(applause)

I love graphics.

They tease my eyes, challenge my mind,

and extend my understanding.

And after practice and design for nearly eight years,

I'm still blown away by their power to communicate.

See what I've learned in that time

is that graphics are like a form of language,

and it takes time to find your voice.

For me, things really clicked at about the time

I created this poster

for the Mushashino Theater Festival in Tokyo.

You know, my goal for this design was simple:

to create a graphic that captured,

perhaps the magic our eyes might experience

when we see something amazing.

After six years, I still enjoy exploring

the color and form of this image.

It has become the symbol of my love for graphics.

What's truly fascinating is for thousands of years,

humans have used graphics in various forms

to communicate abstract ideas.

From the elegant cave paintings

at Cheveaux Cave depicting an array of ancient animals

to Buddhist mandalas depicting the universe

to arabesque patterns that show

the principles governing our world,

graphics always helped humans capture and communicate

abstract processes at work in our minds

and in the world around us.

Now, fast forward hundreds of years

and you'll see that we've been raised

in a Golden Age of Graphics,

and they surround us.

Sometimes in terrible ways,

but occasionally, in beautiful ways.

And in the digital age,

they are being proven again to be

a powerful communication tool.

Now, in 1945, something amazing happened.

ENIAC, the electronic numerical integrator and computer,

was turned on.

This is widely considered to be

the world's first digital computer.

And this huge calculator

started an armed race to build

the world's fastest tabulation devices.

Now, these machines were out of this world

for the people of that time.

And it's unsurprising that companies

had a hard time explaining what they did,

or really, why they were important.

A photograph simply couldn't capture

their inner workings, so they turned to graphics.

Designers such as Anton Stankowski,

who actually coined the phrase,

the visual presentation of invisible processes,

in the 1960's were commissioned

to create abstract representations

of what these machines could accomplish.

These graphics captivated the imagination

and started communicating this new

and invisible world happening within computers.

And they did it with style.

So 50 years later, human ingenuity

is pushing us even deeper into these invisible worlds.

Whereas, the 50's and 60's was an exploration of hardware

and 60's, 70', and 80's, was arguably

an exploration of silicon and software,

the exploration of our day is data,

and more importantly, the potential of data.

And yet again, graphics are proving to be

an invaluable tools helping us describe

and share the nature of the many complex processes

within these invisible worlds.

From my early days at Wired to my extensive work with IBM

to fooling around with the folks at Facebook,

and most recently, VISA, I've always been fascinated

by the worlds within our networks and devices.

And this fascination has sent me on a journey

of drawing the invisible.

Today, I'm often commissioned to create

abstract graphic representations

of things you can't see:

themes such as connectivity, personalization, scalability,

to name a few, are all common threads in my work,

all of which display vast invisible processes.

So how do you make a picture of something you can't see?

For me, I started

by asking questions and creating puzzles.

For example, these sketches, so some of my first

real work with abstract graphics.

A little company called IBM

commissioned me to create a series of visual compositions

of contemporary technical phenomena.

They wanted purely graphic,

non-representational designs presenting terms such as

insight, risk, computing, or simply, data.

I mean, this was an amazing, yet daunting assignment.

Where do you start when you're asked

to create an abstract representation of data?

See, at my core, I'm a visual storyteller,

so making pretty pictures isn't good enough for me.

It's important that I really understand the subject.

And I create something that is smart

as well as beautiful.

And this is why I start by asking questions.

I would question everything about the subject.

There were no stupid questions.

I mean, what makes data data?

How do you structure data?

What's the nature of raw data?

I would sit in my studio having

these low-level existential conversations

that I as an art major in college

was completely unqualified to have.

But something constructive would emerge.

That would be the seed for an image

that could artfully, but intelligently,

represent these subjects.

For example, data is just simply information

that's been collected.

We all understand that.

That's simple.

You know another thing is that

a single piece of data is useful,

but generally, knowledge happens

by planting multiple, and oftentimes

unrelated pieces of data.

That makes perfect sense.

But, lastly, data is always changing, so it's alive.

And like anything else that's alive,

it's subject to external pressures and hierarchies.

Now, when I go through this exercise,

this is where things start getting visual for me,

and I start making puzzles.

And let's play this out a little further.

A piece of data is called a data point.

Well, in my world, this is what

a data point looks like to me.

You know but when you add enough data points,

patterns begin to emerge.

And, eventually, a picture fills-in.

And then, when you add a sense of depth,

you breathe life into the hierarchies

and the pressures governing those patterns.

And then what eventually emerges

is my abstract representation of data.

You see, by asking questions

it's how I distill these subjects

into the key attributes that define them.

And it's these key attributes that guide my hand.

And really, what emerges are graphics that are

evocative of the many complex and invisible processes

at work in technology today.

(10 second pause)

So, you know, whether I'm constructing an image

representing the tsunami of DNA data

we're currently collecting now,

or how data and analytics is improving our personal health,

you know, my motivation is to capture

and celebrate the abstract nature of our existence

into beautiful cognitive puzzles.

And I've come to understand that my graphics draw

upon many of the principles governing the natural world.

Things like multiplicity, pattern,

chaos, form, and function.

But perhaps the strongest aspect of my work,

I think, is when I combine

geometry with iconography.

And a great example of this is a series of six

interlocking posters I created

for IBM's Think Exhibit in New York.

But another thing I've learned over the years

and I find absolutely fascinating

is the ability for these graphics

to transcend language and culture.

The work I was doing at IBM was central

to a communication platform

that spanned over 130 countries.

From China to Chile, IBM was using

these designs to talk about and communicate

some of the more illusive and complicated stories

they wanted to tell.

So now, I'm really excited to share

a piece of work I haven't shown yet.

So, since working 60 hours a week

just seemed too easy, I started

a new studio, a new hybrid

storytelling and design studio called StoryTK.

And we recently concluded a collaboration

that combined many of the graphic disciplines I love:

abstract graphics, infographics, and motion graphics.

And the client was Visa,

and they asked us to tell the story of VisaNet,

the global payments network system

that processes over seven trillion dollars

in transactions every year.

I mean this was my biggest challenge yet.

Something so big and so technical

demanded that I get out of the studio

and into the field.

And my first stop was Visa's data center in Virginia.

After getting a biometric scan

and passing through an airlock tunnel,

I was able to see the guts of one of the world's

most sophisticated and secure global networks.

And I got to talk directly with Visa's top engineers

and was able to ask the questions

that would help me distill this incredibly complex system

into a simple list of attributes.

Things like ubiquity, security, and equality

immediately raised to the surface.

And this prompted me to ask one simple question

that would put me on a path to a solution.

Is each and every transaction viewed equally

in the eyes of the network?

So whether you're spending 200,000 dirham in Dubai

for a new Mercedes

or two dollars in Denver for a pack of gum,

does VisaNet treat each of those transactions equally?

And the answer was yes.

You see, they were so used to talking about transactions

in the thousands or millions

that a convoluted, a very simple but beautiful fact,

that electronic payments, like snowflakes,

are actually completely unique moments in time.

And I was fascinated by this,

and I was obsessed to find a way

to capture this graphically.

In working with Visa's data scientists

we distilled that every transaction

has a key set of variables

that give it its unique signature.

Things like merchant type, amount, time.

From there, I developed a graphical system

based on abstract forms to visualize these variables.

And once the design logic was coded,

the system would generate

unique digital signatures we began calling snowflakes.

So whether you were buying a wedding ring

for your bride to be,

or paying for your child's college tuition,

or making a donation to your favorite charity,

this system combined the power of information

and abstract graphics to capture and visualize

the data moving through one of the world's

most secure and sophisticated global networks.

And, yet again, graphics was a key part

in helping us capture and explain

a complex and mostly invisible process.

And as people continue to build

evermore complex and invisible technological wonders,

abstract graphics will be even more necessary

to communicate how they work.

Yet no matter how much I celebrate abstract graphics

as a powerful communication and storytelling device,

their ability to delight

is powerful and undeniably beautiful.

Thank you. (applause)