Explaining the world one sketch at a time

Sketchplanations makes complex ideas simple with clear, insightful sketches. Explore topics from science, creativity, psychology, and beyond explained in pictures.

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Recent sketches

Beware of local optimisation

Incremental improvements won’t always get you to the optimal solution depending on where you start.…

23 Sep 2013

Urge to underline? Use bold or italic instead

Underlining was a by-product of typewriters. It generally doesn’t improve things. Now, I’m still waiting for someone to make a pen with a button on it to write in bold. And to write a straight line without a separate ruler. Anyone want to team up?…

22 Sep 2013

If we plumbed in printers

The realisation originally came to me when I saw, pinned outside a Professor’s door, an entire sheet of plain letter paper with a single line quote at the top. The standards are driving the system. About time we got more flexible.…

21 Sep 2013