Right now I'm working on some late stage (hopefully) editing of a website banner image (above) for a biotech client. To get an idea of you how much editing was done, you can revisit the November 6th post, which is the first draft of the image. Apparently there was some disagreement among the clients about my original interpretation, which I am thrilled about. While effectively communicating science is always my main goal, a close second is getting people to look at their work in a new light, and maybe even question some assumptions that had been lying dormant. At the very least, just deciding what is important to convey in an image can be a powerful exercise. My former postdoc advisor is great at this. I have no idea if any of this occurred among my clients, but it's nice to think about as I agonize over hues, draw endless stretches of polymer, and skootch objects around nearly imperceptibly, pixel by pixel.
I've just put the updated version, with less of the murky feel of this one I think, on the illustrations page here.