graphic designers took on the "intangible" and lent it visual form

Will Burtin, cooper corporation, 1950s

Here technology and human figures are compared. Bodies compared with machines, brains with computers. Technological intervention at a microscope placed test-tube babies and miracle cures in the same world as polymers. All had properties unheard of before synthetic processing. Visualizing scientific processes was critical in the context of research where the ability to conceptualize a problem was often directly related to the model according to which it could be represented. Burtin's capacity to design scientific findings for broad public consumption accounted for the wide circulation of his imagery.