Sophisticated technologies of scientific visualization often require a departure from the standards of mimetic representation. In this paper the authors introduce a set of nine papers derived from the conference on scientific visualization in Norrköping, Sweden in September 2012, which explore problems of scale, color and technology in scientific visualization. These three kinds of problems are common to multiple visualization methods. As a result, this collection constitutes a preliminary exploration of commonalities in various methods of visualization, e.g., from nanoscale images to outerspace pictures of galaxies.