The Dark Universe

BBC Science Focus is a media brand for insatiably curious readers who want to understand and marvel at the complexity of our world. We publish 14 print editions, together with their digital equivalents, plus 14 extra digi-only issues per year. We report on the breakthroughs and discoveries at the forefront of science and technology, making these advances accessible to all through the use of technical diagrams, high metaphor illustrations, and infographics. These tools help our readers make sense of the issues that affect us all, from plastic use to pay transparency to pollution. I believe this cover deserves to win not only because it was a great seller and garnered praise from Apple, being spotlighted and used to show potential subscribers the kind of exciting content available on their interactive platform, but also because it simply and directly shows the reader the invisible. We often take on and have to visualise esoteric and lofty ideas from the world of science, but none quite as enigmatic as ‘Dark Matter’. Its very existence could overturn what science thinks it knows about the universe and physics in general. So how do we ‘show’ the unshowable? Well, we approached it with a childlike innocence and all the freedom and frustration of being a kid in a sweet shop with too much choice. It looks like nothing, so it can look like anything. We toyed with a typographic-only design, but that felt like a cop-out. I'm a sucker for a tactile object, so in a way, we invented form from thin air—something that echoed its very nature: shapeless, colourless, a void. This is the flagship piece of the year for me because it encapsulates what we do on the art team here at Science Focus. We show the impossible and give physicality to theories. When done well, this goes hand in hand with the fantastic journalism that brings content, often reserved for academic journals, into the ‘everyman’ arena and helps fans the flames of imagination. We knew that while this would certainly look fantastic in its chrome print edition, with its spot gloss on matt paper finish, it would fully realise its potential when some life was injected into it and we saw how it moves and reacts. The ‘matter’ playfully undulates and pulses like ferrofluid as it warps and distorts the typography. We knew this had to work as a small thumbnail as well as in its larger print formats, so we maximised legibility without compromising the effects. The result is something I believe to be original, bold and like its subject matter not seen before.