Since 2021, I’ve been working as a researcher at the Rhine Ruhr Center for Science Communication Research (RRC), a collaborative project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Our work centers on investigating how science is communicated—both within academic circles and to the wider public. We insvestige how is science negotiated and shared and what forms and formats are used to make research accessible and compelling.
The RRC is a classic third-party funded initiative, involving six universities and academic institutions. As is often the case with such projects, communication tends to be pragmatic and improvisational. Within this context, my role is to approach science communication through the lens of a designer. I aim not only to study how others communicate their research, but also to shape how the RRC presents itself—through a visual language I’ve developed specifically for this purpose. After all, if we’re studying how researchers communicate their work, our own visual communication should be exemplary.
What fascinates me most about this challenge is the RRC’s focus: we primarily investigate communication in the social sciences and humanities, and in knowledge about science itself—its systems, structures, and meta-levels. Unlike the natural sciences, which often generate inherently visual content through microscopy, telescopes, or laboratory setups, our subject matter offers no such visual equivalents. The task, then, is to find metaphors that can translate an often-invisible research process into a compelling visual medium.
Why Visual Metaphors Matter
We live in a visually dominated media environment—from websites and print materials to social media, video, and interactive platforms. Effective science communication, therefore, must engage the visual. Creating metaphors and equivalents becomes not just useful, but essential.
The Key Visual
At the heart of our visual identity lies a key visual—a central metaphor from which other design iterations emerge. This key visual appears prominently across the RRC website, as the default header for all posts, and on the opening slides of presentations.
Its core idea draws on the “Zettelkasten” method popularized by sociologist Niklas Luhmann. The twist? We extend these card catalogues into an imagined infinity—representing the seemingly boundless knowledge contained within scientific systems.
This entire visual was created using Blender. Modeling was achieved partly through manual techniques and partly using Geometry Nodes. Texturing was minimal; the wood texture, which I created myself, is freely available on my project site, Patternpanda. To add variation in the drawer fronts, I randomized the UV placement using Blender’s shading nodes. Renders were done in Cycles, using both an old GTX980 and a more modern RTX3080.
Key Visual Variants
For the Living Handbook project, I revised the key visual in multiple formats: a near-photorealistic rendering for social media and the RRC homepage, and an abstract vector version for print.
Manually modeled book and tree as cover image for the Living Handbook. The tree’s foiliage (i.e. the Zettel) was created with a particle system in Blender. Interestingly I did not use Cycles here but did some experiments with EEVEE, resulting in a visual style that reminds me of illustrations in old school books.
Again, Blender served as the primary tool, alongside InDesign for layout. The vectors were generated using Blender’s Freestyle line rendering and exported via SVG. I modeled the abstract tree myself; the realistic version came from Polyhaven—many thanks to them!
Front and back of a DIN lang flyer for the Living Handbook.
The individual Zettelkasten elements are highly modular and reusable. For instance, I repurposed the drawer-and-note motif for our newsletter header. This version was also created in Blender, using Geometry Nodes to distribute the notes in a volume, giving the impression that they’re suspended mid-air.
The Zettelkasten concept has also been adapted for conference programs and invitations. As before, modeling was done in Blender, vector exports were refined in Illustrator, and final layouts in InDesign.
The advantage of working with true 3D models is the flexibility they offer: new perspectives or configurations can be generated in moments. For example, I used Blender’s Freestyle SVG exporter to create a vector version of the visual for use on tote bags. I’m particularly satisfied with Blender’s vector pipeline—especially for generative designs like the three stacks of notes used in a second tote design. Constructing that kind of graphic manually in Illustrator or Affinity would’ve taken far longer than the five minutes it took in Blender.
The Zettelkasten concept was also central to a key visual developed for a conference on AI in the humanities. For this, I played with the tension between analog and digital—creating an “impossible machine” that bridges the two. Rendered in Cycles on a RTX 3080.
Logos and iconography
Beyond the key visual, I designed both the RRC logo and the Living Handbook logo. Each underwent an extensive conceptual and design process, with hundreds of iterations. For these purely vector-based illustrations, I prefer Affinity Designer over Illustrator, which I find overly granular for my workflow.
Visuals for web and social media
I also design most of the title graphics for essays and blog posts on the RRC website. These illustrations aim to retain a minimalist vector aesthetic. Interestingly, my toolset here is eclectic: some images begin as full 3D models in Blender (or Cinema 4D), which I then export as true vectors. Others are entirely hand-drawn on the iPad using Adobe Fresco.
Visuals for the Living Handbook onboarding
The most experimental workflow so far has been for the comic-style illustrations intended for the Living Handbook homepage. I first modeled everything in 3D using Blender. However, Blender’s Freestyle shader struggles with high-resolution, complex models—especially those using Subdivision Surfaces—so I only rendered the models roughly. I then redrew them by hand on the iPad in Adobe Fresco. Final coloring was done in Affinity Designer on my Mac.
Top image: Rendering of a ‘Zettelkasten globe’ that I used as template and reference image for the hand drawn visual down below:
Top image: Rendering that I used as template and reference image for the hand drawn visual down below:
Top image: Rendering that I used as template and reference image for the hand drawn visual down below:
Top image: Crude (!) rendering that I used as template and reference image for the hand drawn visual down below:
Top image: Rendering that I used as template and reference image for the hand drawn visual down below:
