| At Beam, we aspire to communicate important information in a way that evokes emotions and changes decisions and actions for the better. This month we share an example of just how powerful creative storytelling can be. |
| With this in mind, we have started our own journey of innovation, and we will be reporting on challenges and progress in the newsletters to come. We will likely share some tools and learnings along the way too. |
Spotlight
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| Sometimes a visual says what pages of data cannot. By making complex information easy to understand, visualisations help ideas reach wider audiences. |
| One of the most successful examples of this is the Climate Spiral. A spinning wheel of colour that turns 165 years of climate data into something you can understand in less time than it takes to read this sentence. More on that below. |
| Created by British climate scientist Ed Hawkins, the animated graphic first went viral on Twitter (now X) in May 2016. Since then, it has been viewed millions of times, shared widely across social media, featured in news outlets around the world and even shown during the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics. |
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| An updated version is available from NASA. |
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| Familiarity: The visualisation translates climate change into temperature, which is a concept that most people can relate to. This makes the underlying data immediately accessible to audiences with little scientific background.
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| Creativity and design: The climate spiral is simple and easy to follow. Its short animation maintains the viewer’s attention while gradually building tension. The final movement beyond the 1.5°C and 2°C reference lines creates a powerful visual impact that many viewers remember long after watching it. |
| Colour also plays an important role. The progression from blues to yellows reinforce the message of rising temperatures and increasing climate risk. |
| Timing: It landed just after the Paris Agreement set its now-famous 1.5°C target, in a year that broke temperature records off the back of a strong El Niño. |
| Trust: The graphic was initially shared by a respected climate scientist, lending it credibility. |
| Social media then allowed it to spread rapidly beyond academic audiences, demonstrating how digital platforms can help scientific information reach millions of people. |
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| The last point is particularly topical as a recent editorial in Nature argues that the future of research communication will not be through traditional academic articles, but rather through channels like TikTok and Instagram. As these platforms become the primary source of news for many people, particularly those aged 18 to 24, scientists must find creative ways to communicate their findings in formats that are both engaging and accessible, without compromising scientific accuracy. If a spinning wheel of colour can out-communicate a peer-reviewed paper, it’s worth asking what else researchers could be doing differently. |
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Storytelling: Our own innovation drive
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| We’re taking our own advice. As part of an innovation drive, we have kicked off an ideation drive, wrestling with one big question: |
| What do individual researchers in South Africa need?
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| The working hypothesis/problem statement we have derived is that individual researchers in South Africa want to see more real-world implementation of their findings for societal change, but feel ill-equipped to do so. |
| Researchers need: |
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| Communication: Skills and opportunities to translate, share and interpret findings in meaningful ways. |
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| Community: A collaborative network that discusses findings and works towards solving systemic problems. |
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| Funding: Unequal access to funding limits the scope and timing of research opportunities for African researchers |
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| We are therefore embarking on a series of conversations to better understand what researchers need. We will be reaching out to our community for these informal discussions, but please get in contact if you have something you wish to share with us — even if you’re not a researcher yourself. If you’ve ever struggled to explain your work to someone outside your field, you already know exactly what we’re trying to solve. |
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Links we love
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- American data visualisation author Jon Schwabish interviews Alberto Cairo, a data visualisation expert, about the practice of designing effective visualisations, including the importance of making context-dependent decisions rather than strictly following fixed rules (essential listening if you’ve ever agonised over a chart).
- In this 18 minute TED Talk, British data journalist David McCandless explores the beauty and power of data visualisation. He demonstrates how patterns, relationships and hidden connections become visible when complex datasets are transformed into engaging visuals using graphs, colour and design. Eighteen minutes well spent.
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