The time it took to get to our logo just right was as long as the list of expectations we had for it. It had to be minimalistic, yet recognizable, professional but also enthusiastic and most of all a reflection of our identity. Four months later it’s here and we love it. Today we want to reveal the secret of its meaning.
There have been various assumptions lately about the meaning of our logo. Here are our Top 5:
- The cycles of continuous learning
- The waggle dance of the honeybee
- Insect or butterfly wings
- A hyperbolic paraboloid
- The symbol for infinity
In fact, it is a visualization of the Lorenz Attractor, the strange attractor of a system of three coupled, nonlinear differential equations. To avoid boring the majority of readers, we’d like to refer you to Wikipedia for the mathematical background.
The only important thing to understand is that the Lorenz Attractor is the final state of a dynamic process. It was originally developed in 1963 by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz, who used it to model the states of the Earth’s atmosphere with the purpose of weather forecasting. Until then, the chaotic behaviour in such dynamic systems was beyond analytical consideration due to its complexity. This is caused by the fact that the slightest changes of the initial state can lead to completely different results. This is also referred to as the butterfly effect, a metaphor from the field of chaos theory. The effect can also be found in many complex systems in other areas, e.g.
- Economic cycles
- Pattern formation processes in nature
- The emergence of traffic jams
- Neural Networks
- Turbulent flows of liquids and gases
Although the behaviour of these systems should be clearly predictable by the preconditions, it was not possible to describe them mathematically. Only with the introduction of the concept of the strange attractor could the laws of complex systems be better understood and described quantitatively. With this, Edward Lorenz has found a way to make realistic predictions in the field of weather.
Nature is also a highly complex, synergistic system and contains an infinite number of variables. If we follow it’s present development, we can see that many animal and plant species disappear. The reason for this, however, is still beyond our understanding. The development of targeted countermeasures requires a degree of transparency with regard to the causes and their interrelationships, which is not yet available.
Like Edward Lorenz with the weather, apic.ai aims to achieve transparency in the field of biodiversity development. By observing the honey bee — a critical element for the survival of the ecosystem — we create a better understanding of the structure of the entire system. This is how we try to identify the critical factors that need to be addressed in order to prevent the overall system from dysbalancing. The Lorenz Attractor thus reflects what we are trying to achieve.
In the classic apic manner a program was written, in which the equation system parameters could be changed until we liked the design. One of the advantages of equations is that you don’t need any design skills. Those were only used in the last step. Based on our equation, Nergis Kuru visualized our identity in two perfect curves. Whenever we see our logo, it reminds us of our goal to create a better understanding of nature.
