designing-science - Tumblr blog

[designing-science]

Silkscreen Thermochromic Ink

Finally found a book made with heat-sensitive ink! :) Might be interesting for the final publication.

“'Read: Past, Tense', is about the very ordinary experience of blushing. The book uses heat-sensitive ink that relies on the reader's inevitable contact with the page. At first sight the book contains a text that is reversed out of the red ink background but as the reader handles the book and their warmth comes through the page, a more private and intimate text is revealed between the lines (this book will not work with the cold reader). The reader literally has to feel their way around the text and embrace the book in order for the book to reveal its secrets. […] In this book I am more concerned with using the interaction of materials to inform the process of reading and the unravelling of a specific narrative with reference to notions of subtext and ‘reading between the lines’. Inkjet, silkscreen thermochromic ink. Cloth-bound.”

[designing-science]

The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design // Conclusion

“The increasing specialisation of scientific disciplines has resulted in highly specialised languages, both textual and visual, being employed in each field of science. A significant amount of background knowledge is therefore required both to understand these languages and to utilise them. Consequently, it is primarily scientists themselves who produce the visual representations of their ideas and theories, particularly those images which do not originate from observational drawing.  Although examples of scientific graphic design can be seen to fit within the broad category of information design, and, as such, should be within the remit of graphic designers, the visual languages used are so specialised that graphic designers are rarely, if ever, involved in its production. Equally, there has been little detailed research into this specific area of visual communication, with the efforts of historians and sociologists concentrating more on scientific visual representation as a whole, rather than analysing individual pieces of scientific graphic design. There could be much to be gained, by both scientists and graphic designers, from an investigation into the graphic design that is used every day within scientific communities in their journals and conferences. It would require the learning of new visual languages, both scientific and graphic, and, consequently, a degree of cooperation that is rarely seen in this very particular area of graphic design. However, the resulting increase in insight and understanding should more than repay the efforts made.”

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

The Cell

“Collaborations with graphic designers to produce conceptual images within scientific peer groups are even rarer. Will Burtin worked for Scope magazine, the publication of the Upjohn pharmaceutical company, in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. Together with follow graphic designer Lester Beale, Burtin produced some eye-catching magazine covers and spreads. But perhaps his greatest scientific achievement were large-scale, walkthrough 3D models of, for example, the cell, in 1958, and the brain, in 1960, which he produced for Upjohn to use at trade shows. Burtin went to considerable trouble to consult with experts in the fields of cytology and neuroscience, in order to ensure that the colours and shapes he used to represent the various biological elements made scientific, as well as design, sense. As a result, the models were admired by physicians and public alike.”

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

Pauling and Harward

“Successful collaborations between scientists and illustrators, in order to produce conceptual scientific images, are infrequent but they do exist. An oft-cited example is the long, and occasionally fractious, relationship between the Nobel-prize winning chemist Linus Pauling and the artist Roger Hayward, as they worked together on illustrations for Pauling’s work in the mid-twentieth century.49 Pauling was a visual thinker, but not an artist, and he employed Hayward to convert his rough working sketches into finished illustrations […]. Hayward took the trouble to educate himself about the chemistry that he worked on and, rather than just blindly following Pauling’s instructions, their correspondence shows that he contributed fully to the production of the images.”

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

“Relatively few scientists are capable of producing original visual representations of their own ideas and concepts, the early twentieth century neuroscientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal being a notable exception […]”

Image: Santiago Ramon y Cajal, 1904.

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

Trained Judgement

“The use of a drawn image, rather than a photograph, allowed scientists to further develop a specific visual language that best illustrated their work. However, it also required the viewer to be well-versed in that language in order to be able to interpret the image. This is the third stage of scientific visual communication, according to Daston and Galison, that of ‘trained judgement’, where scientists are taught to think about and interpret the models and images that are routinely used in their field of science.47 It also requires that the person who generates the scientific visual representations understands the specific visual language that the image is using, which goes some way to explaining the current demarcation between scientists and graphic designers in the journal Nature.”

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

Mechanical Objectivity

Early scientific photography was regarded as the perfect mechanical observer, unaffected by artistic temperament or biased judgement, as it simply recorded what was in front of it. This ‘mechanical objectivity’, the term that Daston and Galison use to describe the second stage of scientific visual representation, was regarded by both scientists and photographers at the time as the perfect solution to recording science. The ability of photography to both freeze and speed-up time revealed aspects of science never before observed or recorded. In France, Etienne-Jules Marey produced chronophotographs, revealing the movement of humans and animals in successive images on a single photographic plate. His contemporary in Britain, Eadweard Muybridge, produced a similar effect using a succession of plates. 

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

Robert Hooke [1635–1703] was not only a scientist, he was a mapmaking pioneer, architect, astronomer, biologist and ingenious experimenter. He was a founding member and ‘curator of experiments’ at the Royal Society.

This book, Micrographia, was the first important work on microscopy, the study of minute objects through a microscope. First published in 1665, it contains large-scale, finely detailed illustrations of some of the specimens Hooke viewed under the microscopes he designed. At the end of the book, there are observations of the stars and moon as seen through a telescope.

“Micrographia is generally considered to be the first true science textbook, but this did not prevent it from also becoming a best-seller amongst the general population.  Hooke’s work could not have been achieved without the invention of the microscope. The use of lenses, mirrors and camera obscura allowed accurate and detailed images to be made, all of which was to the advantage of the propagation of scientific knowledge and the ‘truth to nature’ approach to scientific visual representation.” Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

“Copernicus’ diagram of the heliocentric solar system, although produced prior to the age of formal scientific publications, is one clear example of an image that has reached beyond scientific communities and attained general use.”

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design.

[designing-science]

The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design

“The term scientific graphic design can be used to describe those images that scientists use to visually communicate their ideas and theories to their peer group. Typically, this type of graphic design is used in scientific journals and within presentations at scientific conferences, and forms an essential part of a scientist’s attempt to persuade others of the validity of their ideas. Individual pieces of scientific graphic design draw on well-established visual languages which, in the case of the life and earth sciences, have developed over several centuries. These languages are based on a strong tradition of observational drawing and are also influenced by the visual thinking employed by some scientists to aid their own work. Thomas Kuhn stated that scientific knowledge advances in a series of paradigms and the longer a paradigm persists, the more specialised its scientific language becomes. It can be argued that this is also true for visual paradigms, examples of graphic design that are the visual embodiment of a scientific theory. The significant amount of background knowledge required to understand scientific images means that few, if any, graphic designers are involved in their production. It is routinely left to scientists themselves to generate their own images, using whatever visualisation software and graphic design skills they have at their disposal. This is despite the shared sensibilities of precision, simplicity and clarity, which exist within both fields. Much insight and understanding could be gained by those graphic designers, or scientists, who are willing to learn new visual languages and to investigate what is a fascinating area of graphic design.”

Brown, Gill, Vol.3, No.1 (Issue 8, 2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of Scientific Graphic Design. 

[designing-science]

Pseudo vintage 3D terrain; Scott Reinhard

[designing-science]

#2 ref

https://flowingdata.com/

[designing-science]

Super Science Friends was created by Brett Jubinville, animated by a lot of talented people at Tinman Creative Studios, and was successfully kickstarted November 2014. It features a team of time-travelling super scientists led by Winston Churchill who travel through time fighting nazis, zombies and all manner of sciency villains!

[designing-science]

Nelly Ben Hayoun // Connecting real people to real science

“I don’t believe you need to be an expert to be a part of any matter that can affect all human beings,” says Ben Hayoun. “What you need is collaborators with expertise. You need to work with them to bridge understanding and intent. My work seeks to make abstract scientific work real by creating tangible experiences that connect real people to real science.”

Nelly Ben Hayoun for AIGA Eye on Design [October 2015]

Continue reading here

[designing-science]

3D Map

[designing-science]

Why does science need illustrators?

Visuals in the world of science communication have a bunch of different roles. First, it’s a great way to capture the imagination as a public. When you think the murals and displays you see at museums, like a dinosaur painted at life-size, it captures your imagination and pulls you in. A lot of those illustrations are done very photo-realistically because you can’t take photographs of [dinosaurs] and you’re trying to transport somebody into a different time and place. But then you get down to the microscopic world, and you can’t take photos of that either; so part of it is making these ideas real to the broader public. Bringing people down to the microscopic level to see things that you can’t see even with microscopes makes the science behind it more relatable.

A lot of the topics [we cover] are quite abstract. Things like quantum physics can get very overwhelming, especially for a non-specialist, but when you start to use visual language and imagery, I think it breaks down a lot of those barriers and makes it a little easier to get beyond the first stages and try to figure it out.

Jen Christiansen for AIGA Eye on Design [January 2019]

Continue reading here