Paper Graphics

Resources to help you make scientific figures for your robotics papers.

It mainly stores the assets used in a tutorial I prepared in 2023, and updated in 2025, which is constantly being improved.

Matias Mattamala (2025), "Effective Design of Graphics for (Robotics) Research" Online (Google Slides)

The tutorial summarizes the workflow I follow when making figures for my papers and other advice. The goal was on "low budget" solutions, using open-source or other free-to-use software tools instead of expensive professional software.

Installation

To run the jupyter notebooks, just use Pixi in this folder:

# Install pixi
curl -fsSL https://pixi.sh/install.sh | sh

# Install the environment
pixi install
pixi shell
jupyter notebook matplotlib/example.ipynb

Other resources

(This section will be extended in the future)

Fonts

• Computer Modern Unicode: The font used by LaTeX
• Roboto: Nice sans serif font

Software tools

• Inkscape: Wonderful vector graphics software
• Google Drawings: Easy diagrams from your Google account
• draw.io: Easy to use though more advanced flowchart software
• GIMP: Brilliant bitmap manipulation software
• Science Plots: Python package to make science-styled plots

Vector graphics

• Inkscape: Wonderful vector graphics software
• Bezier Game: Online game to learn to use the Pen tool in Inkscape (and other vector graphics software)
• Map Chart: To generate colored maps with highlighted countries
• Latex Drawing: Examples on how to design figures with TikZ

Colors

• Claus O. Wilke (2019), "Fundamentals of Data Visualization"
• DaltonLens: Color blindness simulator
• David Nichols, "Coloring for Colorblindness"
• Tint and Shade Generator: To make tint (lighter) or shade (darker) variations of a set of hexadecimal colors
• Scientific Colour Maps

Other technical resources

• PSL Explore Tutorials on Graphics
• Marco Verna, "Resolution, PPI and DPI for photographers"

Other tutorials on designing scientific figures

• Peter Fankhauser (2018), "Graphic and Video Editing for Scientific Publications"
• Alice Chen Kitterman (2021), "Designing an effective graphic abstract"
• Nataliya Rokhmanova, Andrew K. Schulz (2023), "Explaining scientific findings through figures in publications, presentations, and posters "
• Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, "Exploratory Graphics - Guiding Principles Cheat Sheet"
• Nice reporitory with styles for scientific plots: garrettj403/SciencePlots

Accessibility

• How to make Dyslexia Friendly Documents Dyslexia Scotland (Thanks to Heramb Modugula for sharing)
• DaltonLens: Color blindness simulator
• David Nichols, "Coloring for Colorblindness"

Presentation tools

• Projecteur: To spotlight parts of your screen
  • Installation instructions: link
    • Ubuntu 20.04
    • curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/jahnf/projecteur-develop/cfg/gpg/gpg.544E6934C0570750.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/jahnf-projecteur-develop-archive-keyring.gpg
    • curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/jahnf/projecteur-develop/cfg/setup/config.deb.txt?distro=ubuntu&codename=bionic' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jahnf-projecteur-develop.list
    • sudo apt update
    • sudo apt install projecteur
    • Add Ubuntu shortcut to: projecteur -c spot=toggle
• ScreenPointer: Same as Projecteur, but for Mac
• Key-mon: To show your mouse actions on the screen
• ScreenKey: It shows what keyboard keys you are pressing (full sequence, but not mouse)
• pdfpc: Software to present PDFs as slides, with pointer and annotation features (Thanks to Santeri Heiskanen for the link)

LaTex

• LatexIt: To seamlessly copy LaTex-rendered equations into Keynote (Thanks to Joao Carvalho for the pointer)

License

All the images in assets are designed or photographed by me, except from:

• intel_d435i.png, from Intel
• microstrain_gx5_imu.png, from Microstrain