Paper Figures for Security/Systems Research

Paper Figures

A figure is an argument made visible. It earns its place when a reader who looks at it for five seconds, before reading the caption, can state the claim it makes. Everything in this skill serves that test.

The style it encodes is the one strong papers at S&P, USENIX Security, CCS, and NDSS share: small, vector, two-column-width figures; few display items; direct labels; print-safe colour; captions that state the takeaway rather than describing the axes.

Core Principle

One figure = one claim = one message in the caption.

If two claims need showing, draw two panels or two figures. A figure that shows three things is read as none of them.

Non-Negotiables

1. One message per figure. The caption's first sentence states it; the graphic supports it.
2. Draw at printed size. A single-column figure is 3.5 in wide (IEEE), 3.33 in (ACM sigconf), 3.4 in (USENIX). Never draw big and scale down in LaTeX: the fonts shrink below the 7 pt floor.
3. Vector output (.pdf from matplotlib) for anything with text or lines. 300 dpi raster only for photographs and screenshots.
4. Fonts ≥ 7 pt at print size; axis labels 8 pt, tick labels 7 pt.
5. Print-safe colour: Okabe–Ito palette, nothing distinguished by colour alone, and the figure must survive grayscale (scripts/check_figure.py --preview).
6. No misleading axes: bar charts start at zero; log scales are labelled; no truncated y-axis to dramatise a difference; no dual y-axes without an explicit, stated reason.
7. Show uncertainty where the claim is quantitative: CI bands, error bars, or n in the caption. A point estimate without a denominator is not a result.
8. The caption states what to notice, then the units, then n. It is not a list of colours.
9. No chartjunk: no 3-D, no shadows, no gradients as decoration, no rainbow maps, no background fills, no gridlines that fight the data.
10. Reproducible: the script that generated the figure lives next to it in the repo, with the data file or a seed. A figure no one can regenerate is a liability at camera-ready.

Step 0 — Decide the Claim First

Write one sentence, in words, that the figure must make self-evident:

"Public exploit code now appears faster than advisories: the 30-day artifact-to-advisory ratio rose from 0.63 to 1.83 across four eras."

If you cannot write that sentence without "and", you have two figures.

Fill templates/figure-brief.md before touching matplotlib. It takes two minutes and prevents the most common rework: a beautiful figure that shows the wrong quantity.

Step 1 — Choose the Encoding from the Claim

Read references/encoding-guide.md. The short version:

Claim Type	Encoding	Avoid
Distribution / how fast	CDF (step), violin, box, strip	bar of means with no spread
Paired comparison	dumbbell, slope, paired dots	two floating bars
Composition over time	stacked area, small multiples	pie, 3-D pie
Ranking	sorted horizontal bars, dot plot	unordered bars, rainbow
Two-variable trade-off	scatter + Pareto frontier	bubble with unreadable sizes
Matrix / coverage	heatmap with a perceptually uniform map, in-cell values	rainbow heatmap without values
Process / timeline	swimlane, timeline, sequence diagram	a table of dates in prose
Taxonomy / decision	labelled tree, matrix of populated cells	nested bullet text

Step 2 — Draw with the Shared Style

import sys; sys.path.insert(0, "scripts")
from figure_style import apply_style, new_fig, save, SERIES, panel_label

apply_style()                       # 8 pt base, Okabe–Ito, print-safe rcParams
fig, ax = new_fig(3.5, 2.3)         # single column, correct aspect
ax.plot(x, y, color=SERIES[0], label="Pre-AI")
save(fig, "figs/fig1_cdf")          # writes .pdf (for LaTeX) + .png (preview)

Adjust the style globally, never per figure: two figures in one paper with different fonts or line weights read as two different papers.

references/style-spec.md lists every setting and why it is set that way.

Step 3 — Label Directly, Caption Last

• Put the series name at the end of its line, or on the plot, rather than in a legend box. Use a legend only when direct labels would collide (see examples/fig01_cdf.png).
• Panel labels A, B, C in bold at the top-left, referenced from the caption.
• Axis labels: quantity + unit + scale (Days since disclosure (log scale)).
• Then write the caption with references/captions.md: takeaway → what the axes show → units/n/CI → the one caveat a reader must not miss.

Step 4 — Make It Print-Safe

• Palette: SERIES in scripts/figure_style.py (Okabe–Ito). Sequential data: cividis, never jet. Diverging: RdBu_r, only around a meaningful zero.
• Encode by shape too: markers and line styles vary with series, so the figure survives grayscale printing and colour-blind reviewers.
• Run the checker:

python scripts/check_figure.py figs/fig1_cdf.png --preview

It reports size/dpi, the chromatic palette, the grayscale and deuteranopia separation, and writes fig1_cdf_gray.png / fig1_cdf_cvd.png. Look at both.

references/accessibility.md covers the details (contrast, CVD, alt text).

Step 5 — Export and Include

• Export vector PDF with embedded TrueType fonts (pdf.fonttype = 42, already set).
• Include at the printed width: \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{figs/fig1_cdf.pdf}.
• Check the compiled PDF at 100 %: no text below 7 pt, no clipped labels, no figure taller than half a column unless it is the paper's main conceptual figure.
• references/production.md covers LaTeX inclusion, font embedding, and file layout.

Step 6 — Verify Like a Reviewer

1. Five-second test: show the figure alone to someone; can they state the claim?
2. Caption test: the first sentence should be the claim, not "Figure 3 shows…".
3. Grayscale test: both previews read correctly.
4. Zoom test: at 100 % of the compiled PDF, every label is legible.
5. Integrity test: the numbers in the figure match the table and the text; the axis is not truncated; error bars are defined in the caption.
6. Reuse test: delete the PNG; does the script regenerate it byte-comparably? It should.

Display-Item Budget

Venue Class	Total Display Items	Notes
Top-4 conference	6–10	One conceptual figure, one timeline, results tables; every item referenced in text
Magazine	4–6	One message per item; sidebars instead of appendices
Journal	8–12	More room, same rules

If a figure is not referenced with a claim in the text ("Figure 5 shows that X"), remove it or rewrite the sentence.

Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern	Why It Fails
Rainbow/jet colormap	Not perceptually ordered; misleading values; unreadable in grayscale
3-D or shadowed bars/pies	Decoration that distorts the comparison
Pie with >3 slices	Humans compare angles badly; use sorted bars
Dual y-axis	Invites a correlation claim the data does not support; use two panels
Truncated y-axis on bars	Exaggerates differences; a reviewer will notice
Legend box with 6 entries	Forces colour-matching; use direct labels or small multiples
Tiny text scaled down in LaTeX	Fonts fall below 7 pt; the figure becomes gray noise
Caption that lists colours	"The blue line shows…" tells the reader nothing they cannot see
Screenshot of a table	Not vector, not editable, not accessible
Figure that restates a table	Waste of a display item; keep the one that supports the claim
Unlabelled log axis	The reader cannot compare slopes across decades
Missing n / error bars	A point estimate without uncertainty is not evidence

Resource Map

File	Use
references/venue-figure-profiles.md	What the top-4 venues expect, column widths, caption/placement rules
references/encoding-guide.md	Claim → chart mapping, log scales, uncertainty, when a table wins
references/style-spec.md	Every matplotlib setting with its reason; palette hex codes
references/captions.md	Caption formula and before/after examples
references/accessibility.md	Colour-blind and grayscale safety, contrast, alt text
references/production.md	Export, LaTeX inclusion, fonts, file layout, reproducibility
references/anti-patterns.md	What to remove, with the example that shows it
scripts/figure_style.py	rcParams, Okabe–Ito palette, new_fig, save, panel_label
scripts/check_figure.py	Size/dpi check, grayscale and deuteranopia previews, palette report
scripts/make_examples.py	Generates every example figure (synthetic data)
examples/	Reference images: what good looks like, plus a bad-vs-good pair
templates/figure-brief.md	One-page brief before drawing