I’ll never forget the day in grad school when one of our visiting critics referred to my work as Aesthetic Pornography. To me, this was a pivotal moment of the soul-crushing variety—one in which I realized just how easily a designer’s intention could be eclipsed by the viewer’s impression, regardless of how rigorous the designer’s rationale was for the decisions he or she made. In fact, it was this very moment that spurred me to explore various ways of removing my “hand” from subsequent work, a pursuit I’ve since come to view as nearly impossible.

The image above is taken from an in-progress data visualization I’ve been working on for friends that maps their social network. Each circle represents a single individual: size is determined by the length of association, colors correspond to the nature of their relationship, position refers to geography. The detail shown here is North America—the outline of which is roughly visible by squinting.

In absence of a legend (or the above paragraph), what one is left with is the impression of randomly overlapping bubbles in bright, shiny colors. Aesthetic Pornography v2.0. Only this time, I’ll own it.