When: Wednesday, 30 January | 4–5pm GMT
Moderator: Dr. Brianne Kent, Postdoctoral Fellow and Chair of eLife Early-Career Advisory Group (ECAG)
Presenter: Dr. Anne Martin, Graphic Designer and Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oregon
An important part of science communication is creating visual figures. Whether you are sharing your research with experts or non-experts, in print or in oral presentations, presenting your data and your ideas through the use of figures is essential. And yet, visual communication is not part of most science curricula. For early-career researchers, who are applying for jobs and starting to build reputations, it is even more important to communicate effectively.
Earlier this year, eLife Ambassador Helena Jambor wrote a blog post on ecrlife.org titled “Better figures for life sciences”, where she provided useful tips for designing the most effective figures. As she states “good and clear visualisations are essential for reproducibility”. Our next webinar follows on from this, diving into the do’s and don’ts of graphic design.
Find out more about Dr. Anne Martin:
Anne graduated from the University of Georgia in 2007 with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in graphic design. From there she went on to work as a graphic designer at design firms Media South and then Designsensory in Knoxville, TN. She spent six years as a professional graphic designer creating award winning design for clients before deciding to return to school for her doctorate.
Anne was accepted into the University of Utah Biosciences graduate program in 2013. At Utah, she sought to combine her passions of art and science by teaching design strategy to other researchers. She began a series of workshops training scientists to become better visual communicators - an essential skill for scientists that is rarely taught.
Anne received her doctorate in Neurobiology and Anatomy from the University of Utah in 2018 and now is a postdoc at the University of Oregon. She hopes to continue creating a curriculum to teach scientists design fundamentals. Anne also exhibits fine art communicating basic neuroscience principles to non-scientists hoping to introduce more people to the beauty found beneath the microscope.
We welcome comments, questions and feedback. Please annotate publicly on the article or contact us at hello [at] elifesciences [dot] org.
Interested in our full selection of #ECRWednesday webinars, on topics such as preprints, finding funding and more? Take a look at the collection of past reports and recordings.
