Abstract artwork for IBM Research for a post about how researchers are already combining CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs into demonstrations of quantum-centric supercomputing. Read the post at
Client: IBM Research
Creative Director: @joshtotte
Artwork: @carldetorres@optics.lab
Newsweek commissioned @optics.lab and @carldetorres to create the cover portrait of Benjamin Franklin for their “The Future of Money” issue. Created from thousands of concentric circles (and a few squares) the image reads uniquely at different scales for a new take on the famous portrait.
Client: @newsweek
Creative Director: @andyturnbulldesign
Artwork: @carldetorres , @optics.lab
IEEE Spectrum is known for going the distance, and its October 2025 issue on scale was no exception. Expressing scale can hinge on effective visuals, so Optics Lab was brought in to design the issue’s cover, opener, and a series of key infographics. So, if you … are curious how many watt-hours of electricity AI requires, ever wondered how far silica physically travels to become a processor, or have imagined constructing the world’s largest airplane … look no farther than the studio’s detailed illustrations.
Client: @ieeespectrum
Creative Director: @markm92198
Art Director: Brandon Palacio
Designers: @optics.lab , @carldetorres , @larakaradogan , @asa.kittner
#opticslab #IEEE #branding #content #infographics #charts #graphs #marketing #communications #graphicdesign #illustration #ai #silicon #chips #semiconductors #scale
Editorial illustration for IEEE Spectrum by Optics Lab creative director Carl De Torres. Created October 2014.
Illustrator: @carldetorres
Client: @ieeespectrum
Creative Director: @markm92198
#opticslab #carldetorres #illustration
Heli-trek travel map for AFAR magazine documenting a long-distance adventure through Nepal’s Everest region.
Optics Lab creative director, Carl De Torres, worked closely with AFAR’s creative director, Maili Holiman, and the features photographer, @maheimerman , to create an incredibly detailed map documenting the journey from Kathmandu all the way to Everest Base Camp and back. To capture the extremely high elevation and rugged terrain, De Torres chose to work with a detail topographic map. The paths show the trek’s segments that were hiked on foot or traveled by helicopter which help to communicate to the reader the extreme landscapes and elevation one must endure to make this once in a lifetime journey.
Designer: @carldetorres
Client: @afarmedia
Creative Director: @mailicoyote
#opticslab #travel #nepal #helitrek #everest #infographics #magazines #print #journalism #datavisualization #carldetorres
Design and illustration for IEEE Spectrum cover and article about how GPUs might one day scale to have a whooping one trillion transistors.
Optics Lab creative director @carldetorres created the abstract illustrations to help capture how the science of 3D integration in semiconductors technology and fabrication could be used to stack transistors vertically allowing them to have more and more transistors on a single chip.
As the AI boom continues the demand for compute is skyrocketing, and so are the costs. More powerful and efficient chips will be necessary for AI to reach its true potential. Also, the current energy demands of AI are not sustainable and semiconductor industry is in a race to create alternatives to the energy hungry GPU.
Designer: @carldetorres
Client: @ieeespectrum
Creative Director: @markm92198
#opticslab #ieee #spectrum #ieeespectrum #editorial #cover #illustration #GPU #chips #ai #semiconductors #vericalintegration #scale #scaling #abstract #abstraction #visualization #carldetorres #magazines #technology #3Dintegration #inference #training #aiinference #aitraining
Custom typography and graphics for WIRED’s “The Big Interview”.
Coming to San Francisco on December 3, 2024, the Big Interview will showcase the people, platforms, technologies, and ideas that are shaping our shared future—and feature WIRED journalists in one-to-one discussions with some of the most influential leaders across tech, business, science, entertainment, and beyond.
Optics Lab creative director @carldetorres drew a custom alphabet that created the basis for the conference identity and graphic language that will help bring the conference to life. These are a few of the letters, symbols, and lockups created for the identity.
Visit wired.com for tickets to the event and come see the work in person this December in San Francisco.
Designer: @carldetorres
Client: @wired
Creative Director: @_alyssawalker
#opticslab #wired #typography #typographics #design #identity #conference #conferencegraphics #technology #interview #visuals #visuallanguage #w #? #! #interview #journalism #carldetorres
A series of album sleeves for IBM Research, highlighting the latest advances in semiconductor technology.
IBM is at the forefront of designing and fabricating next-generation computer chips. These tiny chips are everywhere, driving nearly everything – but the technologies at the heart of these chips are as invisible as they are complex. As part of an ongoing collaboration, IBM Research sought the help of Optics Lab to explain its latest advances in a meaningful and engaging way. As it happens, microchips are printed on silicon wafers similar in size to a vinyl 33 LP record. Music is a universal language, always evolving and inspiring, which makes it an apt and delightful symbol to amplify the cool science happening at IBM.
We designed six three-panel album sleeves with custom pockets to hold each wafer. Vibrant cover art represents the key technical advancement of that wafer. When opened, the trifold layout reveals deeply researched illustrations and infographics – “liner notes” gleaned through interviews with top IBM semiconductor researchers. Over-printing, foil stamping, and coatings give the albums a unique tactile quality.
Client: IBM Research
Printer: @hemlockprinters
#opticslab #ibm #ibmresearch #branding #writing #content #infographics #charts #graphs #marketing #communications #graphicdesign #illustration #albums #albumcover #music #technology #semicondutors #wafer #silicon #euv #lithography #pantone #print
Cover illustration for Nature, The international journal of science.
In 2020, the editors at Nature reached out to Optics Lab to help create a cover image for their feature article covering the release of ENCODE 3.
According to Wikipedia: The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) is a public research project which aims “to build a comprehensive parts list of functional elements in the human genome.” ENCODE also supports further biomedical research by “generating community resources of genomics data, software, tools and methods for genomics data analysis, and products resulting from data analyses and interpretations.”
The artwork is a visual representation of an interchromosomal network model found in the chromosome territories of a DNA nucleus. These interchromatin elements connect and blend into each other in interesting ways called tethering or diffusing. These interchromosomal networks also reveal something called a chromatin loop. When learning about this science we were inspired to create a typographic numeral three using the visual language of these chromatin loops.
Client: @nature_the_journal
Design and illustration: @carldetorres
Art Director: Kelly Krause
#opticslab #nature #science #encode #encode3 #dna #chromatin #chromatinloops #print #magazine #cover #illustration #coverillustration #cells #nucleus #typography #type #typographics #animation #motion #lettering #numerals
A symbol for the world’s leading quantum computing developer toolkit
In 2017, quantum computing scientists at IBM Research sought the help of Optics Lab to elevate the visual presence of a very important software kit they were developing. They called it the “Quantum Information Science Toolkit,” or “Qiskit.” Fast forward to 2024, and Qiskit is the world’s leading quantum computing development software. According to the Wikipedia post about it, “Qiskit is an open-source software development kit for working with quantum computers at the level of circuits, pulses, and algorithms. It provides tools for creating and manipulating quantum programs and running them on prototype quantum devices on IBM Quantum Platform or on simulators on a local computer.”
Qiskit began as a research project, yet as it evolved we all recognized the significance of this moment and looked to create a symbol, sign, or signet inspired by the science of quantum mechanics. We believed that this gesture would lead the quantum scientific community to really embrace it – and we were right. We drew from knowledge we had gained while working on a new visualization concept in collaboration with Jay Gambetta, VP of Quantum Computing at IBM. This visual representation of a multi-qubit system was dubbed the Q-Sphere. This was the early days of multi-qubit systems. Scientists were primarily visualizing the “state” of a qubit through the Bloch Sphere, an ingenious representation of a two-level quantum mechanical system, aka, a qubit, and named after physicist, Felix Bloch. Learning about the Bloch Sphere (see img. 3) and how it worked inspired us to help invent a type of visualization model that would allow for multiple qubit systems. This was 2017, and the IBM Quantum Experience was just launching on the cloud and running not 1 qubit, but 5 qubits, on IBM’s experimental quantum hardware. We went on to formalize the rules for the Q-Sphere (see img. 4), and it was eventually used within the IBM Quantum Experience and Qiskit as a way to explain lower-level multi-qubit systems.
Qiskit 1.0 is now launched, and we’re proud to have played a small part in this journey.
Client: IBM
#opticslab #quantum
Data visualizations for Patterns+Insights, a magazine produced by Amazon and designed and edited by Jeanette Abbink
In 2023, Amazon reached out to Optics Lab to visualize a series of data sets highlighting gender inequality in various domains. The infographics covered topics such as the “pink tax,” a premium on products and services marketed to women; gender stereotyping across careers; and wage gaps worldwide. The entire issue, dedicated to female ingenuity, is an expertly crafted blend of fascinating articles, art, and images focused on women making an impact around the globe. The design and production were masterfully done by our friend Jeanette Abbink, and we are proud to have helped bring this project into the world.
Client: Amazon
Information Design: @carldetorres
Editor and Creative Director: @jeanette_birdy
Copy Editor: Pennie Rossini
#opticslab #narrative #writing #content #infographics #charts #graphs #print #books #marketing #communications #graphicdesign #illustration #pinktax #genderinequality #homesafety #lostwealth #genderstereotyping #femaleingenuity #amazon #patternsinight
The Carrington Set, a system of numerals designed by Optics Lab.
The ethereal qualities of these numerals were inspired by the beauty of the aurora borealis (or aurora australis for our friends down under).
This natural phenomenon commonly called auroras are the result of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by solar storms.
In our research we came to learn of The Carrington Event, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm that rained down on Earth on September 1st and 2nd in 1859. In a report published by the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute it was recorded that the red glow of the aurora was visible overhead in Havana, Cuba and Santiago, Chile. The map we created shows the locations that reported the event 165 years ago.
Events like this are generally the result of a coronal mass ejection that travels from the sun to the earth in a matter of hours to days and are known to wreak havoc on our modern electronics and communication systems. The Carrington Event of 1859, recorded by Richard Christopher Carrington, inspired us to name these numbers The Carrington Set and is available to use in your next project.
An interesting sidenote is that The Carrington Event took place in solar cycle 10. Solar cycles vary in length, with the average being about 11 years. We are now in solar cycle 25 which has been relatively calm and will peak in 2025.
Design: @carldetorres
#opticslab #numerals #numbers #typography #lettering #typographics #typography #type #auroa #auroaborealis #auroraastralis #thecarringtonevent #thecarringtonset #science #art #graphicdesign
