When creating visuals to explain complex ideas, cutting-edge innovations, or new scientific research, we often focus on the images’ ability to convey information. But data visualization, infographics, or even schematics have a hidden power we rarely discuss: beauty.

Obviously, not all images are beautiful. As designer Alberto Cairo writes, “Beauty is not a thing, or a property of objects, but a measure of the emotional experience of awe, wonder, pleasure, or mere surprise that those objects may unleash.”
Beauty is an experience.

So, can we defend pursuing beauty when communicating science or innovation?

Beauty triggers emotions

Beauty is fundamentally an emotional experience. Emotions have the power to create deep connections with the audience. They help viewers relate to the subject matter on a personal level. A great example of beauty creating emotional connection with abstract ideas can be found in The beauty of mathematics video. The video shows 3 levels of abstraction, each with its own visual language. The beauty of the video lies in the connection between the 3 scenes. Going from one level of abstraction to the other allows us to understand each of them; it connects our vision of reality to the maths and physics behind it. Watching it, we feel touched by having such an understanding of our world.

There is something very satisfying for our brains in the fusion of an emotional experience and a rational experience. Emotional and rational experiences both play a fundamental role in our cognition and our decision-making process. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes “emotion is integral to the process of reasoning”. In other words: through emotions, facts resonate within us.

Wind Map by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg is a great example of a beautiful data visualization. It represents wind patterns — a very large dataset at the scale of the United States — in an instinctive way. Using only black and white, the visualization makes us feel the wind. It connects with us on an emotional level while delivering precise and complex data. I really like Eli Holder’s words about this visualization:

“Data can be texture. Data isn’t limited to profound insights or crisp takeaways. It can also work in the background to create visual interest or give a more diffuse sense of which way the breeze is blowing.”

Beauty creates a satisfaction that lies as much in the movement of the fine white lines as in the feeling of understanding a complex system at a glance.

Beauty creates cultural significance

The story behind NASA’s famous Earthrise photo is quite interesting. It was taken during the Apollo 8 mission, the first to travel around the moon. The crew was equipped with cameras to take photos of the lunar surface. They took about 900 photos, most of them showing in details the grey craters of the moon. During the fourth lunar revolution, astronaut Bill Anders noticed, through a foggy window, the earth rising behind the moon. He was struck by the beauty of the scene. He reached to the camera and asked for a color film. His colleague Frank Borman replied: “hey don’t take that, it’s not scheduled”. The photo was not part of the plan. Without Anders’ intuition and photography skills, that photo would not exist.

Back on earth, the photo circulated widely. The 900 photos of the lunar surface were certainly valuable to scientists, but the one truly beautiful image struck the public around the globe, igniting a global movement of environmental awareness. Looking at the photo today makes us reflect on our planet, on our home, on ourselves. As the science historian Lorraine Daston writes: “It’s an uncomfortable emotion. You don’t have wonder. Wonder has you.”