Writing this book has been a pleasure. The scholarly significance of it aside, I just enjoy visuals. I enjoy looking at them, thinking about them, and talking about them. And that’s not limited to my research interest in science visuals either. I like all of them.

I delight, for example, in IKEA’s visual-only assembly instructions (I’m fully aware that some people don’t). For me, I look at them, I look back at the mess lying on the floor, I see the panels I need, the screws I need, I put them together step by step, just as the visuals show. Everything feels easy, efficient, and intuitive. Just as much, I hate it when I stumble upon a bad set of visual instructions. Examples of those are plentiful. The most recent memory pertains to putting up the bagger kit on our Greenworks mower. Great, great mower really (and great bagger, too), but the instructions? Not so much. The photographs are grainy, dark, and small, so I struggled to see what’s on them and to identify the parts of importance. The angle of the photographs wasn’t quite right, so I really struggled to see what I’m supposed to do with the parts. It took a lot of trial and error, a lot of straining, and, I’m not proud to say, a fair amount of swearing.