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Intermediate

Two ideas at once.

Models that ask you to hold a tension. The story comes first, the mechanics second.

12 models

Design Thinking Process

Filippo Brunelleschi stood inside the unfinished cathedral of Florence in 1418 and looked up through an octagonal hole forty-five meters wide. The wool guild that ran the works had

IntermediateMembers 8 min read

Law of Closure

Scott McCloud drew a man raising an axe over another man's head. In the next panel he drew a city skyline at night with a scream lettered across

Intermediate 8 min read

Gresham's Law

In Antwerp, in the autumn of 1551, Thomas Gresham stands on the floor of the Bourse and watches an English cloth merchant try to settle a bill. The Flemish trader

Intermediate 8 min read

MAYA Principle

Raymond Loewy sat in a NASA conference room in Washington on October 14, 1969, and listened to an engineer explain why the astronauts would never look out a window. He

Intermediate 8 min read

Form-Function Attribution Bias

Doug Evans spent 1,200 days in San Francisco building a juicer.

Intermediate 9 min read

Infinite Game

Paul Cézanne was sixty-seven when a thunderstorm caught him painting Mont Sainte-Victoire.

IntermediateMembers 8 min read

G.I. Joe Fallacy

Samuel Taylor Coleridge knew exactly what was killing him.

Intermediate 5 min read

Semmelweis Reflex

In September 2004, Anne Rice logged onto Amazon and read the reviews of her latest novel, Blood Canticle.

Intermediate 7 min read

Stocks and Flows

In March 1836, Chapman and Hall printed one thousand copies of the first installment of The Pickwick Papers.

IntermediateMembers 8 min read

Cathedral Model

Chartres, 1194. A master mason stands in ash and charred stone.

Intermediate 7 min read

Gestalt Principles

Henri Matisse spent his final decade confined to a wheelchair, scissors in hand, cutting colored paper.

Intermediate 6 min read

Second-Order Thinking

“A runt will not play Michael.”

Intermediate 5 min read