BioRender seeks to empower the world to learn and communicate science faster through visuals.
If you’ve ever read a scientific journal, you know that they can be wildly confusing, especially if you’re not a scientist yourself. Their saving grace, however, is often the illustrations that convert these scientific findings into a visual form that’s easy to understand and, while many illustrations that appear in scientific journals can be very helpful, occasionally they can make the content of the journal seem even more complicated.
The reason that scientific illustrations can sometimes be more confusing than helpful is because, for many years, there’s been a lack of good programs for creating these diagrams and illustrations. Scientists are busy people, and they don’t have time to devote themselves to learning complicated graphic design software. Luckily, in 2017, a new start-up was formed to empower scientists to create easily understandable and enlightening illustrations without the hassle of learning difficult illustration software.
BioRender offers scientists a platform full of building blocks for creating captivating scientific illustrations for a wide range of scientific disciplines. They’re dedicated to making the task of scientific writing easier for scientists and making scientific writing more accessible to the average layperson. Illustrations made with BioRender include intuitive visuals that can be digested and comprehended easily, creating a universal language for scientists and non-scientists alike.
The Story of BioRender
CEO and co-founder of BioRender, Shiz Aoki, was working as the Lead Medical Illustrator for National Geographic for 10 years after graduating from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She then went on to found the award-winning medical illustration and design studio Anatomize.
At the age of 14, Aoki became so fascinated with the medical drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci that she decided to set her life’s course in pursuit of making medical illustration more effective and accessible for all people. She made a plan to graduate from the Johns Hopkins Medical Illustration program and one day work as a science illustrator at National Geographic.
Fast forward 10 years, and Aoki became the youngest science illustrator for National Geographic after recently holding 1 of 5 seats in the Johns Hopkins Medical Illustration program.
After realizing that there was a massive need for illustration software for scientists without any training in illustration or graphic design, Aoki teamed up with Katya Shteyn and Ryan Marien to start developing BioRender in Toronto in 2017. In creating the platform, they coordinated with medical illustrators, software designers, scientists, and biotech firms all across North America.
The idea was to create an “Adobe for scientists” that would make it simple for scientists to create informative illustrations that were ready for publishing. The scientific illustration market is estimated to be worth somewhere around $10 billion, so Aoki and the BioRender team saw a huge opportunity in being able to bridge the gap between science and illustration effectively.
The Problem with Illustration Software
Up until BioRender was created, illustration software wasn’t doing scientists any favors. The two main programs that were being used for scientific illustrations were Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator, neither of which were specifically built for the purpose of scientific illustration.
Microsoft PowerPoint offers scientists the benefit of simplicity. However, the program’s forte is slideshows, not illustrations. Offering only the ability to make basic shapes and lines, PowerPoint fails to incorporate all the visual tools that scientists need to convey complicated scientific findings.
Adobe Illustrator has many more capabilities for creating complex illustrations than Microsoft PowerPoint; however, this is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Because most scientists are not trained in graphic design, the difficult learning curve of a program as powerful as Adobe Illustrator is almost insurmountable for scientists with busy research schedules.
Both of these programs fell short of the mark when it came to giving scientists all the visual representation tools that they need in an easy-to-use interface. Now, with BioRender taking all of scientists’ needs into consideration, they can focus on researching rather than spending unnecessary time fighting an uphill battle trying to create engaging and accessible illustrations.
The BioRender Advantage
BioRender was created specifically for scientists. The platform includes a library of templates and icons that are specifically for neuroscience, immunology, microbiology, and over 30 other life sciences.
You can choose a pre-made template from their selection to make organizing your illustration hassle-free, or you can choose to create your own template to give you complete flexibility in the structure of your visual representation.
Their library of science-related icons includes over 20,000 different items. Imagine the hassle of trying to draw a mitochondrion or a neuron in Adobe Illustrator! That alone could take you up to an hour! With BioRender, all you have to do is search for mitochondria in their library and then click-and-drag it into your diagram. If you need a certain icon that you can’t find in the library, you can message the BioRender team and they’ll create a custom icon for you in under 48 hours.
BioRender also saves you the trouble of having to color-code scientific symbols. Since it was created with scientists in mind, all of the icons are up to date with the latest conventions of color-coding in the scientific community. Users cannot, however, change the actual shape of the icon. In this way, the BioRender team hopes to standardize the symbols used across medical journals and diminish the possibility of any misinterpretations.
Once your illustration is complete, you can export it in multiple formats for use in a wide range of different formats for publications, presentations, or websites. BioRender also makes it easy to go back and change your figures if needed, as well as grant editing access to members of your team or lab.
The BioRender website also includes a Learning Hub resource that’s full of informative videos that will teach you everything you need to know to create beautiful graphics with BioRender. If you want to learn even more, they offer webinars with real hosts that can walk you through how to become a BioRender master.
Pricing Structure
If you’re interested in trying out BioRender to see if it’s better for you than your current illustration software, they offer a Free plan that allows you to create under 5 illustrations absolutely free of charge.
If you actually want to publish your illustrations to a journal, though, you’re going to have to upgrade to the Individual plan, which costs $35 per month. With this plan, you can create unlimited illustrations and publish any of your illustrations to scientific journals.
If you plan on working with a team to create your illustrations, you’re better off going with the Lab plan. This plan offers you the opportunity to share and collaborate on your illustration with up to 5 team members. The plan costs $99 per month and gives you the option to split the billing between your team members. If you want to add additional team members, it costs $20 per month per person.
There’s also an Institution plan that offers sitewide organizational logins or single sign-on. You can also split the plan up into multiple labs or departments, get custom branded icons and templates, and you’ll be provided with a dedicated account manager and design support team. If you’re interested in this plan, you can inquire with BioRender for pricing.
The Future of Scientific Illustration
As of May 2020, BioRender already had over 200,000 users, and it seems inevitable that more and more of the scientific community will transition over to using BioRender rather than less-specialized programs like PowerPoint and Illustrator.
The company has also been inventive with its marketing. In June of last year, they held a contest for scientists to submit their illustrations for the opportunity to have their research promoted and to win prizes. There were over 5,000 entrants to the contest, some of whom were from Stanford Medicine, John Hopkins Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Yale School of Medicine.
BioRender has been quickly adopted and praised by the scientific community at large, and it seems that their company will only continue to grow in users far into the future.
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