Science Communication & Design
Practical guidance on communicating research clearly — from designing conference posters to building figures that tell a story. Written from my background as a designer-turned-researcher.
Designing an Academic Poster
Quick, opinionated tips for building a poster that doesn't lose its audience
Telling Stories with Data
A primer on human-centered design for researchers, plus core design principles for figures
Design Resources
Charts & graphing:
R and ggplot2 for creating charts and graphing data
data-to-viz.com for picking and coding the right chart type
Presentations:
Canva: I find this is very flexible and friendly for teams in a way Adobe Creative Suite is not. I use this for everything now, from talks, to posters, and participant recruitment materials
Adobe Creative Suite: InDesign & Illustrator. I used to use these to build talks, posters, and presentations (sometimes exported to PowerPoint for conference needs). Occasionally Photoshop for photo editing, but now I generally prefer Lightroom if I’m doing my own photo editing for ease, and the rest I use Canva (above)
Color palettes & colorblind-accessible design:
Graphics, infographics & images:
I find Canva’s libraries for images and graphics to be great, especially with the pro version.
Unsplash — free high-quality stock images
Pexels Videos — free presentation videos
The Noun Project — icons and infographics
BioRender — science illustrations
Blush.design — customizable illustrations
Design inspiration:
Pinterest - I used to recommend, but there is a lot of slop there as of 2026.