I once got one of the senior researchers in my group talking about the harsh task of writing scientific articles before the advent of the personal computer(and LaTeX, of course). Back in those days, he had to do the usual handwriting of a draft of his papers, hand that off to a secretary, who&#x27;d, by rule, only type up two drafts of any of the faculty&#x27;s manuscripts. They had to be very careful, then, what they sent off...that it was polished and ready for submission to a journal.<p>Then, when someone had a figure to include (again, before the advent of matlab), they had to plot out their data by hand, then send it off to the art department. Journals back in the day had strict requisites on the quality, type (font) of figures, and on their readability, and the artists were careful to follow these rules, turning handwritten figures into quality, readable, and informative figures.<p>Nowadays, you have no fucking idea how often I have to read a paper with figures that are just plain confusing, un-insightful, and with types and labels that are unreadable, and defeat the whole purpose of a scientific paper: to disseminate and communicate your findings. I get it that STEM&#x27;ers happy now that they no longer have to talk to the art department, but so often, they do not realize how important design is and how you need at least a modicum of design sense, especially when the entire point of you writing a paper (after using it when writing for grants) is to communicate with your fellow scientist your findings.<p>Design is so much more than &quot;color of packaging,&quot; design is readability, type, structure of visual elements, and yes color. Moreover, <i>design</i>, as the name implies, is art for a <i>purpose</i>; often for, yes, attention grabbing and customer wooing, but for us scientists, design plays an important role in the communication process. And going back to color, for fuck&#x27;s sake, some choices colormaps can really hurt the quality of your publication! 10 panes of Jet heatmaps, each with different limits on each pane? Give me a break.<p>Design <i>is</i> important, just as much as literacy is important, just as much as knowing limits before you memorize the derivative of a sine function is important. Just because you have LaTeX and bootstrap doesn&#x27;t mean design isn&#x27;t important anymore, even though it&#x27;s easier. No one can do everything, but being humble enough to learn from people outside your field (even outside science) can make you a better STEM&#x27;er, especially when it comes to sharing your cool ideas.