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:
- Download the slides for the session (pdf, 28MB)
Inspiration for your visuals
- Information is Beautiful: informationisbeautiful.net
- Information is Beautiful awards: informationisbeautifulawards.com
- Visual.ly: visual.ly/view
- Pinterest: pinterest.com
- Google Dataset Search: datasetsearch.research.google.com
- Dear data: dear-data.com
Digital tools to create visuals
- Canva: canva.com
- Infogram: infogram.com
- Piktochart: piktochart.com
- Venngage Infographic maker and Graph maker
- Whimsical: whimsical.com
- Adobe Illustrator: adobe.com
- Affinity Designer: affinity.serif.com
- Inkscape: inkscape.org
- BioRender (like Canva, but specifically for life sciences): biorender.com
- Free infographic templates in PowerPoint: hubspot.com/infographic-templates
- List of dataviz tools: creativebloq.com/design-tools/data-visualization
Inkscape tutorial videos
Photos to use in your visuals
- Burst: burst.shopify.com
- Flickr: flickr.com/
- Picography: picography.co
- Pixabay: pixabay.com
- Reshot: reshot.com
- Unsplash: unsplash.com
- Visual Hunt: visualhunt.com
Illustrations and icons to use in visuals
- Freepik: freepik.com
- The noun project: thenounproject.com
Photos and illustrations (specific themes)
- Cathopic, catholic pictures: cathopic.com
- Figshare, plant illustrations and more for biologists: figshare.com/authors/Plant_Illustrations
- Medical illustrations: smart.servier.com
Colour schemes for your visuals
- Adobe Color CC: color.adobe.com
- Coolors.co: coolors.co
- Pictaculous: digitalinspiration.com/color-palette-generator
- Website color schemes: canva.com/learn/website-color-schemes
- 100 brilliant color combinations: canva.com/learn/100-color-combinations
- Article: Your friendly guide to colors in data visualisation
Typography for your visuals
- Dafont: dafont.com
- Google Fonts: fonts.google.com
- FontSquirrel font identifier: fontsquirrel.com/matcherator
- Font Pairing: fontpair.co
Creating graphs
- Dataviz catalogue: datavizcatalogue.com
- Choose and design the perfect chart: chart.guide
- Choosing the right chart: infogram.com/page/choose-the-right-chart-data-visualization
- The Chartmaker Directory: chartmaker.visualisingdata.com
- The Data Viz Project: datavizproject.com
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Flourish: flourish.studio
- LocalFocus: localfocus.nl
- D3.js: d3js.org
Creating maps
- Snazzy maps (Google maps styles): snazzymaps.com
- Mapbox: mapbox.com
- Mapme: mapme.com/stories
- Datawrapper: datawrapper.de
- Leaflet JavaScript Library: leafletjs.com
- 3D maps with QGIS and Aerialod: statsmapsnpix.com
- Read our blogpost: Behind the 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
- Twitter list: Dataviz world leaders
Infographic blogs and online magazines
- Chartable (by the Datawrapper team)
- Cool Infographics (Randy Krum)
- Flowing Data (Nathan Yau)
- Infographics for the People (John Grimwade)
- The Information is Beautiful blog (David McCandless)
- Junk Charts (Kaiser Fung)
- Nightingale (by the Data Visualization Society)
- The Storytelling with Data blog (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
- The Visme blog on infographics
- Visualising Data (Andy Kirk)
Podcasts on data visualization
Read more:
Why is data visualization so challenging?
Data visualization is very powerful, but it can also be hard. That’s because a great data visual combines three different aspects simultaneously: clarity, correctness, and beauty.
14 November 2022
Data visualization resources: all the links you’ll ever need!
You want to start creating clear and attractive data visuals, but don't know where to start? No worries, here's a complete overview of tools, resources and inspiration you can use as a starting point for your designs.
13 November 2022
Why is data visualization so powerful?
The amount of data coming our way is growing exponentially. In 2021 alone, it is estimated that humankind generated 74 zettabytes of data – that’s about 10,000 GB per person. How on earth are we going to keep this manageable?
7 November 2022
Infographic: Amazing facts about the brain
Did you know that our brain makes up 2% of our body weight, but consumers about 20% of our energy? Did you know that we have a second brain, located in our gut?
Our information designer Sofia made this insightful infographic, giving you an overview of eight amazing facts about the brain!
29 September 2022
How common is your birthday?
Not all birthdays are created equal... in fact, for most countries in the north temperate zone, more people are born in summer (May - August) than in winter (October - January). This heatmap allows you to check how popular your birth date is. It shows the number of people in Belgium for each specific birthday.
19 July 2022
Visualizing Complexity: Dataviz book review
Visualizing Complexity is a great new data visualization book published by information design Superdot. Here's our verdict.
8 July 2022
We are really into visual communication!
Every now and then we send out a newsletter with latest work, handpicked inspirational infographics, must-read blog posts, upcoming dates for workshops and presentations, and links to useful tools and tips. Leave your email address here and we’ll add you to our mailing list of awesome people!