You have full access to this article through your institution. Iconic Nature covers the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Covers of Nature can be found hanging on home and office walls; They are regularly mentioned in conferences and are even topics of academic study.1. Likewise, they are an opportunity for scientists, science writers, and editors
You have full access to this article through your institution.
Iconic Nature covers the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
Covers of Nature can be found hanging on home and office walls; They are regularly mentioned in conferences and are even topics of academic study.1. Likewise, they are an opportunity for scientists, science writers, and editors to work with some of the world’s most creative and inventive artists, designers, illustrators, and photographers—those whose work we celebrate in this special issue on the human art of scientific illustration in the age of artificial intelligence.
Three tips to avoid AI image mistakes in science
Illustrations and photography in Nature Let’s go back to the first issue, published on November 4, 1869. On the masthead was the slogan “An Illustrated Weekly Magazine of Science.” This was no accident: there are images throughout the first issue, ranging from intricate drawings of moths to a book review of A Illustrated natural history of British mothsto simple sketches, particularly one about the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, a project that some feared would fail. There are also photographs accompanying an essay by founding editor Norman Lockyer about that year’s solar eclipse. In a time when “print” meant printing words, the new magazine broke new ground with images.
However, over the following months, readers would have noticed fewer illustrations and photographs. At some point, the word “enlightened” disappeared from the slogan entirely. It would be a century before we started publishing full-page cover images, although initially without words to accompany them.
Since approximately the mid-1970s, NatureThe covers illustrated landmark studies and journalism, including coverage of major world events such as the 2008 global financial crisis.2 and how science could survive the coming recession. Our goal is to create covers that are a combination of art, science, beauty, creativity and novelty. They can be specific or abstract and tell a story that represents the research as accurately as possible in its context; They do not need to tell the entire story of the investigation, but they should not be misleading.
Many of our early covers relied heavily or exclusively on black and white photographs taken with film cameras. In those pre-digital times, images would have been physically cut and pasted in preparation for printing.
‘Good design requires mastery’: scientific illustrators outline the future of AI
Long before social networks, NatureThe cover images began to take on a life of their own, entering the broader public consciousness in their own right. One of the best examples of a cover image that caught public attention is a computer-generated image from the mid-1980s, accompanying a report on a new form of carbon, C.60shaped like a soccer ball3. This research was partly inspired by art and design: the scientists named their discovery ‘Buckminsterfullerene’ after Richard Buckminster Fuller, architect and designer of the geodesic dome.
Digital photography and software used to design magazines and manipulate images captured the attention of the 1990s and greatly improved cover designs. Some of NatureAmong the best-known covers of that time is Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, which was also on the cover of other magazines and newspapers around the world.4. The first draft of the human genome sequence.5 was illustrated on the cover with a visual representation of the double helix of DNA made up of a striking mosaic of images of people from around the world. Illustrations were also used to depict the discovery of a feathered dinosaur in China.6 and γ-ray bursts reported from the merger of two neutron stars7.
The art of data.
Nature appointed a creative director in 2011, leading to new partnerships between scientific illustrators, journalists and data scientists. A notable example of this is the cover of Nature150th anniversary edition produced in collaboration with researchers at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York, and the Complex Networks Research Center based at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. The cover showed the citation networks of 88,000 articles published in Nature since 1900. The principle behind this network was co-citation: two articles were linked if another scientific publication had cited both of them. This project included an animation and a video, along with the network’s cover illustration.
Why nature will not allow the use of generative AI in images and videos
As in other spheres of human endeavor, AI is knocking on the doors of illustrators and designers, looking for a way in. In an article this week, five scientific illustrators make the case for why humans should always be the beating heart of the creative process, a message echoed in a technology article.
Although scientific literature is increasingly read, collated and synthesized by machines, researchers continue to be drawn to covers and appreciate their importance. Although the word “illustrated” is no longer part of NatureThe motto of, arguably, is not necessary. Along with words, data, graphs, photographs and illustrations, the magazine covers will continue to be an essential part of our publication.
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