Drawings, graphics and illustrations are one of the oldest ways of knowledge transfer without language barriers. Through the growth of the scientific community and the associated increase of publications, it has become more difficult to communicate key findings just with plain text. Visualisations of scientific content have become increasingly popular (e.g. colour figures, graphical abstracts, short videos and animations) and represents an efficient form for science communication, also outside of academic journals (e.g. social platforms, teaching).

We use the opportunity at the EGU2019 to give a guided tour through the current trends. We go over the basic rules (do’s and don’ts) for graphic design and present low-budget do-it-yourself solutions along with (hopefully) useful software suggestions.