How we threw 10 quantum bit designs in the trash

Our company’s mission is to showcase the beauty of deep tech. Deep tech companies, such as those in quantum technology, biotech, and AI, build upon scientific theories and concepts to create practical applications. While these practical benefits would be the primary focus in sales, for branding we love to tap into the science and nature behind the technology to evoke emotions and create a personal connection, as we are all part of nature.

In this article, we want to share our search for beauty and meaning—the creative process that went into developing a short film about a piece of technology: a quantum chip.

Preparation

To begin, we educated ourselves on the basics of quantum technology. Everything came into play here—from the “My first book of quantum physics” I once bought for my son at Einstein’s apartment in Bern to YouTube lectures and Reddit fights. We also searched through our contact lists for quantum scientists and enthusiasts willing to give us feedback on each iteration, as the last thing we wanted was to create something meaningless.

Through this preparation, it became clear that the main star of the film should be the quantum bit—the basic unit of information in quantum computing, capable of representing and processing multiple states simultaneously, unlike a classical bit that is either 0 or 1. Our goal then became to visualize the quantum bit first before moving on to the chip part.

3D Bloch sphere

For the first iterations, we went with the 3D Bloch sphere – a geometric representation of a qubit’s state, where any point on or inside the sphere corresponds to a possible quantum state, illustrating the qubit’s superposition and phase relationships. This solution was pretty much on the surface since it’s the most common visual representation of qubit.

But then I had a conversation with Misha—a super smart guy I highly respect—who pointed out that the Bloch sphere is nonsense because a quantum bit doesn’t have a shape. And so, we threw our first qubit visualizations in the trash.

Spinning coin

We decided to focus not on the shape, but on the key quality of a quantum bit: superposition, the ability to exist in multiple states simultaneously. It is often explained using a spinning coin analogy. Just as a spinning coin blurs the distinction between heads and tails, a qubit can exist in a state that is a combination of both 0 and 1 until measured.

Also, when visualizing a qubit as a spinning coin, the analogy can extend to considering the magnetic moment of a particle, which is influenced by its spin state. The orientation of the magnetic moment can be thought of as analogous to the orientation of the spinning coin. That is why we kept the color position untouched when spinning the disk.

We liked the concept since it showed that a qubit is not a particle itself, but rather the quantum state that this particle is in.

But we did not exactly like the design; it was not really satisfying to look at. So, we parked that solution and moved on.

The Cloud

Here, I recalled another conversation I had with a guy named Drew at our local Atlanta tech gathering. I asked an open question about how he would visualize the bit versus the quantum bit, and he came up with a great analogy:

• A Rubik’s cube, with its variety of states, to represent a qubit.
• A bulb, with its two positions—on and off—to represent a bit.

While we didn’t move forward with these analogies directly, the idea of the bulb reminded us of the common icon for cloud solutions that features a cloud inside a bulb. This visual connection led us to think about the concept of a possibility cloud, which can represent the probabilistic nature of a qubit’s state, with each point in the cloud indicating a potential state the qubit can collapse into upon measurement.

We ultimately visualized a qubit as a cloud with a state vector, reflecting the blend of these ideas and the nature of quantum superposition.

We showed this idea to our quantum scientist friend Mykhailo, and he really liked it. It made sense, and he appreciated the analogy.

However, it didn’t feel right to me, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. I decided to show it to my husband since it’s kind of his job to figure out why I don’t like things, and he said, “A cloud is really nothing, maybe water, but it doesn’t have substance. A cloud only looks good when there is scale and movement, which isn’t the case here.”

And that’s how our cloud videos went for redesign.

Cotton Candy

We decided to play with the cloud’s density and add more material to it, but the cloud started to look like cotton candy.

While it was satisfying to look at—literally an eye candy—it didn’t make sense to us. Why are we using sugar to visualize a quantum bit? So, we threw it away.

Silicon

We decided to stick with material representation but find a material that made sense—the materials actually employed in quantum research. This meant transitioning from a high-level, abstract visualization to exploring the actual types of qubits currently being researched and developed:

• Semiconductor qubits that leverage existing silicon chip manufacturing technology, with companies like Intel and Microsoft exploring this path.
• Superconducting qubits using superconductors to trap and manipulate quantum information, with companies such as IBM, Google, and Rigetti Computing.
• Trapped ion qubits utilizing lasers and electromagnetic fields to confine ions for quantum operations, with IonQ, Alpine Quantum Technologies, and Quantinuum.

We researched the materials involved in these types of qubits and fell in love with the sleek structure of silicon used in semiconductor qubits. In silicon-based quantum computers, qubits are often implemented using silicon quantum dots. These quantum dots confine single electrons, and the spin states of these electrons can represent the 0 and 1 states of a qubit.

We decided to create a qubit representation using silicon particles:

We loved that version—it was both material and hollow, it both did and did not have a specific shape, it used a material that made sense, and it had a clean design. Our computers were too weak to render the matte surface of silicon, so it ended up looking like crystals. But we decided to move forward with this qubit representation and created the visualization of the 12-silicon spin qubits chip developed by Intel.

We loved a few things about the film—the chip turning momentum and the chip surface details. But the black background made it hard to see things, and there were flaws we couldn’t fix due to our skill level and computer capacity.

It was okay, but not IT. So it went to the trash.

Learn what happened next in Part 2: How we almost rescued our qubit video and Part 3: The quantum bit visualization we finally liked.