Experiment 001
Three-Body Problem
Three celestial bodies locked in gravitational dialogue—their paths deterministic yet unpredictable. A real-time simulation of one of physics' most beautiful unsolved problems, rendered in light and motion.
On Chaos and Craft
In 1687, Newton solved the two-body problem—two objects in gravitational orbit follow paths you can write as a single equation. Add a third body, and the equation dissolves. No closed-form solution exists. The system becomes exquisitely sensitive to its opening conditions: shift a decimal point and the entire future rewrites itself.
Deterministic does not mean predictable. The rules are simple. The outcomes are not.
The three-body problem lives at the intersection of order and chaos—a space we navigate in every design project. Brand systems are gravitational: identity, audience, and market pull on each other in ways that are technically deterministic but practically impossible to predict from first principles alone.
What you see above are periodic orbits—rare, stable choreographies discovered by mathematicians over the last three decades. The figure-eight, found by Cris Moore in 1993 and proven by Chenciner and Montgomery in 2000, shows three equal masses tracing a single infinity loop. The butterfly and moth orbits, catalogued by Milovan Šuvakov and Veljko Dmitrašinović in 2013, reveal that stability hides in the strangest geometries.
Craft is finding the periodic orbit inside the chaos.Read the full essay →
Experiment 002
Rössler Attractor
Three coupled equations. An infinite, non-repeating trajectory folding through space. Otto Rössler's 1976 system is one of the simplest recipes for chaos—a spiral that periodically spikes into a third dimension, never quite retracing its path.
On Simplicity and Surprise
In 1976, Otto Rössler was not looking for beauty. He was looking for the simplest possible system of equations that could produce chaos—deterministic behavior so sensitive to its starting conditions that prediction becomes impossible. He found it in three lines of calculus.
The simplest rules can produce the most complex behavior. That is the lesson of the Rössler attractor—and of every good brand.
The system traces a flat spiral in two dimensions, unremarkable on its own. But periodically, the third variable spikes—the trajectory folds upward, rotates, and re-enters the spiral at a slightly different point. This fold is where the chaos lives. The path never exactly repeats. It is deterministic yet infinite in its variation.
We see a parallel in the work. A brand identity is a set of simple rules—a color palette, a typeface, a mark, a voice. The rules are finite. But the encounters are infinite: a sign glimpsed from a highway, a menu held in lamplight, an email opened at a desk. Each encounter folds through its own context, its own moment. The same system, never the same experience.
The Rössler attractor reminds us that constraint is not the enemy of surprise. It is the source.
Read the full essay →