I am finally writing this post about a project I undertook last year (better late than never!), where I put aside my oils, acrylics and pencils to do something very different to what I normally do.

I was asked to design a simple image to represent the scientific research conducted at the Centre for Marine Science and Technology (CMST). CMST is a multidisciplinary group working in many different amazing projects within marine sciences. One of the main research lines is underwater acoustics, focused on the study of sound propagation in water. The main types of underwater sound studied at CMST are biological and anthropogenic sounds. Biological sound is the one produced by marine animals such as whales, dolphins, fish, etc., while anthropogenic sound (man-made sound) is, for instance, the noise produced from seismic surveys using airgun arrays, pile driving operations, sonar, ships, etc.

This is a fascinating topic requiring a lot of study yet (and that is why I chose it as the topic of my PhD :D).

My design (below) represents the waveform of a sound signal merged with whale’s flukes half submerged, surrounded by two little fish and bubbles (also sources of underwater sound).

I made two versions with different colors to suit a dark or light background, and both are already printed in polo shirts and water bottles!! :)