Overview

The template produces scientific figures using MATLAB . The figures carefully follow data vizualization best practices and have a minimalist design. As a result, the figures convey information effectively—on screen or in print.

Download

Features

  • The figure aspect ratio is 4:3 so the figure can easily be annotated with a presentation software.
  • The font on the axes and for the annotations is Helvetica.
  • No colors are used on the axes to reduce distraction; colors are reserved for plot elements and annotations.
  • Figure dimensions are set to maximize the use of space.
  • Font sizes and line thicknesses are set for comfortable reading once the figures are inserted in pairs in a paper .
  • A collections of color palettes are provided, both for qualitative displays and sequential displays. The palettes were created by ColorBrewer .
  • The script produces a collection of figures with different plot types and different features.
  • All the figures produced by the template are available in PDF format in the figures folder
  • On a Mac, the figures can easily be annotated with Keynote. This procedure is more user friendly, and more flexible, than annotating the figures directly in MATLAB. The Keynote file figures.key in the folder figures illustrates how to annotate the figures produced by the script.