David Bolinsky on Truth and Beauty

This presentation delivered by medical illustrator and animator David Bolinsky is by no means new (it was posted on the TED site back in July), but I’m guessing most of you haven’t seen it yet. Even if you have seen it, David’s attitude towards his job is refreshing and worth repeat viewing. For him, animation is a means of exposing “truth and beauty” to the masses—or at least to larger numbers of people than elite groups of scientists and researchers.

He explains, “I wanted to figure out a way to help people understand truth and beauty in the biological sciences by using animation, by using pictures, by telling stories so that the things that are not necessarily evident to people can be brought forth and can be taught and can be understood.”

The impulse to explain things by using animation and “telling stories” may seem like an obvious choice for you. It’s your lifeblood, after all. You eat, drink and sleep visual storytelling. But to the rest of the world, what you do as a designer or animator can often feel like a revelation, like a gigantic light bulb suddenly illuminating an immense cavern of knowledge.

That’s a great feeling, isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling shoes or solving world hunger, telling stories through animation is a deeply human act, one that transcends the rational compartmentalization we often use to make sense of our world. Animation instead opts for a holistic presentation of reality—or an idealized version of reality—that resonates as much with our hearts as it does our minds.