Visual abstracts and infographics
A visual abstract presents a study’s main message in a concise image, while an infographic can explain a broader topic or connect several sets of information. Their design starts with an audience, a message and a destination, then combines selected content with a visual structure that can be understood quickly.
Formats and audiences
Visual formats overlap, and there is no agreed boundary between every category. A medical illustration typically shows a principle, concept or procedure in one image, while an infographic combines charts, illustrations and minimal text into an overview. Visual storytelling guides a viewer from an introductory statement towards a conclusion; graphical abstracts and infographics are two formats suited to scientific content.
Five common styles differ in their content, audience, maker and publication setting.
| Style | Content and audience | Production and setting |
|---|---|---|
| Diagram | Technical representations such as molecular or chemical structures and box plots, with little background explanation, for informed researchers and pharmaceutical audiences. | Researchers or medical communicators use Office or PowerPoint with specialist technical software; the results often appear in basic-research journals. |
| Visual or graphical abstract | An overview of a study, often its primary endpoints, with a title, short introduction and key findings, for healthcare professionals and researchers. | Researchers may work with medical communicators and illustrators; Office is commonly used for rapid publication in medical journals and social media. |
| Infographic | Larger bodies of data and connections between datasets, often told through a visual story such as a mountain rising with the data, for researchers through to the public. | Graphic designers use illustration software such as Adobe Illustrator or BioRender; outputs appear in academic journals, press releases and news media. |
| Comic | Research findings conveyed more lightheartedly, often with humour, for broad audiences. | Professional illustrators draw by hand or use illustration software; outputs appear in news media, magazines, websites, package leaflets and patient information. |
| Graphical table of contents | Visual access to technical information for researchers and healthcare professionals, resembling a flow chart. | IT teams, sometimes with visual-design input, build website flow charts or dropdown treatment guidelines using technical software. |
Graphical tables of contents began as visual presentations of book contents and later appeared on websites as interactive flow charts and dropdown guidelines. A graphical abstract can summarise a paper in a single image or cartoon-like visual for scientists and non-specialists. An infographic can instead give a more detailed picture of a complex topic or fact.
Graphical abstracts
Purpose and reach
A graphical abstract is a concise pictorial summary of a paper’s main findings, supplementing the article rather than replacing it. It can help researchers inside and outside the field, students, journalists and the public grasp the take-home message and identify relevant papers. It can also whet a reader’s appetite for the complex information behind it.
Graphical abstracts can appear in image searches, beside article titles, as a key figure at the beginning of an online article or in a graphical table of contents. A compelling visual summary can increase visibility and traffic and may lead to more interest, citations, recognition, funding opportunities or collaborations. Studies associated graphical abstracts and visuals with more readers and citations.
A study comparing Twitter promotion of publications with and without graphical abstracts found 7.7 times the impressions, 8.4 times the retweets and 2.7 times the article visits for posts with them. Simply posting a paper’s URL may fail to attract attention in a crowded social feed.
Examples of clear graphical abstracts combined the research question, materials and methods, and core findings in one image, guiding the eye through the data logically.
A graphical abstract can serve as a conference poster, especially when the presenter can explain further, or sit within a conventional poster as a rapid take-home summary.
Content and style
A graphical abstract should focus on one key message or finding, with its style chosen for the intended audience and use, such as conference networking or public engagement on social media. An infographic style can supply some detail for scientists or broader context for the public, using pertinent visuals and icons rather than figures or charts, with an eye-catching image. Comic-style abstracts can communicate broader research impact to scientific and public audiences, but do not lend themselves to precise findings.
Visual summaries in publications included central illustrations around the 1980s, while the social-media visual-abstract form emerged in 2016. A common layout places the main outcomes in three columns, with a title stating the key question and the author citation and publication details along the bottom. Primary outcomes are usually reported, sometimes with secondary outcomes, and icons are a central design element.
Design advice for graphical abstracts and infographics includes checking the destination’s specifications, understanding the audience’s terminology and reference points, and selecting meaningful data from hypothesis through results. A text hierarchy should distinguish headings, subheadings and body text, using no more than three fonts and one or two contrasting colours or shades. Image quality, text size, readability and ample white space matter, as does selecting software suited to the task and the writer’s skills or working with a design professional. Popular keywords and phrases can help attract attention.
Infographics
Content, forms and uses
An infographic combines data visualisation, illustrations, text and images to tell a story. A well-designed infographic helps people find, understand and remember information, rather than simply presenting a chart or graph. Its three elements are visual design, including colour coding, graphics and icons; content, including time frames, statistics and references; and knowledge, meaning facts and deductions. Colour can accentuate data or separate sections, differently sized shapes can support comparison, and icons can serve as bullets or represent ideas.
Infographics take several physical forms.
- An image can be any size or shape and can support a slide or document.
- A one- or two-page handout can be printed or replace a document on a website.
- A rolling infographic is a long image scrolled on a website; it can carry more information but requires website access and is shared by a link.
Common content types include timelines, processes, how-to guides, comparisons, lists, maps, trends and statistical data. How-to guides can be particularly useful for readers with low literacy, with audience testing checking that the intended takeaways are understood. Infographics can help communicate health information, reinforce a message, educate across barriers, create awareness and encourage action.
Healthcare uses include:
- Patient information and education about disease management, prevention and behaviour change.
- Procedural explanations covering hospital admission and discharge, treatment, post-treatment advice, rehabilitation and medication adherence.
- Educational material for students, nurses, physicians, pharmacists and physiotherapists.
- Industry information about products, procedures and instructions in medical technology, pharmaceuticals and laboratories.
- Information about patient organisations, non-profits and health insurers.
Infographics became more popular in twentieth-century newspapers and magazines, and their use grew with the availability of data and demand for digestible visuals. During COVID-19, they conveyed public messages about symptoms, handwashing, clinical trials and vaccination.
Audience, message and design
Content development should precede design, with writers identifying visual opportunities while remaining open to designers’ approaches. Ten recommended strategies organise this work.
- Start with the audience and message, defining the audience, objective, goals and method of distribution.
- Find data from internal, government, academic or research resources, beginning with more than needed and reducing them during development.
- Write a meaningful story supported by a few strong data, considering a hero statistic as its central takeaway.
- Look for visual opportunities in data and content, using icons where helpful and positive visualisation where possible, such as someone exercising indoors in an infographic about outdoor air quality.
- Consider creatively where an accompanying visual, icon or data display could help.
- Choose meaningful colours and fonts; red, for example, can reinforce danger.
- Keep content minimal and let visual elements lead.
- Group content into clear, digestible chunks, recognising that even one Word page of draft text can be too much.
- Create a visual hierarchy to guide the order of reading.
- Design for clarity with white space, readable sans serif fonts and a grid, avoiding styles that impede interpretation.
Health-literacy recommendations include stating the main message first, using familiar words and “1 in X” expressions, keeping text minimal and using images as cues and visual representations to explain what the data mean.
Production without a designer
Making infographics without a graphic artist can require patience, deeper knowledge of PowerPoint or a new application, and a willingness to rethink how data are presented. Writers new to creating visual content should test different design tools to find the best fit for their needs. Templates help coordinate colours and fonts and can be customised by changing design elements and content. PowerPoint infographic templates can include whole decks, individual elements such as timelines or charts, icons and one- or two-page posters, with topical or placeholder text. Native or downloaded templates can be edited like other PowerPoint files and shared with colleagues for collaboration.
A printable production example
The MRCT Center and PHUSE developed one-page printable infographics to complement a video series on clinical research data, allowing materials to be downloaded, saved and distributed in person where technology was limited. Their four development steps were scriptwriting, graphic design, translation and dissemination.
A concept received an infographic when it was both complex and critical for participants to understand. Clear, simple, plain-language content was reviewed by subject-matter experts, patients and participants. Informative subheadings, bullet points, active voice, second-person address and short sections supported reading, with the upper half of the page designed to engage readers and encourage them to continue.
The graphics followed the videos’ style and used diverse characters to communicate that research was for everyone. Text ran left to right and top to bottom in three or four sections, with bold and italics for key terms, blank space and imagery suited to screen and print. Designers tested colour contrast, font legibility and size for varying visual ability and avoided potentially fear-inducing or dehumanising imagery such as drills, needles and test tubes.
The 2024 distribution plan included both organisations’ websites and a QR code gathering the materials in one place, with PDF for searchable text, PNG for electronic sharing and JPG for print.
Publisher-produced derivatives
A publisher can commission an infographic from an article already published as a separate content type. Nature’s PrimeViews condense a primer article into one illustrated page covering disease epidemiology, mechanism, diagnosis, management and outlook. The derivative presents a smaller portion of the article, links back to the full text and aims to bring traffic to it.
Distribution and evaluation
Infographics can carry links and backlinks, be optimised for search engines and be shared on social media. A distribution plan can include a website, social channels, emails to a network and infographic directories. Visuals or parts of them can be reused across social media, websites and email announcements. Evaluation should consider both initial interest and how well readers digest, understand and retain the information.