top of page
  • Writer's pictureBeink

When text and image intermingle


Lettre "A" par Macrovector

Whenever one wishes to integrate text into an image or images into a text, the question arises of how to arrange one in relation to the other. The text can be separated from the image, supplement it (title, subtitle, caption), match or contrast with, integrate with it or even become completely inseparable from the image (drawn text).




Figure 4 of the scientific article to which I contributed during my thesis.

In a scientific article, text and image are generally redundant with each other: the text must be understandable without the image and the image must not contain anything new to the text and must be completely and completely peeled into the text. Besides, a figure in a scientific article cannot be without a title and a caption, as well as a figure number. It is therefore far from being sufficient on its own, and mainly serves to provide proof of what is put forward in the text. The scientific article is therefore a format not fond of the proverb "a good sketch is better than a long speech", since the figure is rather the illustration of the text.


Yet who here has not dreamed of magically replacing the introduction of a scientific article with a drawing or a set of explanatory diagrams? See why not in the form of a comic strip ...


Take as an example the first paragraph of the introduction to the scientific article The Polo kinase Cdc5 is regulated at multiple levels in the adaptation response to telomere dysfunction, on which I contributed during my thesis. And imagine it in a drawing. Knowing how to decipher a drawing is a skill that can be learned, just like reading text, because images also have their codes and reading rules. A good exercise to know your ability to read an image, is to take the graphic summary made here by Beink and "read it aloud" that is to say to tell a logical story from what you see. . Some codes are general (the arrow with a flat end, for example, represents an inhibition).



So what story did you come up with? Does it correspond to the text, in general terms?