Apple is a famously secretive company — and no doubt that’s one reason that breathless rumors about what it’s working on have become a genre unto themselves.

One overlooked byproduct of this rumor mill is the ever-growing collection of computer-generated renderings of Apple creations that don’t yet exist — and often never will.

These depictions range from best-guess approximations based on alleged leaks to completely speculative flights of fancy. As dazzling and convincing as some of the images are, they are nothing more than visual rumors, stoking the fire of Apple speculation.

So who makes these images? And more to the point: Why?

It turns out there are quite a few visualizers of imagined Apple gear out there, all over the world, and of course their answers vary.

All those that I contacted cited some variation of creative expression. But some have also figured out that these entertaining conjectures can serve as an effective source of publicity — and even revenue.

“Impossible projects”

By day, Federico Ciccarese works as a boat designer for a company near Milan. “At night,” he told me via email, “begins my life as a researcher and developer of impossible projects.” Lately, that’s even led him to work in earnest on making one of these “impossible” projects real.

But that journey has wound through a number of striking Apple-based speculations. Like many others, he and collaborators dreamed up a vision of Apple’s forever-rumored watch, and he figures that may be his most popular virtual creation to date.

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iWatch, via Federico Ciccarese

Previous imaginings include iSiri, which transports Apple’s voice-command software into a standalone wearable device that syncs to a phone via Bluetooth. And I’m personally fond of his earlier, wildly unlikely suggested version of the iPhone 5, below. (Ciccarese took that as a compliment — but noted that many others found it “creepy.”)

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iPhone 5 new, by Federico Ciccarese

Ciccarese’s primary motivation for these time-consuming projects was always to “express myself and realize my thoughts,” he said.

But over time it has led to a few commissions from tech-related companies and impressed publications. And in March he launched a new project that began with visualizations but that he is now seeking investors to make a reality: Youbionic would be a robotic artificial hand. The project, he said, has “introduced me to people who might be in need of what I’m designing” — for real.

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