A figure is often the part of a paper that readers remember. That makes figure design a matter of scientific integrity, not only of style — a principle the Medical Illustration and Visualization Unit applies to all its work.
Show the data
Weissgerber and colleagues showed in PLOS Biology that bar graphs of continuous data can hide very different underlying distributions, and argued for plots that show individual data points when samples are small.
Choose colour carefully
Crameri and colleagues, writing in Nature Communications, showed that rainbow-style colour maps can visually distort data and are hard to read for people with colour-vision deficiency, and recommended perceptually uniform alternatives. Bang Wong’s short column in Nature Methods offers practical palettes that remain distinguishable for colour-blind readers.
Design with intent
Rougier, Droettboom and Bourne’s “Ten simple rules for better figures” remains a useful checklist: know your audience and message, adapt the figure to the medium, avoid chartjunk, and never trust a software default without checking it.