Teaching
Visual Science Communication
PBC-499 – Independent Study
Quarter – Spring 2025
Dr. Liz Anna Kozik (she / her)
Fridays 4/4 – 6/6/25, 9:30-10:30am, Science Library
lkozik (at) ChicagoBotanic.org
Welcome to Visual Scicomm! I’m excited to work with you all to build an exploratory, playful space to approach visual science communication from multiple angles. Together, I intend to help teach you some of the building blocks skills of both science communication and visual design, and support your individual learning goals as they apply to our shared subject.
While, as scientists, we are trained to think in papers and walls of jargon-filled text, it’s not always the best way to reach audiences outside our respective fields. Sometimes even close cousins like taxonomists talking to community ecologists can stumble into communication barriers. For the sake of our work, we need to be able to talk about what we do and share it well. This is true whether it’s forging a professional collaboration, writing a grant, teaching volunteers, or mobilizing community members. Visual science communication takes walls of text and turns them into something that’s less intimidating, more compelling, and easier to share.
4/11 – What’s it look like? Layouts and Wordcounts
In our research, writing looks like a text document with maybe an image or two. It’s as long as it needs to be, who cares about how it’s all laid out. For science communication, the rules are a little different.
There are so many different forms that science communication can take. Is it a pamphlet? A children’s book? A guidebook? A poster? A comic? A magazine? A social media post? All of these different forms all have their own visual grammars. When we think about creating work for each of these, it’s vital we understand what works in that form.
To understand all these different ways information can be laid out, I would like you to find five different formats and record how they are set up in their a two-page spread or foldout. Write them down in your compbooks and be prepared to share with the class. Write neatly so that others can read what you’ve written. Think of this as recording the “recipes” for making each of these formats.
Things I want you to record for each two-page spread / folded document:
Rough Sketch of Two-Page Spread Layout
Size of one page:
Target audience: (Do some googling and take an educated guess! Age, demographic, education level, etc)
Likely Sales Venue: (Do some googling and take an educated guess! Tiny bookshops, Big Box Stores, Airport Shops, Museums, etc)
Approximate Wordcount:
Approximate % of Page Taken Up by Text:
# of Images on page: (If it’s one big image with multiple little vignettes, count the vignettes)
Approximate % of Page Taken Up by Images:
Margin size: (Margins are the space between the edge of the page and where the content starts. Fun note- this is often the part I see too small on science posters!)
Approximate % of Page That’s Blank: (I bet it’s more than you expect!)
To demonstrate, here are two examples:
Format options can include things like: ID books, textbooks, posters (some places include USDA and Xerces, comics, illustrated books, children’s books, educational pamphlets (check your local nature center!), websites, presentation slides, social media posts (consider the “post” the “page”, and the thread and/or multi-image gallery as part of the page), and whatever else you can think of.
You are welcome to find different options that are examples of formats you’re interested in. I am requesting that, of your five, you select at least one that’s digital and at least one that’s physical. Try to pick formats that are different. In the postdoc office, I have oodles of books, comics, ID books, and pamphlets for you to pick through. Please find things that interest you. Feel free to bring them to your desk to look them over and photograph the pages you’re interested in. These are my personal books, so please return them when you’re done.
Ideally, everyone will pick different things and we can combine these into a shared library of recipes for scicomm!
4/4 – Introduction
Homework – Please prepare the “raw ingredients” of your science communication project
Collect 10+ images relevant to your project and store them on your cloud service of choice: Google Drive/Onedrive/Dropbox whatever. Retain the original photographer/illustrator name and source in a separate text document.
You don’t need to be super literal about this. You should find pictures of your study species, but you also can grab images you like the feel of. Every image wont necessarily make it into your project, but they can inform the vibe. Think of this as building a mood-board. This can include examples of text, color, and layouts that you like.
Write up a 1500-word-minimum description of your project. This doesn’t need to be perfect, this is more about brainstorming and thinking through some of these big questions. Please answer the following prompts:
What is the general message you’re trying to communicate?
Why do you care about this topic?
Who are you trying to communicate to?
What behavior or situation are you trying to change?