IT MAY NOT BE MUCH TO LOOK AT, IN TERMS OF DESIGN AESTHETICS, but the power in Google’s new Image Swirl is absolutely remarkable for designers, writers, and concept guys like me.

It’s an experimental feature in Google Labs which is based on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a visual, exploratory interface.

I entered the word “pain” (shown below) and was led down many visual avenues. Prior to having tools like these, creating “message trees” took a great deal of time and effort. The Visual Thesaurus has been around for a while, and is helpful. However, it really isn’t very “visual” because it only uses text to create contextual relationships. Google’s Image Swirl uses images.

I love this new tool. Check it out >here.