14-17 April 2025

People will often separate art and science in two different categories, but to do both properly you need one key component and that is creativity. Remember the last conference or symposium you went to, you can probably remember the nicest presentation and poster partially due to their charismatic speakers or splendid visuals (or both!), or when you were reading through a paper and marveled at their beautiful schematics.
In this course we will cover how to think when you sketch, planning out larger graphics and schematics, getting your projects across at conferences by creating project mascots with stickers, all with the help of open source multi-OS software such as Krita and Inkscape. By the end you should have plenty of ideas to spice up your research with art.

Any researcher, student or creative interested in communicating their science or public engagement through art, no major graphic or artistic skill needed. Come with your project, a summary figure you’ve been struggling with, a public engagement event you are planning for 10-year-olds that need to understand how DNA sequencing works, and learn how to best engage your target audience.
Please submit a “portfolio” before the course, this can be anything you created (a doodle in the corner of your zoom meetings notebook, pretty R figures, your best agarose gel). Also what would you like to learn during the course to better tailor it (e.g. if everyone shows up with an iPad and Procreate we can also play around with animations).

1. Paper, pencil, pens… whatever stationery you have at hand
2. Krita (rasters)
3. Inkscape (vectors)
4. Any graphic tablet (if you don’t have any a good mouse will do the trick)
5. Optional: Procreate (iPad only, rasters)

Day 1. 2-6 pm Berlin time

Creating in the artist dumpster fire that is 2024+
Blank pages and art blocks (how and where to start)
Learning simple designs for complex scientific subject
Color palettes and color blindness
Sketchnoting - text is prohibited!

Day 2. 2-6 pm Berlin time

Crash course in Krita (rasters)
Designing characters/mascots
Logos (scientists LOVE logos)
Cover art for journals and presentations

Day 3. 2-6 pm Berlin time

Crash course in Inkscape (vectors)
Project and protocol schematics
One panel figures for papers
Stickers, final logos, and more (finalize your rasters)

Day 4. 2-6 pm Berlin time

Using art to share your research efficiently
Posters, Pamphlets
Translate your manuscripts into comics
Design a powerpoint slide or one panel figure of your project
Public engagement materials