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Explaining the world
one sketch at a time

Have great conversations about ideas through simple and insightful sketches. Visual explanations that are fast to read, fun to share, and hard to forget.

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In a Book: Big Ideas Little Pictures

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Absorb big ideas with crystal-clear understanding through this collection of 135 visual explanations. Including 24 exclusive new sketches and enhanced versions of classic favourites, each page shares life-improving ideas through beautifully simple illustrations.

Perfect for curious minds and visual learners alike.

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Hi, I'm Jono 👋

I'm an author and illustrator creating one of the world's largest libraries of hand-drawn sketches explaining the world—sketch-by-sketch.

Sketchplanations have been shared millions of times and used in books, articles, classrooms, and more. Learn more about the project, search for a sketch you like, or see recent sketches below.

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Laplace's Demon

For an all-seeing, all-knowing being, the future is as clear as the past Perhaps you, like me, have once considered a thought experiment: Given all the laws of nature and given the current state of everything in the universe, in principle, you could figure out exactly what was going to happen. The laws of nature would just keep things moving as expected, and events in the universe would unfold predictably and imperturbably. What about free will and all that? This idea of a being that knew all the laws and the current states of everything, and therefore how everything would play out, is called Laplace’s Demon. It was named after an extremely smart French mathematician and polymath, Pierre-Simon Laplace, who once wrote (translations vary a little): “We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.” — Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities Determinism is the idea that everything is pre-determined and nothing is left to chance. Laplace’s Demon thought experiment represents the extreme side of that. There are a few challenges to this idea since then, including the practical unpredictability of chaotic systems, quantum mechanics, the difficulty of measuring without disturbing, as well as philosophical and religious ideas about free will. Even if the future did follow perfectly from the past, in practice we couldn’t work it out. Notes on Laplace’s Demon I learned about Laplace’s Demon in David Spiegelhalter’s The Art of Uncertainty after he joined us on the podcast about microlives. Laplace’s Demon is less well-known than Maxwell’s demon — a teeny being that appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics. More generally, Laplace’s Demon is a thought experiment—a hypothetical scenario that helps stress-test and illuminate ideas. Related Ideas to Laplace’s Demon Also see: Laplace’s Demon is an eponym Russell’s Teapot Chesterton’s Fence Black Swan events The Lucretius Problem Hanlon’s Razor The Monty Hall Problem More eponyms You can read a translation of Laplace’s words in his article A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities on Project Gutenberg (this appears near the beginning).For an all-seeing, all-knowing being, the future is as clear as the past Perhaps you, like me, have once considered a thought experiment: Given all the laws of nature and given the current state of everything in the universe, in principle, you could figure out exactly what was going to happen. The laws of nature would just keep things moving as expected, and events in the universe would unfold predictably and imperturbably. What about free will and all that? This idea of a being that knew all the laws and the current states of everything, and therefore how everything would play out, is called Laplace’s Demon. It was named after an extremely smart French mathematician and polymath, Pierre-Simon Laplace, who once wrote (translations vary a little): “We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.” — Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities Determinism is the idea that everything is pre-determined and nothing is left to chance. Laplace’s Demon thought experiment represents the extreme side of that. There are a few challenges to this idea since then, including the practical unpredictability of chaotic systems, quantum mechanics, the difficulty of measuring without disturbing, as well as philosophical and religious ideas about free will. Even if the future did follow perfectly from the past, in practice we couldn’t work it out. Notes on Laplace’s Demon I learned about Laplace’s Demon in David Spiegelhalter’s The Art of Uncertainty after he joined us on the podcast about microlives. Laplace’s Demon is less well-known than Maxwell’s demon — a teeny being that appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics. More generally, Laplace’s Demon is a thought experiment—a hypothetical scenario that helps stress-test and illuminate ideas. Related Ideas to Laplace’s Demon Also see: Laplace’s Demon is an eponym Russell’s Teapot Chesterton’s Fence Black Swan events The Lucretius Problem Hanlon’s Razor The Monty Hall Problem More eponyms You can read a translation of Laplace’s words in his article A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities on Project Gutenberg (this appears near the beginning).

✨ Latest

Common dune types showing how different wind patterns and sand availability shape transverse dunes, linear dunes, barchan dunes and star dunes.

Dune Types: Transverse, Linear, Barchan, Star Dunes

Sand dunes can be beautiful and awe-inspiring. And, though they come in infinite shapes and sizes, specific combinations of winds and sand together create common dune types. I find it interesting to try to recognise the basic types and why they form in the way they do. Here are some of the most common dune types. Transverse Dunes Transverse dunes form, somewhat counterintuitively for me, perpendicular to the wind direction. It’s rather like how a dirt road washboards perpendicular to the direction of traffic, and ripples on the beach will often form at right angles to the wash of the waves. When there’s plenty of sand and the wind is predominantly from one direction, sand begins to pile up and creates sheltered depressions on the other side of growing dunes. The sheltered zones help set up fairly consistent spacing between dunes. It’s fascinating to observe both at a tiny scale on the beach and flying over a vast desert. Transverse dunes typically have a shallower up slope in the direction the wind arrives from and a steeper slip slope on the sheltered side. I learned that the shallower upface is called the stoss side, and the steeper slipface is called the lee face. Linear Dunes When wind blows from two directions, dunes can be pulled into long, linear ridges, forming longitudinal dunes or linear dunes. The ridges align with the average direction of the wind. Some ridges can run for a hundred miles. In contrast to transverse dunes, wind from both directions creates slip faces on both sides, often forming sharp edges along the dune ridges. This leads to the more poetic name of seif dunes, meaning sword in Arabic. Barchan Dunes When the prevailing wind is from one direction and sand is less plentiful, crescent-shaped barchan dunes form. They have characteristic horns extending in the direction the wind blows. Sands are always shifting, and barchan dunes can move relatively quickly along the desert floor compared to other large dunes. Star Dunes When winds blow from many directions, sand can get blown into dunes that grow vertically in a star or pyramid shape. Remarkably, they can reach up to 500m tall. In some areas, star dunes form along longitudinal ridges. Other Dune Types The interactions of sand and wind are endlessly complex, and other types of dunes exist. These include: Dome dunes, without prominent ridges, as you might imagine Parabolic dunes, which look like barchan but face the opposite way. Look out for these near the coast. Reversing dunes, which have a sort of mini-dune facing the opposite way at the top of the ridge. Draas: mega-dunes sometimes made up of other dune forms. Related Ideas to Common Dune Types Also see: The 3 Tallest Mountains Tectonic Plate Interaction Boundaries Settlement Patterns Shapes of Valleys One hump or two hump camel? Topography - Bathymetry Rain Shadow Types of Surf Break Strand line Point Nemo — the remotest place in the oceansSand dunes can be beautiful and awe-inspiring. And, though they come in infinite shapes and sizes, specific combinations of winds and sand together create common dune types. I find it interesting to try to recognise the basic types and why they form in the way they do. Here are some of the most common dune types. Transverse Dunes Transverse dunes form, somewhat counterintuitively for me, perpendicular to the wind direction. It’s rather like how a dirt road washboards perpendicular to the direction of traffic, and ripples on the beach will often form at right angles to the wash of the waves. When there’s plenty of sand and the wind is predominantly from one direction, sand begins to pile up and creates sheltered depressions on the other side of growing dunes. The sheltered zones help set up fairly consistent spacing between dunes. It’s fascinating to observe both at a tiny scale on the beach and flying over a vast desert. Transverse dunes typically have a shallower up slope in the direction the wind arrives from and a steeper slip slope on the sheltered side. I learned that the shallower upface is called the stoss side, and the steeper slipface is called the lee face. Linear Dunes When wind blows from two directions, dunes can be pulled into long, linear ridges, forming longitudinal dunes or linear dunes. The ridges align with the average direction of the wind. Some ridges can run for a hundred miles. In contrast to transverse dunes, wind from both directions creates slip faces on both sides, often forming sharp edges along the dune ridges. This leads to the more poetic name of seif dunes, meaning sword in Arabic. Barchan Dunes When the prevailing wind is from one direction and sand is less plentiful, crescent-shaped barchan dunes form. They have characteristic horns extending in the direction the wind blows. Sands are always shifting, and barchan dunes can move relatively quickly along the desert floor compared to other large dunes. Star Dunes When winds blow from many directions, sand can get blown into dunes that grow vertically in a star or pyramid shape. Remarkably, they can reach up to 500m tall. In some areas, star dunes form along longitudinal ridges. Other Dune Types The interactions of sand and wind are endlessly complex, and other types of dunes exist. These include: Dome dunes, without prominent ridges, as you might imagine Parabolic dunes, which look like barchan but face the opposite way. Look out for these near the coast. Reversing dunes, which have a sort of mini-dune facing the opposite way at the top of the ridge. Draas: mega-dunes sometimes made up of other dune forms. Related Ideas to Common Dune Types Also see: The 3 Tallest Mountains Tectonic Plate Interaction Boundaries Settlement Patterns Shapes of Valleys One hump or two hump camel? Topography - Bathymetry Rain Shadow Types of Surf Break Strand line Point Nemo — the remotest place in the oceans

18 Jan

What is contentment? Happiness, wellbeing and contentment is what you have relative to what you want, from Morgan Housel’s The Art of Spending Money.

Contentment: What you Have Relative to What you Want

Morgan Housel, in his book The Art of Spending Money, says that contentment is what you have relative to what you want. If you have money for a life full of comforts but envy a more glamorous one, you will make yourself unhappy. If you have a simple life with friends, family, health, and interests, and don’t want anything more, then you will be happy as you are. Money makes this visible, but the same rule applies to almost everything: time, relationships, status, health, and freedom. Being content with what you have is a counter to the hedonic treadmill: how people can easily get used to a better situation and start longing for the next thing (been on the list to sketch for a long time!). As Morgan says, “If your expectations grow faster than your income, you will never be happy with your money.” It’s funny how knowing that someone or something has something better can affect your own satisfaction with what you have. “If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor.” — from Sit Down by James (video) I think about this song line quite often. One of my favourite perspective shifts on this is comedian Louis C.K.’s Everything is Amazing, and Nobody is Happy clip with Conan O’Brien. He captures brilliantly how quickly our sense of what is normal inflates, even as life objectively improves. Low expectations? In a class on utility theory long ago, I remember mathematically seeing that if you expect little value, then you’ll be satisfied with whatever you get. And I’ve heard it said that the secret to happiness is low expectations. There’s something in it for sure, but it always seems like a double-edged sword to me. Sure, if you expect your team to lose every time, you might not be bothered when they do. But if you hope that they’ll win, you can get some happiness from that excitement, too. It’s always intriguing how supporters of better teams get more frustrated when they do slightly worse than usual, even while they are still doing much better than my team. Expectations are tricky. It’s so easy to recalibrate what counts as normal. You can skip the ups and downs of supporting a team by not supporting one and not caring what happens. You avoid the downs, but you miss the ups, too. (see The Supporter’s Paradox in Big Ideas Little Pictures) The late Queen Elizabeth II said it beautifully: "Grief is the price we pay for love." — Queen Elizabeth II You can skip the grief by not loving, but that seems a shame. How life feels depends on what we expect as much as what we get. Related quotes "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." ― Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens "Comparison is the thief of joy" — Often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, but from various sources Related Ideas to Contentment Also see: Five Ways to Wellbeing Spend better: If money doesn’t make you happy, you’re not spending it right “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” Flow: state of total focus and joy Prospect Theory Languishing The irresistible power of variable rewards The Overview Effect Don’t compare your back of house with other’s front of houseMorgan Housel, in his book The Art of Spending Money, says that contentment is what you have relative to what you want. If you have money for a life full of comforts but envy a more glamorous one, you will make yourself unhappy. If you have a simple life with friends, family, health, and interests, and don’t want anything more, then you will be happy as you are. Money makes this visible, but the same rule applies to almost everything: time, relationships, status, health, and freedom. Being content with what you have is a counter to the hedonic treadmill: how people can easily get used to a better situation and start longing for the next thing (been on the list to sketch for a long time!). As Morgan says, “If your expectations grow faster than your income, you will never be happy with your money.” It’s funny how knowing that someone or something has something better can affect your own satisfaction with what you have. “If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor.” — from Sit Down by James (video) I think about this song line quite often. One of my favourite perspective shifts on this is comedian Louis C.K.’s Everything is Amazing, and Nobody is Happy clip with Conan O’Brien. He captures brilliantly how quickly our sense of what is normal inflates, even as life objectively improves. Low expectations? In a class on utility theory long ago, I remember mathematically seeing that if you expect little value, then you’ll be satisfied with whatever you get. And I’ve heard it said that the secret to happiness is low expectations. There’s something in it for sure, but it always seems like a double-edged sword to me. Sure, if you expect your team to lose every time, you might not be bothered when they do. But if you hope that they’ll win, you can get some happiness from that excitement, too. It’s always intriguing how supporters of better teams get more frustrated when they do slightly worse than usual, even while they are still doing much better than my team. Expectations are tricky. It’s so easy to recalibrate what counts as normal. You can skip the ups and downs of supporting a team by not supporting one and not caring what happens. You avoid the downs, but you miss the ups, too. (see The Supporter’s Paradox in Big Ideas Little Pictures) The late Queen Elizabeth II said it beautifully: "Grief is the price we pay for love." — Queen Elizabeth II You can skip the grief by not loving, but that seems a shame. How life feels depends on what we expect as much as what we get. Related quotes "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." ― Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens "Comparison is the thief of joy" — Often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, but from various sources Related Ideas to Contentment Also see: Five Ways to Wellbeing Spend better: If money doesn’t make you happy, you’re not spending it right “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” Flow: state of total focus and joy Prospect Theory Languishing The irresistible power of variable rewards The Overview Effect Don’t compare your back of house with other’s front of house

11 Jan

SMART Goals

If you’ve heard of one framework to help with goal-setting, it could well be this one: SMART Goals. SMART is an acronym to keep in mind a few ideas for setting better goals, ones you’re more likely to make progress on and complete. I’ve lost track of when I first learned it, and I do keep it in mind when I set goals. Running through as a little mental checklist helps me go from vague, easy-to-ignore goals to ones with more tangible progress. What are SMART Goals SMART stands for: Specific Avoid vague, fuzzy goals Measurable How will you see your progress, and when you’ve achieved it? Achievable Are you able to control and influence your progress? Relevant Is it really what will help you most? Time-Bound A timeline and deadline spur action I’ve seen some variation in the words, in particular with Achievable, Attainable, or Actionable, Relevant or Realistic, Time-Bound and Timely. Either way, the broad intent, as I understand it, is generally the same: turning vague, passive, and imagined goals into decisions, signals, and progress. SMART Goals help you go from something like: Next year I will get fit to: I will run three times a week, aiming for a 10k personal best in July I have found that if I do actually want to make progress and not just make the same goal next year, the second formulation here will help me. There are many goal-setting frameworks. And there’s advice to focus on habits and systems rather than goals (see, for example, Atomic Habits). SMART isn’t always the answer and at times other strategies might serve you better. Use what works for you. How I use SMART Goals I’ve definitely found SMART help me over the years. Here’s how I think about each of the aspects of SMART Goals: Specific Specific is better than vague. Just like breaking down a big project makes it easier to get started on, getting specific helps me focus on something I’m more likely to act on. Try more new foods, I find, is not as good as Cook one new meal a week. Getting specific forces you to think about how you will make progress on your goal. There are many different ways, and I sometimes find that I didn’t choose the right thing. No matter, just switch it up when you find what really helps you. See Implementation intentions. Measurable I have been involved in several projects at work where we made changes only to realise we had no way of knowing whether they improved things. Sometimes we hadn’t bothered to take a measurement before we started working on it. Other times, we hadn’t included a way to measure an outcome from the change we made. These projects weren’t very satisfying. Keeping your goals measurable helps you know if you’re making things better, and is more motivating along the way (see Flow). For example, measurable helps you go from "Improve the onboarding experience" to "Improve the satisfaction score post-onboarding by 50%." Or ”Get healthier” to “Lose 3 kilograms”. Sometimes changes in what you really care about may take time, and you may need to consider leading rather than lagging metrics. Achievable It’s miserable and demotivating working on goals you stand no chance of hitting. It’s great to think big (as in the BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and, in my experience, it also helps to set goals that are hard but that you stand a chance of getting close to. I have spent a year or more working on company goals that no one really believed we had a chance to hit. Missing it every week is no fun. It’s not always easy to set a specific, measurable goal that’s achievable, usually because I don’t always have a good sense for what’s possible. Fortunately, goal-setting doesn’t have to be a one-time exercise. If you set something too high or too low because you didn’t know what was possible, readjust. And if nothing else, you’ll have made progress and be wiser. If your goal is to run a sub-3-hour marathon but you’ve never really run before, you might be better off starting with “Complete a half-marathon,” until you know how hard running a sub-3-hour marathon is (it’s very hard). Relevant The idea with Relevant goals is that they are the most important ones. It can require some thinking about what you really want to achieve. You don’t want to climb the wrong mountain. A little thought to check I’m really on the right path at the beginning is helpful. Time-Bound This is a reminder to me that a goal without an end is very easy to ignore. Setting a timeline and end date allows me to plan and forces me to make progress even when I don’t want to. Related Ideas to SMART Goals Apparently, as for productivity, I think about goal-setting a lot. Here are some other concepts that might help when setting or working on your SMART goals: The Fresh Start Effect (podcast episode) Leading and lagging metrics Implementation Intentions Clear is kind Local Optimisation The Power of Streaks The Doorstep Mile Enough molehills make a mountain The twin engines of Altruism and Ambition What Drives Us Everything is Aiming Replicate then Innovate Accuracy vs Precision Public Commitment Pledge Commitment Device Goodhart’s Law—very relevant if you’re setting goals for others What gets measured gets better Flow Find your why notIf you’ve heard of one framework to help with goal-setting, it could well be this one: SMART Goals. SMART is an acronym to keep in mind a few ideas for setting better goals, ones you’re more likely to make progress on and complete. I’ve lost track of when I first learned it, and I do keep it in mind when I set goals. Running through as a little mental checklist helps me go from vague, easy-to-ignore goals to ones with more tangible progress. What are SMART Goals SMART stands for: Specific Avoid vague, fuzzy goals Measurable How will you see your progress, and when you’ve achieved it? Achievable Are you able to control and influence your progress? Relevant Is it really what will help you most? Time-Bound A timeline and deadline spur action I’ve seen some variation in the words, in particular with Achievable, Attainable, or Actionable, Relevant or Realistic, Time-Bound and Timely. Either way, the broad intent, as I understand it, is generally the same: turning vague, passive, and imagined goals into decisions, signals, and progress. SMART Goals help you go from something like: Next year I will get fit to: I will run three times a week, aiming for a 10k personal best in July I have found that if I do actually want to make progress and not just make the same goal next year, the second formulation here will help me. There are many goal-setting frameworks. And there’s advice to focus on habits and systems rather than goals (see, for example, Atomic Habits). SMART isn’t always the answer and at times other strategies might serve you better. Use what works for you. How I use SMART Goals I’ve definitely found SMART help me over the years. Here’s how I think about each of the aspects of SMART Goals: Specific Specific is better than vague. Just like breaking down a big project makes it easier to get started on, getting specific helps me focus on something I’m more likely to act on. Try more new foods, I find, is not as good as Cook one new meal a week. Getting specific forces you to think about how you will make progress on your goal. There are many different ways, and I sometimes find that I didn’t choose the right thing. No matter, just switch it up when you find what really helps you. See Implementation intentions. Measurable I have been involved in several projects at work where we made changes only to realise we had no way of knowing whether they improved things. Sometimes we hadn’t bothered to take a measurement before we started working on it. Other times, we hadn’t included a way to measure an outcome from the change we made. These projects weren’t very satisfying. Keeping your goals measurable helps you know if you’re making things better, and is more motivating along the way (see Flow). For example, measurable helps you go from "Improve the onboarding experience" to "Improve the satisfaction score post-onboarding by 50%." Or ”Get healthier” to “Lose 3 kilograms”. Sometimes changes in what you really care about may take time, and you may need to consider leading rather than lagging metrics. Achievable It’s miserable and demotivating working on goals you stand no chance of hitting. It’s great to think big (as in the BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and, in my experience, it also helps to set goals that are hard but that you stand a chance of getting close to. I have spent a year or more working on company goals that no one really believed we had a chance to hit. Missing it every week is no fun. It’s not always easy to set a specific, measurable goal that’s achievable, usually because I don’t always have a good sense for what’s possible. Fortunately, goal-setting doesn’t have to be a one-time exercise. If you set something too high or too low because you didn’t know what was possible, readjust. And if nothing else, you’ll have made progress and be wiser. If your goal is to run a sub-3-hour marathon but you’ve never really run before, you might be better off starting with “Complete a half-marathon,” until you know how hard running a sub-3-hour marathon is (it’s very hard). Relevant The idea with Relevant goals is that they are the most important ones. It can require some thinking about what you really want to achieve. You don’t want to climb the wrong mountain. A little thought to check I’m really on the right path at the beginning is helpful. Time-Bound This is a reminder to me that a goal without an end is very easy to ignore. Setting a timeline and end date allows me to plan and forces me to make progress even when I don’t want to. Related Ideas to SMART Goals Apparently, as for productivity, I think about goal-setting a lot. Here are some other concepts that might help when setting or working on your SMART goals: The Fresh Start Effect (podcast episode) Leading and lagging metrics Implementation Intentions Clear is kind Local Optimisation The Power of Streaks The Doorstep Mile Enough molehills make a mountain The twin engines of Altruism and Ambition What Drives Us Everything is Aiming Replicate then Innovate Accuracy vs Precision Public Commitment Pledge Commitment Device Goodhart’s Law—very relevant if you’re setting goals for others What gets measured gets better Flow Find your why not

4 Jan

What is diagonal billing in cinema, film credits, titles, and design? Example of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman from the Towering Inferno in a movie theatre. Also staggered billing.

Diagonal Billing (or Staggered Billing)

A solution for equal movie star billing The 1974 disaster movie The Towering Inferno had the advantage of two huge stars: Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. Supposedly, neither of them wanted to be portrayed as second to the other. So the studio had a problem: whose name should go first on the movie poster and in the credits? What is Diagonal Billing? Diagonal billing, sometimes called staggered billing, is a way of arranging the names of movie stars to give them equal prominence. Instead of listing one above or in line with the other, the names are placed diagonally: • one name in the bottom-left, • the other in the top-right. This balances the natural reading hierarchy—left to right, top to bottom—so that either name can be read first. It was the clever compromise used for McQueen and Newman in The Towering Inferno, and it has been repeated in many Hollywood films since. Why Diagonal Billing Works In English, we naturally read from left to right and top to bottom. We start reading this way in articles like this, but also posters, adverts, and web pages. Which means what we see top-left is naturally emphasised compared to what we encounter towards the end in the bottom-right. It's also why my sketches typically have a title in the top-left and a logo in the bottom-right: you're meant to see them in that order. Diagonal billing cancels out a name on the left by placing it at the bottom, and emphasises the name on the right by placing it at the top. Examples of Diagonal Billing Balancing Steve McQueen and Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno is how I first learned of staggered but equal billing (from my Dad, though he denies it). You can see the staggering of names in the original movie poster. Other examples include: Cheers TV credits: Ted Danson and Shelley Long Scenes from a Marriage (2021): Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac Chicago (2002): Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones Westworld (1973): James Brolin, Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004): Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow Righteous Kill (2008): Robert De Niro, Al Pacino Keep an eye out for it in movie posters and opening credits, and help me add to the examples! Related Ideas to Diagonal Billing Also see: The Gestalt principles of visual perception The Blur Your Eyes Test F-Shaped Reading The Rule of Thirds Use styling instead of colons Design for a Glance, a Look, a Read Information Radiator The real shape of a crossing (diagonal!) The site TV Tropes also discusses diagonal billing.A solution for equal movie star billing The 1974 disaster movie The Towering Inferno had the advantage of two huge stars: Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. Supposedly, neither of them wanted to be portrayed as second to the other. So the studio had a problem: whose name should go first on the movie poster and in the credits? What is Diagonal Billing? Diagonal billing, sometimes called staggered billing, is a way of arranging the names of movie stars to give them equal prominence. Instead of listing one above or in line with the other, the names are placed diagonally: • one name in the bottom-left, • the other in the top-right. This balances the natural reading hierarchy—left to right, top to bottom—so that either name can be read first. It was the clever compromise used for McQueen and Newman in The Towering Inferno, and it has been repeated in many Hollywood films since. Why Diagonal Billing Works In English, we naturally read from left to right and top to bottom. We start reading this way in articles like this, but also posters, adverts, and web pages. Which means what we see top-left is naturally emphasised compared to what we encounter towards the end in the bottom-right. It's also why my sketches typically have a title in the top-left and a logo in the bottom-right: you're meant to see them in that order. Diagonal billing cancels out a name on the left by placing it at the bottom, and emphasises the name on the right by placing it at the top. Examples of Diagonal Billing Balancing Steve McQueen and Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno is how I first learned of staggered but equal billing (from my Dad, though he denies it). You can see the staggering of names in the original movie poster. Other examples include: Cheers TV credits: Ted Danson and Shelley Long Scenes from a Marriage (2021): Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac Chicago (2002): Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones Westworld (1973): James Brolin, Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004): Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow Righteous Kill (2008): Robert De Niro, Al Pacino Keep an eye out for it in movie posters and opening credits, and help me add to the examples! Related Ideas to Diagonal Billing Also see: The Gestalt principles of visual perception The Blur Your Eyes Test F-Shaped Reading The Rule of Thirds Use styling instead of colons Design for a Glance, a Look, a Read Information Radiator The real shape of a crossing (diagonal!) The site TV Tropes also discusses diagonal billing.

28 Dec 2025

Cornwall vs Devon cream tea styles shown side by side: jam first for Cornwall, cream first for Devon.

Cream Tea: Cream First or Jam First?

The classic cream tea is a simple and delicious affair: a freshly baked scone, clotted cream, jam, and a pot of tea to share. But there’s something brewing, and it’s not just the tea. It’s a question that divides even the most peaceful tea room: should it be cream first or jam first on a scone? The Devon vs Cornwall Cream Tea Debate The two neighbouring English counties most associated with the cream tea are Cornwall and Devon, both in the southwest of England (I included a little map). I learned that, traditionally, each county prepares its cream tea in different ways. The Devon cream tea is cream first, then jam. The Cornwall cream tea is jam first, then cream. As someone with more ties to Devon, I’ve always gone the cream then jam route. But I know that some people swear by the other way. Either way, I can vouch for both a Devon cream tea and a Cornwall cream tea being delicious. Unsure how to eat a cream tea? Perhaps you should follow the locals. If you haven’t had one on location, I recommend you give it a try. Which way do you go? Cream first or jam first? Related Ideas to The Great Cream Tea Debate Also see: Types of sushi How to make Irish coffee The egg float test The tomato test Mandarin, clementine, satsuma, tangerine Fruit or Vegetable Hedgehog a mango Dice an onion Gelato, sorbet, or ice cream P.S. This is a revision of an early sketch I did on this subject. It deserved a stronger one!The classic cream tea is a simple and delicious affair: a freshly baked scone, clotted cream, jam, and a pot of tea to share. But there’s something brewing, and it’s not just the tea. It’s a question that divides even the most peaceful tea room: should it be cream first or jam first on a scone? The Devon vs Cornwall Cream Tea Debate The two neighbouring English counties most associated with the cream tea are Cornwall and Devon, both in the southwest of England (I included a little map). I learned that, traditionally, each county prepares its cream tea in different ways. The Devon cream tea is cream first, then jam. The Cornwall cream tea is jam first, then cream. As someone with more ties to Devon, I’ve always gone the cream then jam route. But I know that some people swear by the other way. Either way, I can vouch for both a Devon cream tea and a Cornwall cream tea being delicious. Unsure how to eat a cream tea? Perhaps you should follow the locals. If you haven’t had one on location, I recommend you give it a try. Which way do you go? Cream first or jam first? Related Ideas to The Great Cream Tea Debate Also see: Types of sushi How to make Irish coffee The egg float test The tomato test Mandarin, clementine, satsuma, tangerine Fruit or Vegetable Hedgehog a mango Dice an onion Gelato, sorbet, or ice cream P.S. This is a revision of an early sketch I did on this subject. It deserved a stronger one!

21 Dec 2025

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