Highlighting & Differentiating

Hi Reader, highlighting is something that is central to good science communication.

Just check out this example of an outstanding advertisement that knows how to direct our eyes and communicate a subtle desire.

The difficulty is that it’s the nuances that make great visual communication.

Here's how to do it effectively, using graphical abstracts as an example:

Fundamental Principles

The goal is to allow your viewer to immediately notice what the focus of your work is and what it uncovered.

But a fundamental principle many miss: you need a clear order and a unified design before you can highlight anything.

In other words, you can only highlight something if everything else looks uniform - whether that’s the arrangement of items, their color, their shape, or even their boldness.

Let’s use shapes to walk through an example step by step before briefly covering other options:

Shapes

Shapes are important features because they help to establish visual order and transmit information.

Imagine you want to display a molecular pathway: you might add a box around each enzyme to make them clearly distinguishable.

At first, for a unified design, ensure each box looks similar - for example, the same border thickness and corner radius.

Now, about highlighting: if your key outcome is that a factor gets overexpressed, you could add a glowing background, enlarge the box, or even adjust the shape itself to make it more circular.

If your outcome shows that a phenotype changes, you could add spikes or deformities to the box.

If your research indicates the loss of a factor, you might fade or leave out the box entirely (or for knock-outs, instead add a cross in a fitting design).

Color

Color is powerful because it adds liveliness and another layer of subtle information to your graphical abstract.

For example, if your palette features light and dark blue, particularly important or affected factors in your research could appear in red.

However, use color sparingly.

Stick to one or two main colors and one contrasting color - and stop there. The more colors you use, the more disorganized and overwhelming your graphical abstract becomes.

Moreover, make sure you don’t use colors that strain the eye. Green or yellow can work, but ensure they aren’t overly bright or harsh.

And remember that colors carry associations. Even if you like red, coloring all factors red and then labeling an overexpressed molecule blue may feel unintuitive.

Arrangement

For differentiation, spacing can highlight the number of steps involved or represent a time component.

As discussed earlier, grouping can make a single item stand on its own and therefore carry more weight compared to three others grouped together.

This ties into white space, which you can use strategically to differentiate elements clearly.

Also beyond graphical abstracts, if you create visual pathways, for example, letting two "pathways" converge, the viewer’s eyes will automatically be drawn to the outcome.

Arrows

Let’s keep it short: don’t underestimate the impact of arrows. Their size, number, length, and arrowhead style can either confuse or inform your reader in an instant.

Count

To cut a long story short, if you use icons, adding more or less clearly communicates an increase or decrease.

Size

You can increase the size of an icon or shape to give it more visual weight.

Similarly, you can increase font size or boldness to highlight key factors or outcomes.

However, be careful. Just like with colors or exaggerated shapes, overdoing it can make your design feel unprofessional or childish.

On the other hand, making elements too small can also be problematic. If viewers can’t easily grasp the information, they may gloss over your graphical abstract because they can’t quickly judge what’s important.

How To Go About It

Trust your intuition about what fits best.

Generally, changing colors is often the most effective approach, followed by subtle additions such as glows or slight shape modifications to represent phenotypes.

After that, consider adjusting fonts before dramatically changing shapes or sizes, as those are the hardest elements to make look polished.

To my mind, this is a prime example of a ​graphical abstract​ with a clear setup but a total lack of prioritization. There are too many colors and formats, which prevent us as viewers from understanding what the outcome of this work really is. Also note that the arrow thickness changes without conveying any additional information—that will always distract your viewer. Finally, using a horizontal layout would be visually easier to distinguish than having to trace changes up and down (which is normally suggesting a hierarchy).

There’s also a conceptual decision to make:

Do you want to split your graphical abstract into two (or rarely more) panels, or keep it as one?

If it’s important to show what the baseline looks like, adding a second panel that highlights the effects of your intervention can be very helpful.

Common Mistakes

All of these highlighting and differentiation tools can work in combination. But as mentioned, it’s about nuance.

For example, if you’re using muted blue tones, you don’t need the brightest possible red to create contrast - a slightly muted red will do the job.

Also, don’t overemphasize. You don’t need to highlight your final result with a different shape, color, and size all at once.

As discussed earlier, take a step back. Sometimes you may create effects you never intended.

At the same time, don’t overthink it. Consider what feels intuitive to your reader.

For example, in textbooks, phosphate groups are usually depicted as circles, try to stay consistent with that. If you have another modification besides a phosphate group, you can still use circles and simply change the color. You don’t need to switch to triangles - too many shapes create confusion.

Pro Tip: Think about deprioritizing other elements. Adjusting transparency or slightly reducing size can be a powerful way to show that a certain pathway is inhibited or inactive.

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