advmat-figures

Design

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.

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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

Figure 1 conveys the central advance (concept + decisive evidence) at a glance
Each figure closes exactly one link of the structure → property → function chain
Every micrograph has an in-image scale bar and names its technique
Sample/condition color-coding is consistent across all figures
Legible at two-column print width; consistent fonts and units
Color-blind-safe and grayscale-distinguishable; not color-dependent
A designed TOC graphic + blurb exists and sells the advance
Non-essential panels/datasets moved to the SI

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.