Iconic Figure

Context

The Iconic Figure project is a science communication endeavor looking for a fun, pleasant, effectful, inclusive, and respectful way to communicate our research findings.

Objectives

Engaging in the dialogue with the public to share scientific evidence is an important task. However, our research often deals with very complex issues, e.g., climate change, its underlying processes, their local to global consequences, and ways of mitigation and adaptation. Hence, communicating scientific results to the public requires some sort of translation that allows non-experts to understand the main findings. Simplifying, packaging, and delivering scientific evidence in the right way is one of the foremost challenges in today’s science communication. Therefore, the aim of the Iconic Figure project is to design a figure that translates our high-resolution greenhouse gas flux data in a way that is both catchy and easy to understand.

Colors can be very powerful tools to help communicate scientific results if selected well. History, culture, societal structures, or gender influence the way colors are perceived. Together with an artist, we developed a color scheme for meteorological as well as greenhouse gas flux data which uses appealing, engaging colors.

Have a look at the Download figure (PNG, 618 KB).