May 30-June 3, 2022
IAHS Scientific Assembly, Montpellier, France
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In this presentation I want to show how to make a great graphical abstract. I will introduce some theoretical background and give some practical tips and tricks to improve a graphical abstract.
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A graphical abstract can be seen as a infographic. There are different types of infographics, on a continuum from figurative representations to abstract representations. They can all be considered data visualizations, because they are all rooted in data collection.
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To show some examples, at the figurative end we see visual representations of animals, followed by schematizations of processes and representations of mathematical expressions. At the end of the continuum, we see the data visualizations, which are common data plots.
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This can be summarized into these three categories: (1) representative illustrations, (2) illustrated diagrams and (3) data visualizations.
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This is an example from an infographic from Scientific American, which shows that you can combine all three forms of information graphics in one figure: (1) representative illustration, (2) illustrated diagrams, and (3) data visualization
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Going back to the continuum of information graphics. For graphical abstracts we should mostly focus on illustrated diagrams, where representative illustrations are mostly used for illustrative purposes and data visualizations are more related to the figures that you would put in your paper.
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So what makes a great graphical abstract? This can be subdivided into three main aspects. First a graphical abstract should be informative. With a graphical abstract you want to convey a message, which should be clear and understandable and try to keep to the main message.
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A graphical abstract should be engaging. It should catch the eye, so people will get interested in your work and want to know more.
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And lastly, a graphical abstract should be accessible. A graphical abstract should be aimed at a large audience, so keep the text simple. But also try to remove unnecessary visual clutter, so there is nothing shown that can make the graphical abstract confusing. These three aspects should be considered when making a graphical abstract.
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What tools can you use to design an infographic. I think most of us would use PowerPoint, which is a useful tool for this, but has some limitations with respect to more specialized software, like Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape, typical examples of vector graphics software. My personal favorite is Inkscape, because it is open source and it is accessible enough to make simple diagrams rapidly.
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I created an example in Inkscape which can use some improvements. Is it informative? Well, not so much. It shows some information about the relevant processes, but the reader does not have a clue what the values represent. Is it engaging? The hillslope and river clearly show something that catches the eye, but the annotations and the table are somewhat old fashion.
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Is it accessible? There is some visual clutter. Like the use of the table. From here on, I'm going to gradually improve the graphical abstract, starting with the colors. The colors that I used may seem a bit unrealistic, but there are some tools around that you can use to choose your colors more wisely.
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You can use a color palette generator. I choose a photo with some colors that are related to the graphical abstract and the color palette generator picks those colors that appear in the photo and fit well together. In this case I used the color palette generator from Steven deGraeve, which generates two color palettes, one dull and one vibrant.
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I applied the colors from both the dull and vibrant color palettes to the graphical abstract, which surely makes it more engaging. Also because I used some transparency in the water and used three different colors for the canopy of the trees.
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Next, I changed the annotations and use sans-serif fonts instead of serif fonts. Also I removed the white background and border and use a transparent background now. These simple changes also makes the graphical abstract more engaging.
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Let’s also make it more accessible. So now, I removed the results and show the values along with the annotation of the different processes. It removes the visual clutter and connects the hillslope and the channel schematization with the results.
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Without the table there is some some room to make the graphical abstract more informative. So I added a text block with the conclusion of the study. Now the reader also knows what the values stand for, a change caused by climate change.
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So with a few simple steps you can improve your graphical abstract, making it more informative, engaging and accessible. This will ultimately lead to more interest in your graphical abstract and your research.