporate the visual breadcrumbs that help to promote effective visual processing.

So again, to start, you can look at your research paper and what you can start with is just to, you know, come up with a one sentence for each of the sections. And among all these sentences, you want to make sure that somewhere you talk about, you know, the problem—the specific problem—that your research addresses and what is the overarching goal.

A bonus would be if you can actually try and keep this to one to two sentences. If you can combine sentences like material, methods, and the results that would be great.

And if you can achieve all these things, you can go to the next step, which is actually drawing out what's happening in each sentence that you've created. And this is kind of an important aspect of it because it's starting to get you into the visualization mode of your script.

And finally, you want to take all your little pictures and you want to place them just in one particular page, and the size is usually dictated by the journal and the figure size restrictions. And once you've combined all of your pictures, you've basically created an illustrated version of your script.

And now comes the hardest part, which is the streamlining.

[Fifth slide: Be ruthless, and]

So some of the things that I start talking about when I'm looking at all of these different panels is I start asking myself some questions, and this is just an example of a few questions.

[Sixth slide: curate your information]

For instance, you can look to see if all of your panels—or some of your panels—have certain consistencies in scale and magnification, in point of view, setting, or background.

And if they don't, this is where you have to start being very analytical about creating all these images in your mind with the same visual consistencies. If you've already got them, then this is where you can start trying to combine the panels.

[Seventh slide: Unify scale and point of view]

So let's go to an example. The way I've set up the examples are “before,” which is usually the reference material that someone like you all give to me, and then the “after” is what I produce. So what is the overarching goal in this “before” figure? It is just to show two different ways that potential antibody-dependent enhancement can develop.

And what you see here is the left side of the screen kind of has this top to bottom visual presentation of the information. That's how you read it. And the right, you kind of start on the upper right side and then you kind of swoosh over to the lower right side. So right there, you're already creating a visual interruption. And anytime you have this kind of visual interruption is an opportunity for you to lose the viewer's attention. You'll also notice that there are two kind of big cells. One is orange, and one is gray, but they're the same cell.

So what I've done on the right is I've changed the point of view for both of the images, and then I've also kept this top to bottom kind of curvy, flowy-like presentation of the visual information to unify these aspects of the figure.

[Eighth slide: Give the “illusion” of a single image]

So this next example is a fantastic research paper figure on your left. Unfortunately, it's overly complex for a visual abstract, and so what I attempted to do here was just extract the important information in introducing this synthetic spider web and talking about what it's made out of and how it specifically functions to mimic a natural spider web.

So I'm trying to give the illusion of a single panel image by utilizing this ionic spider web as a backdrop and then putting the vignettes on top of it. And the vignettes describe—starting from the upper left side—what the fibers are made of, and then going clockwise around are all the ways that it functions like a natural spider web.

[Ninth slide: One background for all!]

Another thing that's somewhat similar is just trying to unify this background. So what is the overarching goal for this graphic on the left? The authors really wanted to emphasize the many different mechanisms by which calcium is moved inside, outside of a cell, and around the cell. And so I think I've accomplished the same feat showing all the different ways and mechanisms that calcium has moved in and around a cell, but I've unified it into one background, thus decreasing the number of visual interruptions.

[Tenth slide: Still curating…]

Okay, let's go back to the flow chart. So we've tried our best to eliminate multiple panels and images but we still might have them. Right? So if we still have them, we're gonna, again, try to create an illusion to reduce the number of panels that we see. So, one of the things that we can do is simply eliminating boxes and using blurbs as separators.

[Eleventh slide: Reduce, reduce, reduce]

Or we can attempt to actually eliminate some panels. So in this example on the left, the overarching goal of this figure was to introduce a new navigational controller that's added to this old—old-ish—quadrupedal robot. And what this navigational controller does is it now allows this robot to function autonomously.

So in the left side, the top three images show different learning pedagogies that go into the design of this navigational controller. But these are kind of abstract concepts. And what I really wanted to focus on was what this navigational controller, you know, allows this robot to do, which is navigate autonomously. I eliminated the top three figures in favor of text boxes on the right so the information is still there. And then this way it kind of gives the illusion that there's like four panels, and it also allows the viewer to focus on what the navigational controller does.

[Twelfth slide: Yup, still curating…]

So are there repetitions in your figure? Sometimes repetitions can be a bad thing and a good thing. So let's cover the bad.

[Thirteenth slide: Repetition can be bad]

The overarching goal in this before figure is to do a compare and contrast. So those are very important types of figures to show. However, because there's so many different elements included on this figure, all the different elements have to be reduced to a certain size, and that makes it harder to read from a visual standpoint.

So what I did on the right is I tried to take that common element of the cells and the glucose uptake—the one thing that doesn't change—and I put them in the middle of the figure so that both panels could share that specific element. And what I did was twofold, actually. One, I was able to make all of the elements slightly larger on the page, and I'm also giving kind of the illusion that this is just a one panel figure.

[Fourteenth slide: Repetition can be good]

Repetition can be a good thing. So the overarching goal in this awesome “before” sketch is that this particular robot is applying different learning strategies and actually affecting different outcomes. But at first glance, I thought, “Well, is the robot thinking about two different things and choosing one and then that's the outcome? Or is it thinking about two different things and it has the same outcome?”

So I thought in this case it was better just to separate out the panels so that the take home message would be that each different learning strategy that the robot uses affects a different outcome.

[Fifteenth slide: And still curating…]

Okay, so we're doing our best to eliminate these multiple images and panels to reduce the number of visual interruptions. But again, sometimes you can't. And so if you have to include multiple images, can you categorize them? And if you can't, maybe they just need to be eliminated for the purposes of your visual abstract. Or, if they can, then maybe you can group them.

[Sixteenth slide: Grids are GREAT]

In the left hand panel, this is a great visual. The overarching goal is to show the evolution of deep sea exploration vehicles that are now bio-inspired. And so on the right, what I've done is I've used a grid pattern to organize the information so that it flows more effectively.

[Seventeenth slide: The painful part is over!]

So we've gotten through the painful part of streamlining and now we're going to get to adding those visual breadcrumbs or those visual cues that'll reinforce that visual hierarchy. You know, Alberto talked about this. And these visual hierarchies—we're just going to use these visual cues to help tell the viewer, just directly tell the viewer, what should be, what's the most important, and what are the less important elements.

[Eighteenth slide: Adding visual breadcrumbs]

So the first visual cue that I want to go through is size, which Alberto already touched upon as well, and it's also, you know, somewhat of a no-brainer.

[Nineteenth slide: Bigger IS better]

And so again, we'll go back to our quadrupedal robot. In the left-hand side, all the seven panels have the same size. And on the right side, you know, clearly I've increased the size of the robot to show off that navigational system.

[Twentieth slide: More breadcrumbs]

Okay, and Alberto also touched upon this—color. And color is a very controversial topic. We've been taught since we were little that color should be used for description. The sky is blue, the sun is yellow, etc. But the unique thing that science does, and science graphics do, are that we use color functionally and not for description.

[Twenty-first slide: The power of the absence of color]

So in this example—I hope this makes this clear—when you look on the left-hand side, where does your eye go? And what's the most important part of this graphic? So it's kind of hard to tell.

So on the right, what I've done is that I've used a saturated warm color—red—to highlight the receptor tyrosine kinase enzyme, which is the star of the show. And all of the other elements are still represented; they just are set back with the absence of color.

[Twenty-second slide: Color-coding tells the story]

Again, on the left here, what's the most important element or elements in this graphic? To me, immediately my eye goes to the left-hand side—you know, the full color panels—when in fact all six of these panels are of equal importance. So on the right, I've used color specifically to draw your attention to those anatomic locations that are being highlighted. And on top of that, I eliminated the middle figure, which was unnecessary, which then allowed me to make all the individual panels larger.

[Twenty-third slide: The more breadcrumbs the better]

Okay, so this is an artist's secret weapon. You know, we have the ability to render very differently.

[Twenty-fourth slide: 3D versus 2D versus color versus black-and-white line versus…]

We can use 3D; we can use 2D; we can use black and white versus form. So I think in this example it’s pretty clear where I want your eye to go, and that's to the squid robot and the squid.

[Twenty-fifth slide: Keep adding those breadcrumbs]

Organization is a graphic designer’s secret weapon as well as an illustrator’s secret weapon, and it can make or break your figure. You want to use these layout and design principles to lead the viewer through your graphic.

[Twenty-sixth slide: Graphic design is our secret weapon!]

So in the left-hand side, this is a top to bottom representation. It's perfectly legitimate, but where it starts to fall apart is on the right hand side with the wedge graphs, and this is because vertical text is very difficult to read.

So fortunately, this was a very simple solution. I just had to rotate the graphic counterclockwise, and that allows me to show the graph at the bottom—to read it from left to right, which is much easier. And you'll also notice that the type of graph changed.

[Twenty-seventh slide: The “trail” ends here]

And finally detail. And, you know, like size, this seems very obvious. And detail can mean adding more detail to a visual, or it can also mean just adding visual detail in general.

[Twenty-eighth slide: Details are iconic]

So again, this example is probably a no-brainer. On the left, we have a flow chart—my favorite. But you know looking at the flowchart, it might not be very visually interesting. And on top of that, you don't really get a sense of what it is unless you read it. So on the right, I've added that visual detail, which hopefully generates more visual interest as well as adding those icons that might give a clue as to what this flowchart is about.

[Twenty-ninth slide: Pop Quiz Time]

So finally, it's a pop quiz, and I'm going to give you 10 seconds like Alberto did. Of all these visual breadcrumbs that I mentioned—color, size, treatment, detail, and organization—I want you to name three different visual breadcrumbs that you can add to make this more visually legible.

[10 seconds pass]

[Thirtieth slide: How many breadcrumbs did YOU add?]

Okay, here's one solution. So I've done some color coding. I've also used color just for descriptive purposes while I'm setting other visual elements back, and I've used a grid organization, you know, to organize the information.

[Thirty-first slide: Did the audience find the presentation helpful?]

Okay. So, you know, my hope in this talk was to really clarify why we creative professionals make all the changes that we make to your figures. And the takeaway message is really to give you a better understanding of our mindset and processes so that in the future the “before” figures that you give to someone like me will result in an “after” figure that was presented here. So thanks very much.

And stop sharing.

[Screen share stops]

Okay.


Robert:

Hi. As I mentioned in the chat, we're going to take a short five-minute biology break before the next presentations, so we will resume in five minutes. Don't go away. Or, too far.

[Biology Break slide]

[Visualizing Science slides rotate through while classical music plays]

[Screen share stops]

Hello, welcome back to Visualizing Science. We're going to continue with our program with Chris Bickel. Chris, would you like to share your–


Chris Bickel:

I will share my screen and get going.


Robert:

Okay.


Chris:

See here.

[Screen share begins]

[Chris’s presentation: Title slide]

Okay, good morning, everybody. My name is Chris Bickel. I'm Senior Scientific Illustrator at Science magazine. I have been at the journal for about 15 years. I have a degree in medical illustration from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2004, though I—as my title states—am distinctly a scientific illustrator at this point.

I'm going to talk about editorial illustration at the magazine today. The bulk of what I'll discuss is cover illustration. That's the largest internal use of editorial illustration at the journal.

[Second slide: Editorial illustration]

Editorial illustration is artwork that's inspired by written text that visually illuminates concepts of a story. Not even necessarily the entire story, but enough to educate, you know, while at the same time intriguing an audience and wanting to know more, wanting to read into the journal, wanting to get inside.

These kind of illustrations can be whimsical and fun in nature. I think it's common these days to kind of see blocky editorial illustrations that are used in a variety of different publications. Within scientific illustration, it's still something it needs to educate and not purely be it at my will and fancy.

[Third slide: Cover illustration]

So like I said, we're going to discuss cover illustration. Considerations that I use when designing cover illustrations are, of course, our audience. Our audience at Science is rather high-level functioning scientific researchers, but not everybody is an expert in everything. So we need to shape cover stories to be easily accessible for quick understanding and digestion of what the topic is while at the same time even forming some questions to get someone to get inside of the magazine.

One of the things that I consider is to look outside of just the scientific details for inspiration on how I might visually communicate a topic on a Science cover. I try to leverage the freedom and leverage the opposite, really, of doing a didactic figure where we limit color; we try to use color a little bit more expressively on cover images.

And then above all else, creating something that's beautiful but certainly accurate. There's really no point to beautiful scientific illustrations that don't tell a story.

[Fourth slide: 10 Science covers]

Here are 10 covers that I've worked on in the last couple of years, a little smattering of some of the ones I like. We are going to discuss the middle top three in more detail and look at how they are produced, and I will discuss some key considerations for each of them.

As you can see here, we illustrate a wide range of science, of course, at the journal. We have perovskite solar cells in the bottom right. We have a metamaterial cover: “A Surprising Twist.” We have a subatomic particles, molecular biology, chemistry, just the whole host of topics.

[Fifth slide: 3 Science covers standing out from the previous 10]

So these are the three covers: “Coronavirus Interrupted” that we will discuss about. That's a cell and molecular biology piece. The central image “Metallic Solution” was a very interesting paper about an engineered fluid that turns into a metal while retaining the qualities of a fluid—or retain the qualities of both, actually. And lastly, “A Surprising Twist,” which was a cover on chiral metamaterials and how they deal with compressive forces.

[Sixth slide: Coronavirus Interrupted—Story]

So “Coronavirus Interrupted” was a project we worked on this year, of course. The paper was on the drug interaction with a protease and how the drug would potentially inhibit the protease and thus stop viral replication within a cell.

In this case, be it that the story was about a small molecule drug here in orange and the beige protease, we needed to have a fair amount of context so that you weren't just looking at what would look like a random protein databank-based molecular coordinate illustration and needed to add the context of coronavirus.

In much of the work previous to this piece, a lot of the viruses I looked at portrayed were in warmer tones. And I thought in this instance, it would be kind of fun to break that mold and also allow the point of the story in the warmer tones to really show in the forefront while also adding the context needed to make the entire cover descriptive visual.

[Seventh slide: Coronavirus Interrupted—Process: Research]

So to break down how I started this process of making this cover, here's some sketches. At this process, I'm looking at compositional considerations for a final—how it might interact with cover logo, doing research and talking with researchers, and getting boned up on the science as well as getting my ideas down on paper. Or in this case, an iPad Pro. Fun fact, I haven't drawn on a piece of paper in about six years.

In this case, also, there was a question while making this illustration as to whether or not the virus was a direct fusing virus or one that was taken up by endocytosis. And in June, we decided that the endocytosis model would be the best moving forward with our cover. So I graduated more to the right-hand sketch than the left.

[Eighth slide: Coronavirus Interrupted—Process: Exploratory modeling]

Next step is doing some preliminary 3D modeling to build base models to research molecular coordinate data and start visualizing some of my ideas in 3D space. Here I have designed on the right a full viral particle with M proteins, E proteins and spike proteins, and then the viral membrane. I started working on—with the left-hand sketch—trying to also kind of see if that direct budding concept would work.

The sharp coronavirus-minded people will notice that the end capsids are all completely incorrect in the left image, and that was really just some preliminary work.

[Ninth slide: Coronavirus Interrupted—Process: Scene set up]

Here I use Cinema 4D—which is a Maxon product; it's a German 3D modeling animation program—to set up my work. This is just a neat shot of kind of how that cover’s visualized in the 3D space—how you see it before it is rendered out.

And those on the webinar that do this sort of work will certainly know that the computer does not show you what you always get out of it. And it's your job to kind of understand that process and make the computer do what you want it to do.

[Tenth slide: Coronavirus Interrupted—Process: Rendering]

The next part of this process is rendering out individual components and elements out of the three-dimensional composition. This allows for rendering separate passes for isolating components and applying post effects more selectively than on the image as a whole.

On the right-hand side, you can see as the image is composited together, my art director and I worked together to start cropping this image to give it a little bit more of a focus visually and to get rid of some of the extraneous space that wasn't helping shape the story.

[Eleventh slide: Coronavirus Interrupted—Final Design]

So we're back to the final here. Sorry for being redundant, but this shows you our final illustration. In this instance, you may see that some of the orange—the bright orange drug molecules—have been moved around so that the cover line can– So they can be read properly and not be impacted by some of the visual components. That's a point that I will also touch on in subsequent covers here.

[Twelfth slide: Metallic Solution—Story]

This metallic solution was an interesting and far different editorial sort of take on a subject than the last example. In this science, an electrolyte transitions from being a fluid to being a metallic fluid, where you would have the complexity of having the dynamics of a fluid but also with the characteristics of a metal. In this instance, I looked for some external cues.

[Thirteenth slide: Metallic Solution—Process: Sketching]

I looked to using–

Let me skip to here.

[Fourteenth slide: Metallic Solution—Process: Inspiration]

–using a water faucet imagery to give kind of a jumping off point to showing–

[Twelfth slide: Metallic Solution—Story]

–this liquid in a clean, clear, and concise way.

[Thirteenth slide: Metallic Solution—Process: Sketching]

Here are some sketches where I started sketching out some concepts. I had this initial understanding that this metal liquid kind of transitioned in a very finite and specific time point. You can see in the left side I had sketched some fluids kind of falling off of a ledge, kind of playing up on a motif that this fluid hit a point of no return.

And that ended up being incorrect, so I moved away from that to something that was just kind of inspired by the faucet imagery that I just showed. So the image on the right is where we kind of took this illustration.

[Fourteenth slide: Metallic Solution—Process: Inspiration]

So at this point, using the water faucet imagery, I started hand sculpting this piece in Cinema 4D. I'm sure some of you have heard of ZBrush, which is a 3D sculpting program. I tend to do my sculpting in Cinema 4D. So this was sculpted a couple of times. I don't think that you ever need to go with your first attempt. It's really good to build off of your previous work and keep pushing where you're gonna go with something.

The two central images here weren't right hitting the mark, but they were good kind of preliminary test runs to the image on the right, which is our final. The model was hand sculpted with a mouse, and I did some particle simulations to get some of the additional bubbling and the fluid and the spatters around the exterior.

[Fifteenth slide: Metallic Solution—Final Design]

Here's our final illustration. It's very clean, very clear, kind of a high contrast look. The metallic solution cover line fits very nicely in that subtle curve in the fluid dripping, and that leads to just a nice continuity between the two elements and flow.

We also needed to keep in mind how the teaser at the very top would be legible. And it's the bane of the illustrator's existence—all this type on these covers—but it is very important whenever designing these kind of pieces to ensure the whole package works clean and beautifully as a whole.

[Sixteenth slide: A Surprising Twist—Story]

The last cover I'll talk about briefly is one I produced in 2007. The research is about very small metamaterials that, when compressed, do not squoosh out or bulge but they twist and do not change in overall volume—not volume, but overall shape—like you would assume.

[Seventeenth slide: A Surprising Twist—Process: Research]

This was a more explicit take on the reference material. Here's a couple of figures from the research. And in looking at these, I kept thinking of skyscrapers and kept thinking of kind of like old technical drawings, and I looked towards that sort of imagery for inspiration.

[Eighteenth slide: A Surprising Twist—Process: Inspiration]

Here are a couple of images that I used. And on the right was an initial kind of model that is actually twisting the wrong direction, but I'm trying to again work with the first go and see how I could make this otherwise—I wouldn’t say boring, but—square shape, you know, have some dynamicism and some unique dynamic angular cues.

[Nineteenth slide: A Surprising Twist—Final Design]

And this in the final, you can see that I colored the blocky shape with a gradient, which also helped give some verticality to the design. And I overlaid a few different line renders to try to get the kind of technical non-organic side of this across while at the same time grounding the subject on the cover. This was a case of playing with the subject coming over the science logo, which also added a nice sense of depth and some additional dynamic looks.

So that is what I have for you today.

[Twentieth slide: Thank you]

I just want to give a brief overview of us using editorial illustration at the journal, some covers, and thank you very much. I'll turn it over to Scott and Nicoletta.

[Screen share stops]


Robert:

Thank you, Chris. So Niki, would you like to share your screen?


[Screen share begins]

[Niki’s presentation: Title slide]


Niki Barolini:

Okay. Hello everybody, and welcome to my presentation on visualizing Alzheimer's with Dr. Scott Small.

[Second slide: Artists have depicted medical advances]

So it's not news that artists and physicians have always shared a close working relationship. They need each other to make sense of intricate and mysterious workings of our bodies.

[Third slide: Leonardo da Vinci]

Often, physicians were also artists or artists who also practice medicine: icons such as Leonardo da Vinci, Andreas Vesalius, and Frank Netter.

[Fourth slide: Hi I’m Niki]

Hi, I'm Niki. And no, I'm not a physician, although I did take a year of pre-med in college and have dissected a few bodies.

[Fifth slide: Illustrations of vertebrae, a heart, and the human body]

Instead, I studied art. And the good news is that I'm a much better artist than I would have been a doctor. Here are some examples of illustrations I've done for Columbia physicians.

[Seventh slide: Scott A. Small, MD]

Oops, sorry.

[Sixth slide: I need art]

Recently, one of our top-caliber physicians reached out to me with my favorite question: “I need art. Can you help me?” He's joining us here today. Welcome Dr. Scott Small–

[Seventh slide: Scott A. Small, MD]

–the director of Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Columbia, where he is the Boris and Rose Katz Professor of Neurology. Scott, can you please tell us a little bit about your research work?


Scott Small:

Yeah, thanks to everyone for–

[Eighth slide: Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC)

–inviting me to participate in what I think is super important. The first thing I'll say that I am a physician. But unlike da Vinci or Netter, I am not an artist. And that's why we need to learn to collaborate. And my prime focus is on Alzheimer's disease.

And I'll just make one general comment and let Niki take it from there, and that is it's always surprising to me that sometimes scientists don't completely understand the value of art or visual representation. There's a sense—perhaps a hubristic sense—that, you know, science is science and visualization is just advertising, and we don't need advertising if our product is perfect.

And that of course is wrong—explicitly and implicitly. That's been proven wrong by practitioners of science, wrong by philosophers of science. I'll paraphrase one practitioner, and that's Einstein, who was very clear on “You don't understand something unless you can visualize it.” He did it in his mind. But of course, that's also true as we communicate science.

The other point I'll make is that as science has gotten more and more complicated, what I was impressed by just watching our colleagues earlier in the earlier presentations is that particularly when you're going to high impact journals—and our science are like stuffed turkeys: there's a lot of things going on, even scientists to scientists—it's really important to have that really great graphic to help communicate what we're doing.

So no longer can you just show a bar graph and expect people to really read through the details. Often, there's a panel that just helps explain the logic of the experiment, the experimental design. And so I do think that working with our visual artists on this call is super important.

[Ninth slide: Images of a brain, clouds, and other things]


Niki:

Thank you, Scott. That was very eloquent. So Scott was having his work published in Science Translational Medicine, and he was asked to submit cover art. He already had a few conceptual ideas that he presented to me involving the brain, tau proteins, neurons, clouds, tears, and Alzheimer's patients.

[Tenth slide: The many stages of developing cover art]

So I began doing some rough conceptuals showing the neurons, the brain, tau tears. It so happens that I have a 95-year-old mother who has dementia, so I ended up sketching her. But the art wasn't hitting the mark. The message wasn't quite clear. Basically, the problem with my approach was that it was too literal and not conceptual enough.

[Eleventh slide: Final cover art samples]

Ultimately, Scott and I agreed that the cloudy brain raining tau was really the best conceptual idea to visualize. It told a clear story; it created a scientific allegory.

Here are two versions using that concept.

[Twelfth slide: Final published cover art]

So Translational science magazine used it for the cover in their November issue.

[Thirteenth slide: Sketches of the brain]

Scott and I also worked on a series of black and white line images for his forthcoming book Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering.

Scott, could you talk a little bit about that title? The title is really intriguing. Do you mind talking–?


Scott:

Yeah, it's a sly title, and it's a sly book for someone who focuses on trying to cure the suffering of forgetting. And so this really comes from the mirror image of that—the emerging science of actually why the forgetting we're all born with. So everyone here on this call has forgetting, and I'll assume that no one here on this call has pathological forgetting. And we're all frustrated by it, but it turns out that mother nature in her genius has bestowed us with forgetting for good reason, and that's the essence of the book.

[Fourteenth slide: What is the hardest part of working with an artist?]


Niki:

Scott, what is the most challenging part of working with an artist to realize your research?


Scott:

Well, there was nothing challenging with you, Niki, so–


Niki:

Oh, well thank you. [laughs]


Scott:

It's a bad example. But I think the hardest part we need to learn—the scientists– So in this book particularly, the hardest part for this book—this is mean for a general audience; it will be published by Random House—is really knowing how to elevate to a high enough altitude and get a bird's eye view on what captures the essence without being accused of dumbing things down.

[Fifteenth slide: Communication Pitfalls]

That is so, so hard for us. So that's what Niki and I have been working on.


Niki:

Yeah. So in my experience, scientists work under tight deadlines, and their budgets are usually capped. They often don't have means or opportunity or time to engage with an artist. The main thing that drives scientists is the love of the discovery and sharing those discovery with people who can understand the intricacies.

[Sixteenth slide: The main goal of the scientist is to discover the knowledge]

So for most scientists, art is an afterthought. The main goal of the scientists is to discover the knowledge. The dissemination is a second priority. Whereas the main goal of the artist is that of disseminating the concepts and ideas and narratives visually.

[Seventeenth slide: Many of the exciting discoveries are small steps]

It's important to bring art into the process early on. Many of the exciting discoveries are smaller steps along the way that are hard to explain. And visualization of data and mapping out research can lead to new hypothesis and insights for scientists themselves.

[Eighteenth slide: Benefits]

Artwork can bring in additional funding. In other words, if the artwork enabled success at getting funds that wouldn't be obtained otherwise, the artwork would become the driver. Artwork needs to move from simply disseminating knowledge that is already codified to becoming part of the scientific process of model building.

[Nineteenth slide: Include art at the start!]

Finally, as with most things, the more attention and time given to its development, the better the results. So include art at the start.

[Twentieth slide: Resources for art and graphics]

I am available to help anybody with their artwork in any kind of scientific capacity. And there is also a department—Columbia Creative—within the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that is available to also help with artwork. So please feel free to reach out. And thank you for joining this webinar.

[Screen share stops]

Okay.


Robert:

So thank you all, presenters, for that incredibly detailed and comprehensive overview and getting down into some of the points. We're going to take a few minutes and go through questions that were posted in the chat. And various panelists can respond to those.

One of the overall questions that I think each of you could respond to are “What are the primary graphic tools or applications that you're using in your job?” A bunch of people have posted, you know, questions about 3D software and other detailed questions. So one by one in the order that you presented, to start with Alberto, tell us what your primary tool is. What do you use the most? And what you have sort of secondary in your toolkit that you find useful or helpful.


Alberto:

Adobe CC. The suite is kind of the base application that we use for everything—Illustrator, Photoshop, et cetera. On the 3D side of the equation, it varies. Like Chris and Val, for example, use Cinema 4D, which is a standard in the industry in certain aspects. But Alice, for example, has used—for years—Blender, which is an open source 3D software that is extremely powerful and does the job. If I have to answer this on a basic level, the primary tool that we use is the pencil.


Niki:

Yes.


Alberto:

I mean, this is where we conceive everything. Only in the case of Chris and myself, we use iPads since a long time, but it's the same principle. I mean, primary tool: pencil.


Robert:

Alice?


Alice:

Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator. I almost never go into Photoshop to paint; it's usually just for layering effects. And Blender. And then on the animation side, After Effects. But like Alberto said, Adobe CC has a lot of powerful, like–

Well, Adobe Fuse. I guess Adobe decided not to use that anymore, but that was kind of sad because it allowed you to create human figures and then animate them a little bit so that you can freeze them in time and use those, and that was 3D.

And Adobe Dimension, as well, which is just great for smaller, less complicated 3D objects that you can then utilize in Blender or other 3D programs.


Robert:

And what about you, Chris?


Chris:

I'll echo largely that the Adobe suite is kind of the bread and butter. Adobe Photoshop. I use After Effects and Premiere for animation work. Photoshop is largely for color correction, some post effects. Really, bulk of my work is in max on Cinema 4D. I was exposed to that in college and have a hearty almost 20 years of use with that, so I have a particularly positive experience with it over the years. And also a host of small plug-ins and different smaller programs for visualizing proteins, getting three-dimensional coordinate data into the 3D space.

And as Alberto said, as much as I use a digital pencil, like it's key to be able to draw, to get things down on paper or pad or whatever you have to do be it digitally or traditionally.


Robert:

And what about you, Niki?


Niki:

Yeah, I would say the pencil is [laughs]. Yes, the humble pencil is the beginning of everything. But I too used Fuse. I used to use Fuse all the time. Before that, I was using Poser, but both of those things are pretty much defunct. And Illustrator and Photoshop are my go-to. And then for animation, After Effects, of course. But nothing beats actually sketching out your ideas on paper first and then going to generate computer graphics from that.


Robert:

[Indiscernible]


Chris:

Yeah. Sorry, Robert. I had something to add to that. I think Niki is completely correct in the fact that the computer doesn't make the art for us: it's a tool. It's another tool set, and your ability to harness it is up to your, you know, artistic skills and your brain and what have you. But at the end of the day, you've got to be able to draw. You've got to be able to visualize in a traditional sense and have all the skills that you would classically think an artist should have. And the computer, as much as we use it, it's not a substitute for skill.


Alberto:

I–


Niki:

I– Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Alberto.


Alberto:

No, sorry. Very, very briefly, and I would like to add the—because I've seen questions about the three packages we use in a specific way—but I would like to add that it does not matter what 3D package you use. They all have very similar functions, and they range in– I mean, the only difference—the basic difference—is price. But as I said, you can use Blender, which is free source and it's extremely popular and extremely powerful. But they have all the same functions and the same capabilities, essentially.


Robert:

So I wanted to take just a quick second and direct this same question to Dr. Small. Dr. Small, when you're working on a project and you go to talk to Niki the first time, do you do any drawing or visual conception, or is it all words? How do you approach conveying your idea for visuals to Niki?


Scott:

Yeah, that's a good question. What would I do—and for the scientists out there—it's the same way when you approach any expert like a statistician, for example. First, approach them with some general idea of what you have in mind. That's the best way we know epistemologically to communicate what we're thinking. The way I do it is—and the way I think Niki showed the way we did it together—is I admitted I can't use a pencil. So I went to the internet and simply found examples of what I had in mind just to get the ball rolling. Or in this case, the pencil rolling.


Robert:

Excellent.

So I'm going to then turn that question to Niki and the other panelists. In your experience with scientists of all types, what would you suggest them to do to prepare? Is Dr. Small’s experience of sort of pulling a few images from the internet most helpful or analogies helpful?


Niki:

Yeah.


Robert:

What would you advise for scientists to do to help get the ball rolling?


Niki:

It's very helpful, and one of the things that you have to keep in mind too is that an artist also has their own vision. So for example, you know, I ended up going into representing my mother when really what I needed to do was something more conceptual and go back to the images that Scott had pulled out and found for me to explain what was really going on.

And so it is really helpful to have the guidance of the scientists that you're working with. And the more detailed they can be, the better it is to be able to render something that's going to be useful to them in explaining of their research.


Chris:

Robert, can I make another point?


Robert:

Sure.


Chris:

I don't know if there are junior colleagues on the phone, but, you know, there's a debate about how important it is to get a cover article. I think most people think it's a bonus. For those who don't know, and I know this with authority from talking to editors in the major journals, they really want a really striking cover. It helps them. They're not sure, even until a few weeks before publication date, on what they're going to decide on.

And so don't be ashamed to ask them. You're actually helping them do their job. And if you think that you have a cover idea and if they say “Maybe,” try to generate something with the colleagues on this call or others just to give them a sense. I think that really helps them when they make their final decision.

Obviously, the quality of the science matters—if they think it's really a lead article or not. But there could be multiple options. They'll go after something that I think is visually pleasing. So, you know, this is a dialogue with the editors, even pre-pub.


Robert:

So that's a jumping-off point for a question that was posed in the chat. Selection of cover images. Are there standards? And also, who decides on the cover layout, the text, what gets superimposed over what? Is that all in-house, or do external people contribute at some point? There were other external contributors, or individuals were suggesting artwork, and now it seems to be done in-house. So people want to know how this works.


Alberto:

I can talk about covers because we really process a lot of them, and my team is involved in a good portion of them. So we decide the covers in-house, normally. But again, the primary consideration is the material from the authors. The authors bring us their submission or their ideas for the cover, and we work as a group. It’s interdisciplinary, actually. Several groups work on this idea and how we can develop.

I have to say also that we try very, very hard to make our covers very consistent with our style and the style of the magazine in general. So there's a lot of debate in this cover. Lots of back and forth. There are cases in which the submitted art from the author goes as is, sometimes. But there's also a dialogue, even in this case, with them on how they can help us to make the cover more close to our style and our aesthetics in general.

So it is a back and forth, but ultimately the decision is ours. And it is a decision shared by the design group, by the people who direct this tutorial. So it is a consensus, and it is a long process, actually. It takes us a long time to decide covers and how we're gonna finally publish them.


Chris:

Robert, I can speak to some of the more artistic, I think, points of that question. When I propose a cover, I tend to design it and present it to our designers—our creative director who is the individual that has the skills and the decision to decide where the cover line is going to be, how everything's going to be assembled. So I would say largely those kind of decisions are mostly done in-house.

We like to have, I don't want to use the word control. But in getting art from other people—vendors, freelancers, etc. or researchers—sometimes we don't have the flexibility to make it look how it needs to look from a professional, you know, quality standpoint as well as just making a really good, engaging cover. So I'd say that most the time we use submitted work as a jumping off point, but we work—like Alberto said—in direct concert with the researchers and our editorial team to decide what's really going to be the cover of Science.

I would venture that the science drives it more for our journal than– So if we have a really compelling research that needs to get on the cover but not good imagery, we will make that happen. So I would say the art does not drive it terribly deeply as much as the content.


Robert:

So it's more of an editorial-driven choice.


Chris:

It is initially. And then when we get deeper into it, the aesthetic and our opinions start to matter more and more and more, and we shape that narrative and that visual as we get to that point.


Robert:

I understand this is highly competitive. Everyone wants the cover. Everyone feels their work should be on the cover or they wouldn't be proposing it.


Chris:

Yes. And that brings me to another thought process that I was thinking, and hearing you ask the questions, is that sometimes in the scientific community people are so wed to their ideas. And they're so unbelievably good at what they do that they have a hard time having a professional visualizer come into the fold and want to change a couple things or listen.

So I would say as a general comment, embracing us. You know? We're around. Not every researcher is going to have the budget or time to get a top-level illustrator, and that's understandable. Look and embrace those other professions and the people that can help shape your work.


Alberto:

And I may add that many times, the author seeks our assistance actually to develop concepts for the cover.


Chris:

Yes.


Alice:

And I mean, just to kind of like, you know, go way back to how a scientist should communicate with a creative professional like us is really just to go back and kind of present a narrative to us. You know, tell us the story of what is the big picture and how that research fits into the big picture.

A lot of us do have science backgrounds and/or we go through a lot of science study. And so we're not experts and we are relying on you to tell us, but we do have some training that helps us bridge that gap between the science and the visualization.


Robert:

Great. Alice, while I've got you on a roll here, there have been a couple of comments or questions about color palette, font selection, and all those types of things. Can you shed some light on that for our audience?


Alice:

Well again, you know, the great thing about what Science has done is that we've tried to create a strong visual brand that is applied across all of the journals. So when we talk about, you know, the use of color—functional versus description—we're really creating those visual hierarchies that basically tell the viewer what to look at. You know, what's the most important element or important elements? Or what is relative to each other? What relates to each other? You know, you can use a family of reds to denote a protein family.

So we start with a, you know, a set of guidelines—font sizes, font weight, line weights, leader lines—and that gives kind of like that visual continuity across all the visuals. Fewer visual disruptions, which is what we're talking about.

So you know, someone did ask about the color. We are very mindful of our colorblind audience, so we avoid red green where possible. However, it's not really the red or the green: it's the value; it's the saturation of those colors that can also make that distinction. So, you know, we use those tools to show us if the values are different enough. And that's why often you'll see the teal and orange juxtaposition in some of our palettes.

So we do start with that set of guidelines. And then, you know, we work with the authors and researchers if they tell us that a specific color needs to be used for specific elements. If they can justify it, you know, sure, we'll go with that.


Alberto:

Yeah.


Chris:

You're muted, Robert.


Alice:

Yeah.


Robert:

I wanted to wrap up in just a minute and sort of circle back to this notion of dialogue between the researchers, scientists, and artists.

Maybe Scott and Niki could talk a little bit about their day-to-day interaction. Scott, what guidance are you giving to Niki? Niki, what guidance are you giving to Scott? And how do you reach a point where you're both satisfied with outcomes?


Scott:

Well–


Niki:

Well, Scott is good at working with artists, to begin with. He has an open mind, so he's pretty good at being okay with thinking out of the box, so to speak. But sometimes that's a little bit of a problem since scientists are very much in their work and they kind of have a tunnel vision, and so sometimes it's a little hard for them to see out of that to make that leap.


Scott:

So I'd like to maybe answer with the meta point on maybe the inverse of what I said earlier: To compel us, the scientists, to reach out to you. I don't know if this is an uptown or downtown problem in our beloved campus, but I can tell you that I know a lot of my colleagues uptown would love to have better art rendering, and they simply don't know the facilities and the colleagues we have here on the phone who can help us with that.


Niki:

They’re welcome to come to me. [laughs]


Scott:

No, I know. But in so far that this could be communicated at every level. I think–


Niki:

Yes.


Scott:

–the spreading the news is important.


Niki:

Yes.


Chris:

And I think it's important to acknowledge too maybe it's a numbers problem. I think there's a lot more researchers and scientists in the world than scientific illustrators, so that's a bit unfortunate. But I think that's a job that, you know, our community needs to do, should do, and maybe can do better—about, like, groups like the GNSI, the AMI professional organizations try to get, you know, that message out. But we are kind of a niche group, and it's a unique speciality.


Niki:

By the way, Chris, I just wanted to say that your twist cover is very much admired by one of our professors at Columbia. It's a while ago, and he brought it to me. He said, “Look how great this is!” So I had it up in my office for a while. [Chris laughs] I didn’t know it was you that had done that, but now I meet you, so– [laughs] Pretty cool.


Robert:

Well, we're at our 11:30 allotted time. I wanted to thank all of our presenters and the organizers of this event, and particularly Niki Barolini for putting these experts together. We'll continue with this series. There are two more sessions of Visualizing Science in the coming weeks. We will be promoting those widely and try to get as large as audience as possible. Thank you all, and have a great day.


Niki:

Thank you.


Chris:

Thank you.