Notes on “Principles of Beautiful Figures for Research Papers”

My notes on Andrey Churkin (Андрей Чуркин)’s 2024 video “Principles of Beautiful Figures for Research Papers”.

• Journals compress raster images when publishing. Thus it’s better to use vector graphics (SVG for example) to prevent this. Students often don’t know (Oh well, people in general).

• Advice: Don’t take screenshots of your computer and put them in a paper.

  Even some journals change SVGs to raster (shaking my head). You might have to convert some parts of a graphic for it to be reasonably sized and still readable.

• Don’t use a font size smaller than the journal template’s smallest font.

  Make sure it’s readable at a distance (think about how readable it would be on paper).

• Divide diagrams into smaller parts.

  • Don’t include too many elements.
  • Ask for feedback on whether it is readable.

• Highlight the most important data. Use transparency for example.

• Use black, white, and gray, plus dotted and dashed lines if you can.

• Start with the fewest amount of elements.

• Don’t use bright colours. Especially, don’t use complementary colours (colours that cancel each other out).

  • Use the “color-hex” website to find color palettes.
  • Julia, the programming language, has a package called “color schemes” that has many built-in colour schemes
  • Don’t use yellow on white background
  • Don’t use the rainbow color scheme: all possible colours
  • Think about how colours get interpreted by readers.

• Don’t show all the data you have. You’re trying to tell a story. Only show the data that’s necessary. (Not saying falsify data, etc.)

• Think about the general reading order.

• Have a consistent style throughout a document. If you have different styles it looks like a compilation of figures from different sources.

• Avoid pie charts if you have too many categories, or want to change the evolution of an indicator. It’s not easy to compare the slices.