I spent two weeks last winter redrawing a single time-frequency panel from the 2015 archive. The useful version was not prettier. It was stricter: dark canvas, visible ticks, and a heat ramp that let the brightest yellow arrive only at merger.
The curve has to earn its color
Most science graphics fail when they decorate uncertainty instead of locating it. The chirp works because every mark has a job: seconds on the floor, hertz on the wall, and energy climbing from indigo noise into cyan-green evidence.