| name | advmat-figures |
| description | Use when designing or auditing figures for an Advanced Materials manuscript, including the lead figure, multi-panel characterization figures, and the Table-of-Contents graphic, where visual quality is a house expectation. Designs figure strategy; does not run the analysis or write prose. |
Advanced Materials Figures (advmat-figures)
When to trigger
- You have many candidate panels and need a coherent figure set
- Your lead figure does not convey the central advance at a glance
- Characterization panels are crowded, mislabeled, or unreadable at column width
- You have no Table-of-Contents (TOC) graphic, or it is an afterthought
- A coauthor wants to "add one more panel just in case"
Figure strategy for Adv. Mater.
Advanced Materials is a visually demanding journal — striking, cover-quality figures are a house expectation, and the journal actively selects work for cover art. But visual polish must serve the science. The hierarchy:
- Lead figure (Figure 1) — usually a schematic of the material/design concept plus the single most decisive piece of evidence. A reader skimming should grasp the advance from this figure and its caption alone.
- Characterization figures — each closes one link of the structure → property → function chain (e.g. one figure for structure by XRD/TEM, one for the property, one for the device + benchmarking).
- The TOC graphic — a small, self-explaining image plus a short blurb that sells the advance to a browsing reader; treat it as a designed object, not a cropped panel.
- Everything else — optimization sweeps, extra samples, raw traces → Supporting Information.
If a panel does not advance the central claim or one essential link, move it to the SI.
Multi-panel characterization figures
Materials figures are dense by nature; discipline keeps them readable:
| Principle | Practice |
|---|
| One figure, one link | Group panels that jointly prove one claim (e.g. all structure) |
| Reading order | Label (a),(b),(c) top-left to bottom-right; caption follows it |
| Scale bars, always | Every micrograph carries a scale bar in the image, not only the caption |
| Consistent color-coding | The same sample/condition keeps one color across all figures |
| Annotate the feature | Arrow/label the lattice fringe, peak, or interface that matters |
| Overlay, don't scatter | Show theory-vs-experiment or before-vs-after on shared axes |
Production standards (Wiley format)
- Design for the journal's two-column layout; check legibility at final printed width.
- Fonts, axis labels, and tick numbers legible at print size; keep a consistent typeface across figures.
- Vector formats for line art/schematics; high-resolution raster (meeting Wiley's DPI requirement) for micrographs — verify the current DPI/format spec.
- Color is free in Adv. Mater. (online and print), but keep palettes color-blind-safe and distinguishable in grayscale; never encode by color alone.
- Define every symbol, abbreviation, and unit in the caption; give micrographs their scale and technique.
- Match nomenclature and units to the main text; use SI units and consistent significant figures.
The TOC graphic and cover art
- The TOC entry (graphic + short text) is a required, high-visibility asset — design it to communicate the advance to a non-specialist in one glance.
- If aiming for cover consideration, prepare a separate high-resolution cover image; do not repurpose a cramped data panel. Verify current cover-submission format and dimensions.
Checklist
Anti-patterns
- A lead figure too dense to parse without the main text
- Micrographs with no scale bar, or scale bars only mentioned in the caption
- Ten-panel megafigures that bury the takeaway
- Inconsistent color-coding of the same sample across figures
- Color-only encoding that fails in grayscale or for color-blind readers
- A TOC graphic that is a cropped, unreadable data panel
Output format
【Figure count】N — each essential? yes / cut list
【Fig. 1 conveys the advance at a glance】yes / redesign
【Per-figure single chain-link】list
【Scale bars on all micrographs】yes / fix
【Consistent color-coding】yes / fix
【Color-blind / grayscale safe】yes / fix
【TOC graphic】designed + blurb? yes / fix
【Next】advmat-supplementary (SI) or advmat-length-management (fit format)
Figure DPI, format, TOC-graphic, and cover-art specifications are set by Wiley and change — verify current requirements on the official Advanced Materials author page.
