Research visuals: all the resources you'll ever need!

If you want to start creating clear and attractive visuals about your research, but don’t know where to start, this page is for you! Here’s a complete overview of tools, resources and inspiration you can use as a starting point for your designs.

Presentation

Institut Curie course:

Inspiration for your visuals

Digital tools to create visuals

Inkscape tutorial videos

Photos to use in your visuals

Illustrations and icons to use in visuals

Photos and illustrations (specific themes)

Colour schemes for your visuals

Typography for your visuals

Creating graphs

Creating maps

Books about visuals, infographics and data visualization

  • Data visualisation, Andy Kirk
  • Dear Data, Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec
  • Information graphics, Taschen
  • Infographic designers’ sketchbooks, Steven Heller & Rick Landers
  • Storytelling with data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
  • The visual display of quantitative information, Edward Tufte
  • Trees, maps and theorems, Jean-Luc Doumont
  • Visual journalism, Gestalten
  • Visual thinking, Willemien Brand

People on Twitter talking about infographics and data visualization

Infographic blogs and online magazines

Podcasts on data visualization

Books on a bookshelf - infographics resources

Read more:

Small multiples can save your chart

When you're dealing with a chart that has too much information on it, the most straightforward advice to follow is: break it down into multiple charts, each with less information on them. A powerful example of this is a so-called small multiple approach.

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Data visualization podcasts 2023

At Baryon, we’re huge fans of podcasts! Data visualization podcasts are a great way to stay up to date on the latest trends and techniques in data visualization.

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thumbnail for video 10 - can you use excel to create a powerful chart

Can you use Excel to create a powerful chart?

Spreadsheet tools such as Microsoft Excel or Numbers might not be the first thing on your mind when considering data visualization tools, but they can be pretty solid choices to build data visuals. Don’t let anyone convince you that using Excel to create data visuals is unprofessional.

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thumbnail for video 09 - choosing the right font for your data visual

Choosing the right font for your data visual

Fonts evoke emotions: there are very sophisticated fonts, playful fonts, attention-grabbing fonts, and elegant handwritten fonts. Using the wrong type of font can have a lot of impact. In data visualization the implications of typography are mainly focused on readability. Labels and annotations can easily become so small they get hard to read. Above all else, we should choose a font which is readable at small sizes.

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thumbnail for video 08 - three roles of colour in a data visual

Three roles of colour in a data visual

Colour is one of the most crucial tools we have to turn a normal chart into a powerful chart with a clear message, a chart which tells a story rather than simply presenting the information.

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thumbnail for video 07 - 7 different goals for your chart

7 different goals for your chart

A crucial step in building a powerful chart is choosing the right type of chart. A lot of charts don’t work because they simply use the wrong type of chart. To avoid this trap, we must ask ourselves a basic question: what’s the ultimate goal of our data visual? What do we want to show with our data?

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We are really into visual communication!

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