Prof. Gutiérrez is a lifelong artist whose expertise and passion for visual arts is reflected in our scientific work in the QMDS, where we use various experimental techniques to image the quantum world of electrons.
Creating efficient, dynamic scientific figures and cover art is critical to expressing our research findings to the scientific community and the general public. If you would like to learn how to make scientific figures using the vector graphics software Adobe Illustrator (provided to students for free by many universities), see the videos below or at Prof. Gutiérrez' YouTube channel.
By popular demand, we have also made our journal figure templates available on Github (see below). Disclaimer: Use the templates AT YOUR OWN RISK. These were made for our own personal use, so we are not responsible for delays in your publication due to incorrect/outdated information.
0. Motivation & series intro.
3. Fills, patterns, symbols.
Creating cartoon 3D-like shapes.
Intro, basic tools.
4. Special effects, 3D, save styles.
2. Creating, editing shapes.
6. Templates, workflow, efficiency.
Example of a template for the AAAS (Science, Science Advances) journals.
As demonstrated in this YouTube video, starting from a customized template can help to organize your figure to maximize white space
Adobe Illustrator *.ait template files for AAAS, APS, ACS, IOP, and Nature journals can be found here at this GitHub repository.
Left: Actual, published figure that was made without a journal template.
Right: How the figure should have been made using a template. The STM/STS images are larger and white space is minimized.
Group Logos