Meeting between Gill, Mattia and Yannis, Friday 25th August 2017

Gill met with Mattia and Yannis to discuss the progress of the collaboration, particularly in two main areas.

Image gallery website and associated files

Gill had set up a separate wordpress website to act as an image gallery for the neuroimaging department. Since being set up a week ago, the website has been frequently updated and further changes were discussed during the meeting, although it was agreed that this portfolio-type website will at least be a good start as an image gallery. More text will be added to each of the thumbnail images, to make it clear who had created the image and when. It will also be made easier for people outside of King’s to make contact, if they wish to use any of the images, by including a Contact page. If possible, a dedicated King’s email address will be set up for the image gallery, which people can also use to get in touch.

[Update on Wednesday 11th October 2017 – the contents of the separate portfolio website have now been incorporated into the main website and are accessible from the Image Gallery webpage.]

Together with the image gallery, there will need to be a repository of the associated Illustrator and high-resolution image files, kept internally within King’s. After some discussion, it was agreed that the OneDrive facility that already exists within King’s could be used. Gill will provide all of the files that are associated with the gallery images to Mattia and Yannis, so that this option can be tested.

Workshops

There was much discussion concerning the pilot workshops, with November 2017 being earmarked as the best time to hold them. Mattia will check the availability of the neuroimaging department meeting room, the aim being to hold the two workshops on consecutive Wednesday afternoons. It was agreed that, for the first workshop, it would be good to use an activity to engage the participants at the start of the workshop, and there was some discussion about the form this would take. It is likely to involve the participants creating their own conceptual figure(s) on paper, by selecting from a range of visual elements that they are supplied with. It was also agreed that this workshop should focus on the conceptual figure(s) that Yannis and Nisha will use in their review paper. The figure(s) will serve as a case study and will be used, together with the examples that the participants themselves have constructed, to illustrate the issues that will be covered in the workshop.

The second workshop will concentrate on practical skills in Illustrator, with the intention being to introduce all of the functionality that Gill used to create the brain images that are currently in the image gallery. The process she went through to get from the original reference photographs to the final images will also be shown, with an emphasis on how to build up an image so that it can easily be edited, simplified and adapted for future use. Gill will provide printable handouts, prior to the workshop, that will detail all of the Illustrator functionality that will be covered.

There was some discussion of the Illustrator licences that will be needed for the second workshop. It is hoped that a combination of existing licences owned by members of the department, together with trial versions downloaded specifically to use in the workshop, will be sufficient. None of the functionality that Gill is intending to cover is new to Illustrator, so even old licences should be adequate to allow participants to at least try the software.

More detail on the continued development of the workshops will be included on the Workshops pages of this website, which will be frequently updated.