03.10.2025 –, Carl Benz
Scientific visualisation enhances our understanding of the world’s beauty and complexity. Despite its widespread use, it’s rarely part of a university’s curricula and often misused. Misuse can exclude readers or mislead them.
The study of human colour perception is extensive but creating accessible and accurate scientific visualisation with colour has become easy. All necessary aspects are understood, and tools exist.
This lecture introduces basic colour knowledge for visualising data, from simple bar plots to complex cross-disciplinary maps. Pioneering science-proof colour palettes and gradients are available freely and prebuilt into software. I introduce the latest Scientific colour maps (www.fabiocrameri.ch/colourmaps/) and its various palette and gradient types.
After this lecture, you’ll understand the basics of colour use and I hope you’ll become an advocate for ensuring that we accurately show insightful scientific results to everyone.
Dr. Fabio Crameri is a geoscientist, graphic designer, and science communicator. With a PhD in Geophysics from ETH Zurich, his background is in Geophysics, where he worked on global-scale dynamics of the Earth and other planetary bodies between 2013–2020. He developed numerical models, post-processing tools, and concepts like „Ocean-plate tectonics“. Fabio collaborated with experts to build the transdisciplinary Subduction Zone Initiation (SZI) Database and created the academic profile „ProAc“.
Fabio also promotes accurate and inclusive science visuals through the open-access graphics collection s-ink.org, designed the „Scientific color maps“, and advocated for methodological changes in academia related to graphic design. Since 2020, he founded Undertone.design for academic graphic design and joined the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) as Communication Specialist.