Ink & Instinct Infographic

Client
Shehryar (Shay) Saharan, University of Toronto

Year
2025

Audience
General Population

Tools
Procreate, Adobe Illustrator

Publication
Ink & Instinct was featured in the Spring 2025 Issue of the IMS Magazine (page 21).

Description
Created to encourage ecological exploration, this infographic describes the many unique abilities of the common cuttlefish. Special attention was kept in maintaining grid alignment for smooth reading order.

Process work

Research & Sketching
After conducting thorough research on the common cuttlefish (sources at the end of this page), I began by creating a quick sketch and a mock layout on Procreate. This included organizing the flow of information and arranging the headings to make the most sense in reading order.

Colour Compositions
Next, I created colour layouts of my infographic. I received some feedback to change the layout to align with a grid for readability, and to extend my infographic horizontally to include a new section explaining the camo. I took this feedback and created a new, expanded colour composition.

Final Rendering
After finalizing my layout, I began the final rendering process. I started by creating the background, then working on the main cuttlefish. I rendered the seaweed and seamoss, and then created a distribution map to place behind the rocky landscape.

I added a second, out-of-focus cuttlefish to the foreground. This was in an effort to maintain scientific accuracy, since the striped pattern is displayed by cuttlefish when they interact with other individuals. This also helped create more of an immersive environment, which I wanted to achieve with this piece.

Finally, once all of my elements were created and text in place, I checked everything against a grid to ensure the peice maintained an overall grid alignment. After ensuring everything was aligned, the infographic was complete and ready for print.

Final Piece:

  • Adamo, S. A., Ehgoetz, K., Sangster, C., & Whitehorne, I. (2006). Signaling to the enemy? Body pattern expression and its response to external cues during hunting in the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis (Cephalopoda). The Biological Bulletin, 210(3), 192–200. https://doi.org/10.2307/4134557

    Aquatic species distribution map viewer. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2025). https://www.fao.org/fishery/geoserver/factsheets/species.html

    Bloor, I. S. M., Attrill, M. J., & Jackson, E. L. (2013). A review of the factors influencing spawning, early life stage survival and recruitment variability in the common cuttlefish (sepia officinalis). Advances in Marine Biology, 1–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-410498-3.00001-x

    Cartron, L., Shashar, N., Dickel, L., & Darmaillacq, A.-S. (2013). Effects of stimuli shape and polarization in evoking deimatic patterns in the European cuttlefish, sepia officinalis, under varying turbidity conditions. Invertebrate Neuroscience, 13(1), 19–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10158-013-0148-y

    Chiao, C.-C., Chubb, C., Buresch, K., Siemann, L., & Hanlon, R. T. (2009). The scaling effects of substrate texture on camouflage patterning in cuttlefish. Vision Research, 49(13), 1647–1656. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2009.04.002

    Davies, D., & Nelson, K. (2018). Supporting Sustainable Sepia Stocks. Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority. https://secure.toolkitfiles.co.uk/clients/34087/sitedata/files/Conservation-Research/Biology-Ecology.pdf

    Ganias, K., Perri, R., & Moditsis, A. (2021). Cuttlefish and squid egg deposition patterns on artificial devices and trap-like gears: Implications for offspring survival and population management. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 78(5), 1614–1622. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsab062

    Gilmore, R., Crook, R., & Krans, J. L. (2016). Cephalopod Camouflage: Cells and Organs of the Skin. Nature news. https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/cephalopod-camouflage-cells-and-organs-of-the-144048968/

    Hanlon, R. T., & Messenger, J. B. (1988). Adaptive Coloration in Young Cuttlefish (Sepia Officinalis L.): The Morphology and Development of Body Patterns and Their Relation to Behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 320(1200), 437–487. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2396667

    Imarazene, B., Andouche, A., Bassaglia, Y., Lopez, P.-J., & Bonnaud-Ponticelli, L. (2017). Eye development in sepia officinalis embryo: What the uncommon gene expression profiles tell us about eye evolution. Frontiers in Physiology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2017.00613

    Jouary, A., & Machens, C. K. (2018). A living display system resolved pixel by Pixel. Nature, 562(7727), 350–351. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05909-0

    Monterey Bay Aquarium. (2025). Common Cuttlefish. Montereybayaquarium.org. https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/animals-a-to-z/common-cuttlefish

    Mzaki, F., Manchih, K., Idrissi, H. F., Boumaaz, A., Haddouch, A. B., & Tazi, O. (2017). Diet of the common cuttlefish Sepia officinalis ( Linnaeus , 1758 ) ( Cephalopoda : Sepiidae ) in the Southern Moroccan Atlantic waters , Cap Boujdour , Cap Blanc. AACL Bioflux, 10(6). https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:53584132

    Mäthger, L. M., Hanlon, R. T., Håkansson, J., & Nilsson, D.-E. (2013). The W-shaped pupil in cuttlefish (sepia officinalis): Functions for improving horizontal vision. Vision Research, 83, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2013.02.016

    Paulij, W. P., Herman, P. M., Roozen, M. E., & Denuce, J. M. (1991). The influence of photoperiodicity on hatching of Sepia officinalis. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 71(3), 665–678. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0025315400053224

    Zatylny-Gaudin, C., & Henry, J. (2018). Egg-laying in the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Biological Resources of Water. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71915

<
>