Why aren’t more people outside the scientific community engaged with the developments of science and engineering? Perhaps, as Felice Frankel suggests, it has something to do with the way scientists communicate their ideas. Frankel, along with co-author Angela DePace, recently wrote Visual Strategies: A Practical Guide to Graphics for Scientists and Engineers as an answer to this challenge: how can scientists and engineers, including those without any design training, effectively create compelling visuals to convey their ideas? Why do some graphics work while others obscure important information?

Whether the visuals are meant for scientific journals, grant proposals, conference posters or presentations, they all share the common goal of transmitting information clearly and efficiently. In this recent MIT news video, Frankel gives us an in-depth look at a specific example, a colored representation of a quantum corral, and then shows us the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of their suggested changes to the visual. By taking away color from the image, Frankel and DePace direct the viewer’s attention to the most important information being conveyed.