CommentPublished: 13 June 2025Helena Klara Jambor ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3397-18421,2 Nature Cell Biology (2025)Cite this articleMetrics detailsSubjectsBioinformaticsHigh-throughput screeningCreating clear and engaging scientific figures is crucial to communicate complex data. In this Comment, I condense principles from design, visual perception and data visualization research in a checklist that can help researchers to improve their data visualization, by focusing on clarity, accessibility and design best practices.This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institutionAccess optionsAccess Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journalsGet Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription27,99 € / 30 dayscancel any timeLearn moreSubscribe to this journalReceive 12 print issues and online access209,00 € per yearonly 17,42 € per issueLearn moreBuy this articlePurchase on SpringerLinkInstant access to full article PDFBuy nowPrices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkoutFig. 1: Basics for figures.Fig. 2: Designing figures.Fig. 3: Feedback for figures.ReferencesFriendly, M. in Handbook of Data Visualization (eds Chen, C. et al.) 15–56 (Springer, 2008).Tufte, E. R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Graphics, 2011).Brown, B. S. Trends Cell Biol. 6, 37–39 (1996).Article PubMed CAS Google Scholar Faulkes, Z. Better Posters: Plan, Design and Present an Academic Poster (Pelagic, 2021).Jambor, H. K. Front. Bioinform. 3, 1216139 (2023).Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar Jambor, H. K. & Bornhäuser, M. PLoS Comp. Biol. 20, e1011789 (2024).Article CAS Google Scholar Schmied, C. et al. Nat. Methods 21, 170–181 (2024).Article PubMed CAS Google Scholar Schmied, C. & Jambor, H. K. F1000Res 9, 1373 (2020).Article PubMed Google Scholar Senft, R. A. et al. PLoS Biol. 21, e3002167 (2023).Article PubMed PubMed Central CAS Google Scholar Wong, B. Nat. Methods 7, 665–665 (2010).Article CAS Google Scholar Royle, S. J. The Digital Cell: Cell Biology as a Data Science (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2019).Wilke, C. Fundamentals of Data Visualization: a Primer on Making Informative and Compelling Figures (O’Reilly Media, 2019).Franconeri, S. L., Padilla, L. M., Shah, P., Zacks, J. M. & Hullman, J. Psychol. Sci. Public Interest 22, 110–161 (2021).Article PubMed Google Scholar Weissgerber, T. L., Milic, N. M., Winham, S. J. & Garovic, V. D. PLoS Biol. 13, e1002128 (2015).Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar Perkel, J. M. Nature 582, 137–138 (2020).Article PubMed CAS Google Scholar Download referencesAcknowledgementsI thank my colleagues T. Weissgerber, A. Gucek, S. Royle and J. P. Saenz for feedback on the draft version of this Comment, as well as the many students of my data-viz courses, whose examples continually expand my expertise and whose requests for an easy-to-follow workflow inspired this checklist.Author informationAuthors and AffiliationsInstitute for Data Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Visualization and Simulation, University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, Chur, SwitzerlandHelena Klara JamborNational Center for Tumor Diseases, University Cancer Center, NCT-UCC, Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus an der Technischen Universität Dresden, Dresden, GermanyHelena Klara JamborAuthorsHelena Klara JamborView author publicationsYou can also search for this author inPubMed Google ScholarCorresponding authorCorrespondence to Helena Klara Jambor.Ethics declarationsCompeting interestsH.K.J. received a salary from a habilitation award of the Medical Faculty of the Technische Universität Dresden. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewPeer review informationNature Cell Biology thanks Beth Cimini and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.Supplementary informationSupplementary MaterialRights and permissionsReprints and permissionsAbout this article