Visual Anatomy of an Article – Lessons Learned and Taught in Five Figures

Abstract

To grow is to teach. In that spirit this article aims to teach best practice for visualizations and at the same time to highlight some of the harvest we could reap in our lab. Following figures recently published in one of our manuscripts, we demonstrate how creativity in figure making goes hand in hand with storytelling, a deepened understanding of the scientific work and an increase in lateral thinking inside the research avenue. We hope it will help to promote scientific visualizations as a useful, even if sometimes harsh, mirror to give new angles to the laboratory work.