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    Capturing The Invisible World of Technology With Graphic Design

    Carl de Torres at WIRED by Design, 2014. In partnership with Skywalker Sound, Marin County, CA. To learn more visit: live.hyzs518.com

    Released on 12/08/2014

    Transcript

    (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)

    Starring: Carl de Torres

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