How to Draw a Good Figure

I prepare a series of training videos on creating a good figure for scientific publication. Please find the YouTube list here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLR0SJ1WSb91f2D4ZwxDIkgPvClM4Atl1

The videos target STEM grad students with no design background. Everything can be implemented in PPT and Excel. Although most colleges do invite professional designers working for scientific publication to come and give seminar, I do notice that many students struggle to implement their advices. Here is a good example from such seminars, "close the layer with text and only focus on your shapes to see how the figure looks"... Honestly, I am not convinced that most PhDs in my department know what is a layer. 

Thus, I limit myself to PPT and Excel to build this tutorial (my go-to software combo is Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Matlab, and Excel). I hope this tutorial is straightforward and like an SOP - something you can directly implement. 

Video 1 - Introduction and Composition

We will focus on how to compose the figure in PPT. Typically, we can set the slide to be 8 in wide for a full page width figure and set the slide to be 4 in wide for a half page width figure. We can use font size of 8 and select between "Calibri" and "Times New Roman". This will build a good figure. 

Video 2 - Chart

We will focus on how to create chart with PPT and Excel. Particularly, we want to focus on how to create visual grouping effect and use the figure to tell a story. 

Video 3 - Illustration

For this 3rd video, we will talk about how to create 3D illustration in PPT. It is actually simpler than you imagine. We can create good drawings to demonstrate our ideas and help with story telling.

Video 4 - Case Studies

We will go over a couple examples I have worked on over the years. I want to discuss situations where being able to create illustration is important. We will also recap on the key concepts introduced in the previous videos of this figure work series.