Today we are going to tackle a general topic that deals with how data is represented in scientific papers. The use of illustrations in scientifi c publications is a longstanding tradition that goes back thousands of years. In the course of writing 1,200 Nanowerk Spotlights over the past six years, we have worked our way through thousands of papers. And if one thing has stood out, it is the quality of the illustrations included in these papers: some are just excellent and capture the essence of the findings; others, well, let's just say they could be improved upon. Here are five specific recommendations on how scientists should design effective figures.