Nature cover illustration
When we decided to feature the microfluidics piece on the cover, the question facing us was: photography or illustration? There are some gorgeous devices out there, so photography could have worked.
We reached out to one of the authors, David Beebe, for image suggestions, and he pointed out that it might be more appropriate to do an illustration rather than showing one specific technology in a photograph.
From Beebe: “The impact will likely come in many areas/fields of research or conversely there is unlikely to be a single ‘killer application’ … we don’t want to convey a bunch of gee whiz cool widgets, rather that the field is moving now towards practical implementation and real impact”
We took Beebe’s advice and concentrated on doing an illustrated concept cover, to convey the idea of a field of science that is moving towards a more practical phase, with many solutions. We came up with the idea of using a Swiss army knife as a metaphor. The final cover art shows a generic microfluid chip design, as the base of the ‘knife’ (in red), with the familiar tools of the Swiss army knife completing the visual.
