November 2022
Gill ran another series of graphic design workshops for members of the KCL Health Faculties during November, with one theory session held online and three practical sessions held in-person at the KCL Waterloo campus.
In conjunction with the November workshops, Gill has been revising and updating all of the training material on the associated KEATS webpage. New versions of all of the workshop handouts are now available, together with a Zoom recording of the November 2022 theory workshop.
September 2022
Gill was the guest speaker at a ‘BioArt’ workshop, discussing her research and work in the field of scientific visual communication. The workshop was a collaboration between the International Genetically Engineered Medicine (iGEM) team at King’s College London and NYCU_Formosa, Taiwan, and was designed to help inspire the next generation of science communicators.
March 2022
Gill ran another series of online graphic design workshops for research students of King’s Health Faculties – one theory session, followed by three repetitions of a practical session – on Wednesday mornings throughout March. More details can be found on the Workshops (2022) webpage.
Update April 2022 – All of the March workshops were fully booked and there are still people on the waiting list for Workshop 2 practical sessions. There are currently no plans to run further workshops in this academic year but sessions may be scheduled for the 2022/23 academic year, if there is sufficient demand. Gill also hopes that there will be opportunity to update the training materials on the KEATS webpage, to keep pace with the updates to the live workshops.
Tuesday 18th and Tuesday 25th January 2022
Gill met online with Giovanna to discuss the feedback received on the example FDOPA PET imaging leaflet and to determine what changes needed to be made. More details of these meetings, together with examples of the updated leaflet(s), can be found in this blog post.
Friday 3rd December 2021
Gill met online with Giovanna to review a revised version of the FDOPA PET Imaging leaflet and to discuss further updates. More details of the meeting, and the subsequent updated leaflet, can be found in this blog post.
November / December 2021
Further online graphic design workshops, presented by Gill Brown, have been scheduled for the autumn term at King’s. This includes a theoretical session (for 50 participants), covering good graphic design practice for scientific visual communication, followed by three practical workshops (up to 12 participants in each) providing hands-on experience of creating scientific figures using Adobe Illustrator software.
19th October update: All of the scheduled workshops are now fully booked, with a waiting list.
Thursday 18th November 2021
Gill met online with Giovanna to review the first draft of the FDOPA PET Imaging leaflet. More details can be found in this blog post.
Tuesday 5th October 2021
Gill met online with Dr Giovanna Nordio to discuss a possible extension to the work undertaken during the PIS project. Giovanna and Dr Mattia Veronese want to create an illustrated information leaflet for patients undergoing FDOPA-PET imaging. This would involve adapting some of the illustrations used in the example Patient Information Sheet and designing an informative and visually engaging A4-sized leaflet.
More details can be found in this blog post, and on the dedicated project webpage.
October 2021
Update: The Spotlight article mentioned in the news item below has now been published online in Clinical and Translational Imaging. The article can be read and downloaded from here.
July 2021
A submission has been made for possible publication in the journal Clinical and Translational Imaging as a Spotlight. The submission, made by Dr Giovanna Nordio, is entitled Can visual illustrations transform the patient information sheet for PET/MR neuroimaging studies into engaging and interesting reading?
May / June 2021
Five sessions of an online workshop covering the practical aspects of creating conceptual scientific figures are being held in May / June for members of the Health Faculties at King’s. The dates have been added to the Workshops (2020/21) webpage, although all of the workshops are currently fully booked.
Thursday 25th March 2021
Gill met online with Giovanna and with Dr Yannis Paloyelis. Yannis had previously collaborated with Gill during her PhD research in 2018 and had seen the work on the example PIS. He is interested in using illustrated documents to aid patient consultation, as well as in official patient information sheets, for an upcoming neuroimaging study. More details can be found in this blog post.
Tuesday 2nd March 2021
Gill and Giovanna met online to discuss the next steps in the PIS project and what was required to finalise the example PIS. The outcome of that meeting is documented in this blog post.
Thursday 28th January 2021
Gill met online with Giovanna and Mattia to discuss the next steps in the PIS project. The outcome of the meeting is documented in this blog post.
Tuesday 26th January 2021
Gill and Mattia held an online meeting with Ana Marques of the Curriculum and Digital Innovation (CDI) Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London. Ana and her colleagues have been instrumental in creating the online content for the graphic design workshops held during 2020. The purpose of the meeting was to record a conversation between Gill and Mattia as they discussed their collaboration, how it started and how it led to the workshops and the online course. A video of the conversation has been added to the KEATS webpage containing the training material from the workshops and, for those outside of King’s, can also be accesse
Friday 8th January 2021
Both the FAST-R team and scientists working in the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences have provided feedback on the example PIS modules submitted in December (see this blog post for more about these modules). Giovanna and Gill met online on Wednesday 13th January 2021 to discuss the feedback and the meeting outcome is documented in this blog post.
Friday 18th December 2020
In March 2019, Gill worked with Dr Anoushka Leslie of the CNS to produce four information sheets on the subject of brain ageing and white matter, designed for use by both patients and the general public. These sheets were reviewed by a patient group in a workshop held on Saturday 23rd March 2019 and the conclusions from that review have now been made available by Anoushka. The four information sheets are also available and a link to the website containing them will be added in due course. Most of the individual images created for use in the sheets are already available in the image gallery on this website. More details regarding this project, and images of the complete sheets, can be found on Gill’s own website.
Wednesday 9th December 2020
Example Patient Information Sheet (PIS) modules were completed and given to Giovanna for submission for review by the FAST-R (Feasibility and Acceptability Support Team for Researchers) at the Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. All being well, they will provide feedback on the modules in January 2021. For more information on the example PIS modules that were submitted, see this blog post.
December 2020
Two online workshop sessions were held for research staff and students of the Health faculties at King’s, running on Tuesday 8th and Friday 11th December 2020. These Zoom workshops featured the Adobe Illustrator exercises and other material that was covered in the original Workshop 2 (Practical) sessions in February 2020. Both online sessions were fully booked, with 11 places made available on each. There is still a waiting list of approximately 40 people who would like to attend this workshop and it is hoped that further sessions can be scheduled for the New Year, if there is still demand for them.
However – the material from all of the original 2020 workshops, both theory and practical (presentations, pdf guides and video demonstrations of the Illustrator exercises), is now available to all KCL Health Faculty research staff and students via the KEATS online training website. More details regarding the online workshop material has been added to the Workshops (2020/21) webpage.
Tuesday 24th November 2020
Gill attended an online meeting with Giovanna and Mattia to discuss the text and images required for PIS Modules 4 and 5, prior to their submission to FAST-R. The outcome of this meeting is documented in this blog post.
Monday 16th November 2020
Gill attended an online meeting with Giovanna and Mattia to discuss the next steps for the Patient Information Sheet (PIS) project. The outcome of this meeting is documented in this blog post.
October 2020
Gill is intending to run an online workshop in early December, covering the same material presented in the Workshop 2 sessions she ran in February 2020. There will be two online sessions initially, delivered via Zoom, and aimed primarily at those people who were on the waiting list for the original workshops but did not get a chance to attend. The material presented in both of the original Workshops 1 and 2 should be available to view online via the King’s Moodle website by mid-November 2020. See the Workshops (2020/21) page for more details.
Wednesday 16th September 2020
Gill attended an online meeting with Giovanna and Mattia to discuss the start-up of the Patient Information Sheet (PIS) project. The outcome of this meeting is documented on the website blog.
July 2020
Dr Giovanna Nordio, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, will be working in collaboration with Mattia and Gill to create an illustrated Patient Information Sheet (PIS). The project is being funded by a grant from the Wellcome EPSRC Centre for Medical Engineering (CME) Public Engagement Grant Scheme, the aim being to create a visual and modular information sheet, that can easily be adapted for different PET / MRI studies. Gill’s specific job will involve creating adaptable figures and images that go along with the sheet, as well as ensuring that the design of the PIS makes it as accessible as possible to all readers.
The collaborative work between Gill and the CNS has so far concentrated mainly on peer-to-peer scientific visual communication. This project provides an opportunity to expand the work into communication between scientists and non-scientists. Progress on the project will be documented on the website blog and more details can be found on this webpage.
May 2020
The Graphic Design for Scientific Figures workshops have now been completed, with 30 participants attending Workshop 1 on January 31st and a total of 35 participants attending the four sessions of Workshop 2 during February. Given the situation with the coronavirus pandemic, there are currently no plans to repeat the workshops, although we are aware that there were people on waiting lists for both workshops who did not get a chance to attend.
The presentations from Workshop 1 were recorded remotely during April and will be made available to the doctoral research students and research staff of the King’s College London Health Faculties. A demonstration of the two Adobe Illustrator exercises used in Workshop 2 was remotely recorded during May and will also be made available, as will all of the training materials that were provided to the workshop participants as handouts. More details will be released once all of the material is online.
More information about the workshop content can be found on the Workshops 2020/21 webpage.
Monday 28th October 2019
Meeting between Gill and Mattia to discuss the new workshops. These will be held in early 2020, with more information on a dedicated webpage.
Wednesday 1st May 2019
The Health Sciences Doctoral Training Centre at King’s College London has awarded Mattia and Gill funding to create and run two workshops on the production of conceptual figures. The workshops will be designed for KCL PhD students, and will take place in either late 2019 or early 2020.
Workshop 1 will provide guidance in effective visual communication and graphic design, tailored specifically to the creation and use of scientific conceptual figures.
Workshop 2 will provide hands-on instruction in the creation and editing of scientific images and figures, making use of visual elements in the online library. This workshop will be run two or three times, to cater for smaller groups of attendees.
Both workshops will be recorded, and all training materials will be made available online for use within KCL. More details will be posted on a dedicated webpage in due course and progress posts on the preparations for the workshops will be made on the website blog.
February / March 2019
Gill worked with King’s College London / Maudsley BRC to create visual material to inform patients, clinical trial participants and the general public about executive function, the effect of ageing on the brain, the role of white matter pathways in the human brain and how DTI (diffusion tensor imaging) visualises these pathways.
The work included creating illustrations and designing documents to be used by clinicians. More details regarding this work are posted on Gill’s own website.
Friday 26th October 2018
Meeting between Gill, Mattia and others to discuss further collaboration / research. For a review of some of the issues raised during the meeting, specifically how best to demonstrate the adaptability of the visual elements, see this blog post.
Wednesday 19th September 2018
Meeting between Gill and Barbara to get feedback on the use of the visual elements for the dopamine synthesis figure, provided in July. For a review of the meeting, see this blog post.
Thursday 19th July 2018
Meeting between Gill and Barbara to go through the steps required to create and edit a figure showing dopamine synthesis, by using the supplied visual elements. For a review of the meeting, see this blog post.
Monday 16th July 2018
Meeting between Gill, Yannis, Daniel and Robert to go through the steps required to create and edit a figure showing intranasal delivery of oxytocin, by using the supplied visual elements. For a review of the meeting, see this blog post.
Thursday 7th June 2018
Meeting between Gill and Yannis to discuss the conceptual figure for an upcoming journal article. For a review of the meeting, see this blog post.
Wednesday 6th June 2018
Meeting between Gill, Mattia and Barbara to discuss the conceptual figure for an upcoming journal article. For a review of the meeting, see this blog post.
Friday 18th May 2018
Meeting between Gill and Pierluigi to discuss a conceptual figure for an upcoming journal article. For a review of the issues raised at the meeting, see this blog post.
Thursday 22nd February 2018
Meeting between Gill and Nisha to discuss the construction of a conceptual figure from the visual elements. For a review of the meeting, see this blog post.
Friday 16th February 2018
The online image gallery has been updated, to include all of the images created for Nisha’s methods paper, together with additional olfactory and trigeminal nerve images that were created for the CME opening event.
Monday 22nd January 2018
Gill has updated the online image gallery to make clear that the high-resolution image files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license, and so can be made available for non-commercial use outside of the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences.
Friday 19th January 2018
Meeting between Gill and Nisha to discuss progress on the conceptual figures for Nisha’s upcoming methods paper. For a summary of the meeting, see this blog post.
Thursday 14th December 2017
Meeting between Gill and Nisha to discuss the conceptual figures in Nisha’s upcoming methods paper. For a brief summary of the meeting, see this blog post.
Gill, Mattia and Nisha showed the work of the collaboration at the opening of the new Centre for Medical Engineering at King’s. For a review of the event, see this blog post.
Wednesday 8th November 2017
Workshop 2 – A hands-on guide to using Adobe Illustrator. For a review of the workshop, see this webpage.
Wednesday 1st November 2017
Workshop 1 – Proposing a new way of producing conceptual figures. For a review of the workshop, see this webpage.
Thursday 19th October 2017
Meetings between Yannis, Nisha, Mattia and Gill, to discuss both the conceptual figures to be used in upcoming papers and the upcoming workshops. For a brief summary of the meetings, see this blog post.
Wednesday 11th October 2017
The CNS image gallery has now been incorporated into the main website, with the portfolios of images accessible from the Image Gallery webpage.
Wednesday 4th October 2017
The dates, times and content of the pilot workshops have been finalised and Gill has updated the Workshops webpages.
Tuesday 29th August 2017
Following the meeting with Mattia and Yannis, Gill has updated the Workshops webpages.
Friday 25th August 2017
Meeting between Gill, Mattia and Yannis, to discuss the progress of the collaboration. See this blog post for more details.
Monday 21st August 2017
A separate, portfolio-style website has been created, to act as an image gallery. Also, see this blog post for more details.
[Update on Wednesday 11th October 2017 – the contents of the portfolio website have now been incorporated into the main website, accessible from the Image Gallery webpage]
Wednesday 26th July 2017
Following the meeting with Mattia and Yannis, Gill created an initial proposal for two pilot workshops. See the Workshops webpage for more details.
Friday 21st July 2017
Meeting between Gill, Mattia and Yannis to discuss the next steps for the collaboration. See this blog post for more details.
Tuesday 11th July 2017
An Instagram account is now live @neurographical. Currently, the majority of the posted images are re-drawn details from existing conceptual figures. These details are all representations of visual elements that are relevant to Yannis and Nisha’s research areas. In due course, more examples of original figures, created during the collaboration, will also be posted.
Thursday 15th June 2017
Gill attended a meeting at the Neuroimaging department, as Nisha presented some preliminary results. See this blog post for more details.
Meeting between Gill and Yannis to discuss his research and the conceptual figures that are used to visually communicate that work. See this blog post for more details.
Friday 2nd June 2017
Meeting between Gill and Nisha to discuss Nisha’s research and the type of conceptual figures that are used to visually communicate that work. See this blog post for more details.
Thursday 27th April 2017
First meeting of the team to discuss what they would like to achieve from the collaboration. Read about the outcome on The Collaboration page.
Neuroscience & graphic design 