52 references across eight families, gathered from Wikimedia Commons and
captured live from named institutional sources. 26 more were gathered and cut —
what went, and why, is recorded under each family.
Every image carries its licence. Nothing here is generated, and nothing here is a
fabricated micrograph — which for this audience is the whole point.
Photoluminescence — the product, lit
8 references
The product is genuinely photoluminescent, and nobody has photographed it. One vial under a 365 nm lamp, black ground, flat frontal fill, dated caption — the product and the proof in a single frame.
ADOPTShoot it. It is true, it is vivid, and it costs a lamp and an afternoon.
REFUSENever call it a moat. Glaia has sold a carbon-dot foliar since 2024 and carbon dots are photoluminescent by definition — claiming otherwise re-issues the “only company in the world” line the survey already falsified. First-mover on an image, not whitespace.
CUT 6a schematic, a mineral collection, a decorative glass jar and three non-sequiturs. Fluorescence is a broad search term; only the lab-real frames stay.
Lab Mol Colloidal quantum dots 01CC BY 4.0Lab Mol Colloidal quantum dots 02CC BY 4.0QD SCC BY-SA 3.0Fluorescence in calciteCC BY-SA 4.0Fluorescence of Riboflavin in WaterCC BY 4.0Rough diamonds - necklace in UV and normal light B - compositeCC BY-SA 4.0Uv lampCC BY-SA 4.0Uv light sanitizerCC BY-SA 4.0
Instrument output — greyscale, real
9 references
Grey, noisy, low-contrast, scale bar in frame. This is what credibility looks like to someone who reads papers. The authority comes from the restraint.
ADOPTCommission a real HRTEM of the actual particle from UPM ION2 — the founder’s own institute, which offers it as a paid service.
REFUSENever generate one. A fabricated micrograph in front of an agronomist is a credibility loss, not a style choice. And instrument grammar — scale bars, nm, n =, panel letters — is reserved for things an instrument actually made.
CUT 5two false-colour micrographs and two composite diagrams. False colour is real instrument output, but it reads as decoration to the audience we are persuading — the greyscale plates carry more authority here.
Photo of earthworm head (Eisenia hortensis) taken with a scanning elecCC BY 4.0Scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrograph of a lyocell rayon fiberCC BY 3.0Scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrograph of viscose rayon fibresCC BY 3.0Transmission Electron Microscopy image of upconversion nanoparticlesCC BY-SA 4.0Policarp Hortolà. Coloured SEM image of an author's bloodstainCC BY-SA 4.0Psarolepis romeri ground section SEM pictureCC BY 4.0CarbonNanolatticeCC BY-SA 4.0Carbon Nanotube Purity (5887835290)Public domainCarbon nanotubes penetrating lung cellPublic domain
Where the light lands
11 references
The other half of the mechanism. Leaf cross-section, stomata, chloroplast, chlorophyll autofluorescence. The violet histology stain is the register: clinical, unstyled, legible.
ADOPTSourceable today under CC-BY, including an Oryza sativa plate. Free, real, and specific to the crop that carries the commercial evidence.
REFUSENo illustrated cell diagrams. The moment it is drawn rather than imaged, it becomes a textbook graphic and stops being evidence.
CUT 3two out-of-focus frames and a petri-dish array that is culture work, not anatomy.
Hydrophytic leaf micrographCC BY-SA 4.0Mesophytic leaf micrographCC BY-SA 4.0Urtica dioica leaf cross section micrograph.zipCC BY-SA 4.0Xerophytic leaf micrographCC BY-SA 4.0Leaf epidermisPublic domainMicroscope image of Urtica Dioica leafCC0Stomata of Tradescantia spathacea leavesCC BY 4.0Estomas y Cloroplasto de hoja de geranio aumento total 400xCC BY-SA 4.0Fluorescence micrograph of Thalassiosira nanaeCC BY-SA 4.0Oceanides.v37i1-2.276-Fig2CC BY 4.0Cross section of leafCC BY-SA 4.0
The crop, close
5 references
Paddy at grain-fill, leaf surface, the spray actually going on. The frames that survived are the plain ones — grain in a dish, a duster over a field, veins in a leaf.
ADOPTThe dossier photograph: treated strip and control strip in one wide frame, boundary visible, scale object in shot, flat mid-morning light, dated. Weekly from week 2.
REFUSEGolden hour. Reflections. Anything that would look at home in a tourism campaign. The control is never cropped out — cropping it is the whole lie.
CUT 3three scenic paddy landscapes — mountains, a cow, a boy at golden hour. Beautiful, and exactly wrong: the brief calls for the deliberately unbeautiful dossier photograph, flat-lit, with the control never cropped out.
Green rice sheaves planted in a paddy field with long shadows at goldeCC BY-SA 4.0Kalijira - কালিজিরা - Paddy - DSC00615CC BY-SA 4.0Kataribhog - কাটারিভোগ - Paddy - DSC00617CC BY-SA 4.0Cropduster spraying pesticidesPublic domainFittonia gigantea leaf veins macroCC BY-SA 4.0
Paper-figure language
5 references
White ground, no gridlines, hairline traces, series labelled inline beside their own trace, units on every axis, n = and range always present.
ADOPTThis is the house chart style. It is also the honest one — it makes the sample size impossible to hide.
REFUSENever draw a plot from a number we cannot source. A chart is an assertion with better manners.
CUT 2two engineering cross-sections that belong to the dossier family, not this one.
Intcal 20 calibration curveCC BY-SA 3.0Dose response antagonistCC BY-SA 4.0Our World in Datascreenshot — reference only, not for reuse
Hairline traces, inline series labels, units on every axis. Chart as evidence, not decoration.
PLOS ONE — figure conventionsscreenshot — reference only, not for reuse
The register an agronomist reads all day. Panel letters, scale bars, n and range always present.
FAOSTATscreenshot — reference only, not for reuse
Institutional data presentation — dense, tabular, no ornament.
Serious without being dull
5 references
The named references, captured live. OpenDOSM matters most of the five: it is Malaysian government proof that a bilingual technical surface can be excellent.
ADOPTCompose with institutional chrome. The mark sits beside a UPM crest and a MySTI mark on every real surface — design for that adjacency, not for a hero shot.
REFUSENever mimic a government identity. Borrowing state visual authority you do not hold is the fastest way to lose a procurement officer.
CUT 1one unrelated diagram.
GOV.UK Design Systemscreenshot — reference only, not for reuse
Legibility as rationale. Every component justified by a user need, not a taste argument.
OpenDOSM — Dept. of Statistics Malaysiascreenshot — reference only, not for reuse
The local proof. A Malaysian government technical surface, bilingual, and genuinely well made.
Rijksoverheidscreenshot — reference only, not for reuse
Consolidation — one visual system across an entire government, exception-free.
Swiss Confederation (CD Bund)screenshot — reference only, not for reuse
Exception-free execution. The grid holds across every department.
GOV.UKscreenshot — reference only, not for reuse
What a citizen-facing technical service looks like when clarity outranks brand expression.
The specimen plate
6 references
The comparative catalogue as layout grammar — and the visual form of the works-on / does-not-work-on table. Note the labels: typewritten, numbered, unglamorous, trusted.
ADOPTBuild it now, ship it when the crop table closes. The C4 cell is drawn blank — a blank cell is a defensible position in a review; a guess is not.
REFUSENo decorative botanical illustration. This is a record, not an artwork.
CUT 1a Tissot painting, matched on the word ‘specimen’ in its title.
Arbejder fra den Botaniske have i København (1902) (19561721940)No restrictionsCtenobethylus oblongiceps GZG-BST05036 label 1CC BY 4.0Museum specimen with QR Code containing label data - ZooKeys-209-147-gCC BY 3.0Specimen label for Bactrocera varipes Guadalcanal 1965CC BY 4.0Specimen label from the collection of Anatolia College MuseumNo restrictionsMakers of British botany, Plate 6 (a page from The comparative anatomyPublic domain
The dossier
3 references
Title blocks, drawing sheets, dense tables. The artefacts that actually win a procurement review, where Bahasa Malaysia sets at the same size and weight as English.
ADOPTThe engineering title block as the model for every document header: what it is, who made it, when, at what revision.
REFUSEBahasa Malaysia as an afterthought — a toggle, a smaller size, a second column. It leads for the grower audience.
CUT 5five bilingual road and exit signs. The query asked for bilingual documents and got signage — a literal match to the wrong noun. This family is the thinnest on the board and is the one to gather again.
City of Reno, Nevada, Department of Engineering. Booth Street Bridge. Public domainCity of Reno, Nevada, Department of Engineering. Booth Street Bridge. Public domainFrances Benedict Viewing Engineering Drawing of Civil War Monitor "ChiPublic domain
