Betsy Palay and Tami Tolpa

I am a 3rd year PhD student (biology) and really profited from this course. It offered me some new insights into how to convert an idea I have in my head into a final figure that is structured and well designed. The post-it idea is excellent and an amazing tool. I apply it now whenever I have to create a complex text or figure. Thanks a lot for creating and offering S.P.A.R.K.!

Using a very direct, clear and logical approach S.P.A.R.K offers 5 practical tools within a clever acronym that will improve any science visualization projects. This is a well-thought-out course that was clearly prepared with care. I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever felt the frustration of not being able to communicate complex ideas into clear visuals. Having the S.P.A.R.K. acronym as a resource in one's tool kit (or in this case, artist's materials) will provide invaluable time saving and streamlining skills. A necessary resource for science artists and science nonartists everywhere.

I have decades of experience in visual design and illustration and this course helped me reinforced things I already knew and also made me understand the visual language in a fresh new way. The course itself is very well designed and clear. I look forward to applying everything I learned, thanks for providing the pdf, sample projects, and the checklists. It loved that you can do it at your own pace. Above all, it was fun to do and I'll recommended to my colleagues. Please offer more courses! B

In my role as a communications consultant, clients often ask me for input on the design of graphics and figures to enhance the visuals in outreach materials (e.g., grants, brochures). As a text-based learner and a writer, I have struggled in providing this service. But now with the training from the SPARK course, I feel more confident in my ability to do so, which will benefit my clients in the end. I especially appreciate the process-driven approach taught in this course that consistently can be applied to the design of any visual, along with the useful handouts that guide me through the process. I highly recommend this course to other technical folks, including science writers, who desire to clearly communicate their work to a broad audience.

I took Betsy Palay’s course at Stanford and learned a great deal about science visualization. Her advice helped me and I wanted to recommend visual communication training to my science communication workshop attendees. However, I wondered whether an online course would be effective in teaching visual arts? I was pleasantly surprised to learn it could. SPARK presents a five sequence strategy for creating a clear visual in a series of 24 high quality videos interspersed with quizzes and pdf hardcopies that can be used as guides. For me the most useful of the nine sections was constructing a clear path of information in the visual. I’m not a medical illustrator and can’t even draw stick figures! But I can draw simple shapes, lines, arrows and boxes, and SPARK showed me that’s all I need to visually represent many of the difficult concepts in biomedical research and engineering. After about a week working at my own pace, I was able to design some decent visuals for use in my workshop presentations. My background is in oral science storytelling and I am learning how illustrations can further augment storytelling if done correctly. Palay and Tolpa inspire us to tell meaningful stories using simple, easy to draw pictures built around a solid story path. SPARK has plenty of practical advice with dozens of examples to demonstrate each topic. I will highly recommend the course at my workshops and to anyone looking to advance to the next level in science presentation. -Dennis F. Mangan, PhD. Director, Chalk Talk Science Project. www.chalktalkscience.org

At the beginning the course material was sophisticated imply time consuming process, but by repeatedly watching videos and viewing the last two sections I feel that the 5 strategies are easy and by practice I can do it!

The S.P.A.R.K. course provides you with a clear, step-by-step method for creating striking, informative figures and illustrations for scientific publications. The course is well paced. Great examples are given. Techniques are practical and easy to implement. Even students with no artistic skills can learn how to improve their figures and illustrations. Recommended to anyone preparing scientific publications, posters, visual abstracts and other materials with figures and illustrations.

I've been very impressed by the Picture As Portal course. The course breaks down and explains how to convey an idea or concept into a clear graphic. The course's step by step process, combined with numerous easy-to-follow examples, enables the student to both understand graphical basics and use them to create their own coherent images. -Mark Clemens Former Art Director Scientific American magazine 

As a scientific illustrator and magazine graphics editor with over 20 years of experience, I found this course to include remarkably clear and sound advice for developing science graphics. Great content (with enough context to provide a solid basis for understanding), especially for newbies and scientists. I was particularly impressed with Tolpa and Palay’s approach to teaching about using composition as a way to reinforce the information being illustrated, especially for folks that may not be used to thinking in terms of visual structure.

I am a physician scientist and have been in the biotechnology field for 30 years. Power Point presentations are ubiquitous and sadly most often poorly conceived and executed. SPARK is the best and most comprehensive examination and explanation of techniques necessary to improve visual communication in the presentation product. It will change the way I think about and create more effective presentations. -Andrew Perlman, MD, PhD, Managing Director and Chief Medical Officer of VPD, former Senior Director of Clinical Research at Genentech

Really loved your course - all the material was extremely clear and well laid out. Such a nice, systematic approach to communicating complicated concepts. This will be invaluable to my work!