Academic journals in a wide range of disciplines are increasingly requiring graphical abstracts (GAs). A commonly noted feature of this emerging genre is the simultaneous use of textual and visual elements within a single-panel multimodal text. This dimension, however, has not been described in sufficient detail in available GA studies. To advance the discussion on textual-visual interactions in GAs, we focused on the interplay of ideational meanings created by these two distinct semiotic sources. We collected the GAs of all 129 open-access research articles published in the journal Cell throughout 2023. Using edge detection and manual checks, we decomposed these GAs into basic textual and visual units. Each basic textual unit (BTU) was paired with its visual correlates through an analytical procedure that considers both visual and semantic clues. We categorized the ideational interplay within each textual-visual pair using a framework adapted from Unsworth's (2007) taxonomy. Our findings reveal that textual elements are integral to this visually prominent genre, and the ideational textual-visual interplay exhibits several realization patterns that can serve as practical references for effective GA design. These insights may inform future research and practices in the design of graphical abstracts.