Please help me find graphic designers who specialize in scientific figures.
March 13, 2012 10:57 AM Subscribe
I'm a Ph.D. student who knows how important it is to have great graphics for scientific papers, posters, and job talks. Good scientists don't just come up with results, they present the results in ways that inspire, educate, and amaze others. I'm looking to find contract graphic designers who specialize in scientific work.
Searching Google has come up mostly empty: I have found scientific illustrators (i.e. drawings for textbooks), and scientific animators (who do not specialize in 2D journal figures in the standard data software).
I'd like to find a designer who can work in MATLAB and Adobe Illustrator, which are the mainly used software suites in my field. I'd like someone to help me design and execute figures and also spruce up my presentations -- mostly 2D still images based on data, and occasional videos. The goal are the types of figures that get published in the journals Science and Nature and can spread a scientific idea.
This is for one-off, repeated contract work with deadlines over a few weeks and a decent amount of brainstorming and back-and-forth on how to present the data. I'd probably like to spend $3000 or less over a few months. If I one day become a professor, I could hire on a larger scale. I also have a lot of friends and colleagues in my network, who could potentially also hire the designer going forward.
Lastly, I can only work with affordable designers at this point, so people just building up their portfolios might be a good match. I'm willing to look nationally and even overseas.
Any suggestions about where I might look? Any suggestions for how to go about my search? The answer is not, "Hire a grad student to do it" because I'd like a reliable professional with graphics expertise, and who I can build a relationship with over time. Thanks!
Searching Google has come up mostly empty: I have found scientific illustrators (i.e. drawings for textbooks), and scientific animators (who do not specialize in 2D journal figures in the standard data software).
I'd like to find a designer who can work in MATLAB and Adobe Illustrator, which are the mainly used software suites in my field. I'd like someone to help me design and execute figures and also spruce up my presentations -- mostly 2D still images based on data, and occasional videos. The goal are the types of figures that get published in the journals Science and Nature and can spread a scientific idea.
This is for one-off, repeated contract work with deadlines over a few weeks and a decent amount of brainstorming and back-and-forth on how to present the data. I'd probably like to spend $3000 or less over a few months. If I one day become a professor, I could hire on a larger scale. I also have a lot of friends and colleagues in my network, who could potentially also hire the designer going forward.
Lastly, I can only work with affordable designers at this point, so people just building up their portfolios might be a good match. I'm willing to look nationally and even overseas.
Any suggestions about where I might look? Any suggestions for how to go about my search? The answer is not, "Hire a grad student to do it" because I'd like a reliable professional with graphics expertise, and who I can build a relationship with over time. Thanks!
My understanding was that once an author gets their work accepted in a really top-flight journal (e.g. Science, Nature), the journal helps the author to spruce up the figures - it's not in the journal's interest to have shabby pics.
So, maybe contact the office of a leading journal in your field and they might be able to point you to some good people?
posted by firesine at 11:07 AM on March 13, 2012
So, maybe contact the office of a leading journal in your field and they might be able to point you to some good people?
posted by firesine at 11:07 AM on March 13, 2012
Are you sure you need this? Do you have some sort of really unusual kind of data to present? Every scientist I know (which is a large number) makes their own figures in Illustrator. It doesn't take that long to learn it well enough to make your figures look pretty good.
posted by juliapangolin at 11:23 AM on March 13, 2012
posted by juliapangolin at 11:23 AM on March 13, 2012
...and you don't even need expensive software like Illustrator. Mine are all kludged together in an unholy alliance of Inkscape, OpenOffice and gnuplot.
posted by firesine at 11:26 AM on March 13, 2012
posted by firesine at 11:26 AM on March 13, 2012
I don't know anyone.
The pay someone to teach you to do it yourself approach: You might want to consider taking Tufte's one-day course and/or purchase his books.
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 11:28 AM on March 13, 2012 [2 favorites]
The pay someone to teach you to do it yourself approach: You might want to consider taking Tufte's one-day course and/or purchase his books.
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 11:28 AM on March 13, 2012 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Head to your local design schools.
I'm in design school right now and I'm constantly getting listserv emails from our career department for projects/contracting/internship, and especially the ones that are paid get snapped up right quick. It's a huge pool of people eager for design work. And you get the added plus of building relationships with good designers early, who will probably stick by you because, hey, you were one of their first clients. (At least that's what I would do.)
And please, please, PLEASE, for the sake of all that is good and holy, avoid spec work all the time, everytime. Do it for your soul.
posted by jay.eye.elle.elle. at 11:30 AM on March 13, 2012
I'm in design school right now and I'm constantly getting listserv emails from our career department for projects/contracting/internship, and especially the ones that are paid get snapped up right quick. It's a huge pool of people eager for design work. And you get the added plus of building relationships with good designers early, who will probably stick by you because, hey, you were one of their first clients. (At least that's what I would do.)
And please, please, PLEASE, for the sake of all that is good and holy, avoid spec work all the time, everytime. Do it for your soul.
posted by jay.eye.elle.elle. at 11:30 AM on March 13, 2012
..it might also be a good place to meet relevant designers who want to do the sort of work you're hiring for!
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 11:32 AM on March 13, 2012
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 11:32 AM on March 13, 2012
It's definitely worth learning good design skills and practices for yourself as a PhD student in the sciences. Most of the time, you're going to have to continually modify figures at the behest of your supervisor, editors and collaborators. And figures that works for a paper will probably need some modification to be useful for your presentations.
Matlab and Illustrator both can be configured to make beautiful figures with a fairly mellow learning curve- if possible, work in vector formats such as Postscript so that you can edit figures between programs. Maybe you could find a designer that's willing to teach you how to use these programs to make pretty figures?
Isecond the recommendation to checking out Edward Tufte's books from the library, and keeping an eye out for figures in papers you read that are effective. These blogs (Nice Figure and Better Posters) are worth checking out.
I know some Nature journals frequently redesign figures to make them more ascetically pleasing, but you do have to start with a Nature-worthy result which tends to be the tricky part.
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 11:46 AM on March 13, 2012
Matlab and Illustrator both can be configured to make beautiful figures with a fairly mellow learning curve- if possible, work in vector formats such as Postscript so that you can edit figures between programs. Maybe you could find a designer that's willing to teach you how to use these programs to make pretty figures?
Isecond the recommendation to checking out Edward Tufte's books from the library, and keeping an eye out for figures in papers you read that are effective. These blogs (Nice Figure and Better Posters) are worth checking out.
I know some Nature journals frequently redesign figures to make them more ascetically pleasing, but you do have to start with a Nature-worthy result which tends to be the tricky part.
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 11:46 AM on March 13, 2012
Response by poster: Thanks all! The links and suggestions above are great.
Clarifications:
My data is from multiple 3D locations within the brain... with multiple 2D figures at each location... collected over time. Many variables. Many patients. I know how to use Illustrator. I'd like to pay someone else to brainstorm with me about how to tell the story, and also spend time on the graphics details like colors and layout.
DarlingBri, the figures I have in mind look more like these: Sirota article
(Mod -- feel free to delete if t doesn't show up outside of my Intranet)
beepbeepboopboop, great point that a Ph.D. student should learn to do this stuff. I'd like a designer as part of the team, rather than the only one doing the work.
posted by aki_norev at 12:07 PM on March 13, 2012
Clarifications:
My data is from multiple 3D locations within the brain... with multiple 2D figures at each location... collected over time. Many variables. Many patients. I know how to use Illustrator. I'd like to pay someone else to brainstorm with me about how to tell the story, and also spend time on the graphics details like colors and layout.
DarlingBri, the figures I have in mind look more like these: Sirota article
(Mod -- feel free to delete if t doesn't show up outside of my Intranet)
beepbeepboopboop, great point that a Ph.D. student should learn to do this stuff. I'd like a designer as part of the team, rather than the only one doing the work.
posted by aki_norev at 12:07 PM on March 13, 2012
I thought of Nicholas Felton's Feltron Reports. May not be what you want, but worth a look none the less.
posted by backwards guitar at 2:34 PM on March 13, 2012
posted by backwards guitar at 2:34 PM on March 13, 2012
A lot of those mini-figs from the paper you linked looks like Matlab or proprietary software generated.
Unfortunately, I don't think a design student is going to be much help unless you come up with the story and have the graphs ready to be packaged into figures. A designer may help with the artistic production, but you might end up having to spend a *lot* of time educating them before they can actually be helpful.
The vast majority of the other graphs can be done easily and quickly using Graphpad Prism (note: the graphs they have on their site are pretty ugly - the program can very easily spit out much better looking graphs).
If you're doing more optical imaging rather than ephys, learning how to make good figures is important; when you're applying for grants, you might not be able to afford to hire outside help. Best case is learn how to do it very well yourself, somewhat less good is to sign on graduate students who are (when you're a PI).
posted by porpoise at 7:06 PM on March 13, 2012
Unfortunately, I don't think a design student is going to be much help unless you come up with the story and have the graphs ready to be packaged into figures. A designer may help with the artistic production, but you might end up having to spend a *lot* of time educating them before they can actually be helpful.
The vast majority of the other graphs can be done easily and quickly using Graphpad Prism (note: the graphs they have on their site are pretty ugly - the program can very easily spit out much better looking graphs).
If you're doing more optical imaging rather than ephys, learning how to make good figures is important; when you're applying for grants, you might not be able to afford to hire outside help. Best case is learn how to do it very well yourself, somewhat less good is to sign on graduate students who are (when you're a PI).
posted by porpoise at 7:06 PM on March 13, 2012
I think it's awesome that you realize the power of a good figure! You'd definitely enjoy Tufte's stuff, as recommended above. I also agree with the suggestions that a journal would help provide certain figures, especially say, for a review article, but if you're just starting out then it's not likely that would available for you... Does your university's medical arts department (or what ever it's called there) have any similarly ambitious/like-minded designers working there? Also, on a similar note as talking to local design schools, have you googled using terms like "scientific visualization" or "data visualization", if that's more what you're after? I did a quick google and I can't tell what's local to you, but this post highlights potential programs of interest. Again, not sure where you are -- but if you have access to a large journalism / science communications program with a focus in data viz then you may find some leads there. (example, sorta)
Looking at your link now... which figure in the article you cited? If they used a particular program, would the methods section, or supplemental data (or even acknowledgements section maybe) help you out here?
And, could I have put any more question marks in this answer?!
posted by NikitaNikita at 7:13 PM on March 13, 2012
Looking at your link now... which figure in the article you cited? If they used a particular program, would the methods section, or supplemental data (or even acknowledgements section maybe) help you out here?
And, could I have put any more question marks in this answer?!
posted by NikitaNikita at 7:13 PM on March 13, 2012
Your university probably has an internal creative services or medical arts department. Contact them and see if (a) you can hire them, or (b) if anyone in the department does freelance work on the side.
posted by elizeh at 7:16 PM on March 13, 2012
posted by elizeh at 7:16 PM on March 13, 2012
In linked in there is a guy who posts about being available for hire from this website. He also has started a group here to talk about graphic design in science.
posted by koolkat at 2:46 AM on March 14, 2012
posted by koolkat at 2:46 AM on March 14, 2012
If you want to experiment with creating some nicer looking graphics on your own then look into Tableau Software.
In terms of hiring a designer, the skill set you are looking for seems kind of specialized if you absolutely need someone who can work in both Matlab and Illustrator. If you can export vector (eps) files from Matlab on your end then a designer versed in data visualization should be able to polish up that output into something more presentable.
One process note, obviously any updates you make to the data after handing a file to a designer will require them to either recreate the entire graphic or hand-adjust the changes. Your designer will appreciate it if what you hand-off is final.
posted by quadog at 11:18 AM on March 14, 2012
In terms of hiring a designer, the skill set you are looking for seems kind of specialized if you absolutely need someone who can work in both Matlab and Illustrator. If you can export vector (eps) files from Matlab on your end then a designer versed in data visualization should be able to polish up that output into something more presentable.
One process note, obviously any updates you make to the data after handing a file to a designer will require them to either recreate the entire graphic or hand-adjust the changes. Your designer will appreciate it if what you hand-off is final.
posted by quadog at 11:18 AM on March 14, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:00 AM on March 13, 2012