Knolling

[state]

"Always. Be. Knolling." [0], is probably my favorite of Tom Sachs' Ten Bullets. As a whole, it's a pretty good office manual. Better for a studio than a startup office — but worth a look nonetheless.

0 - https://youtu.be/49p1JVLHUos?t=15m38s

[mcguire]

"Arbitrary decision making and personal inventiveness are discouraged."

[BoppreH]

There's a great subreddit dedicated to this, with lots of content: https://www.reddit.com/r/knolling/

I find it specially interesting when it's done to "dissect" machines, making it look like schematics. I find it helps dispelling the impression of things being black boxes.

[ballenf]

No amount of knolling will help me with my usual problem taking apart complicated machinery:

https://xkcd.com/1780/

(That's titled Appliance Repair)

[__jal]

My grandfather carefully painted black silhouettes of tools that hung behind his workbench, so he could tell at a glance if anything was missing. (There was a house rule of use anything you want, but it better go back where it came from when you were done.)

He didn't do that with his toolboxes, but all but one of those were locked.

I do find I do this as a sort of a tick, while thinking through my next step while making stuff.

[kaybe]

This is a professional technique.

The hangar I just came from has hard rules - if any tool is missing the planes are grounded until the tool is found. No matter what. So you better don't lose those tools.

[smnscu]

Also see Andrew Kim's book 90° on knolling. Andrew is the designer behind minimallyminimal.com, the Microsoft redesign concept, Xbox One S, who now works at Tesla.

http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/90degrees

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/90-degrees/id605530423?mt=1...

[noir_lord]

I bought an Xbox One S recently (didn't know anything about the S it was just a good price for an Xbox).

Its a beautiful piece of hardware and doesn't look out of place under the TV like the old Xboxes somehow did.

[kosma]

OT: This has been parodied at least once; see Stackenblochen[1].

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEN5-_93gQg

[sboselli]

The wikipedia article doesn't mention it, but just like Tom Sachs spent time at Gehry's shop and adopted this term and practice; so did Casey Neistat spent time at Sachs' shop, where he also adopted it (and probably made it more well known than ever before). If you've seen Casey's videos or pictures of his famous NY studio; this is where it all came from.

[switchbak]

Is this just OCD, or is there an actual benefit to Knolling?

My gut reaction to this is that it's distracting compulsive behaviour, but I could be wrong. I've found organization for a workshop to be of unexpectedly huge value, so I could be wrong here too.

[marklyon]

I enjoy this video, by Casey's brother, outlining the studio rules: https://vimeo.com/34901903

[893helios]

Always be Knolling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-CTkbHnpNQ)

[DanBlake]

I built a entire website essentially built around this - http://www.everydaycarry.com - its been crazy seeing something that started off as a niche hobby turning into a business

[Mz]

I thought of your site as soon as I saw this, though, tbh, I don't think of it is a site. I know it from Twitter and somehow it is weird to me to think of it as a site. I can't quite put my finger on why that is.

[hkon]

Always liked your site. I wanted to create a similar site, but yours was so good I didn't.

[menzoic]

The images are too high res for mobile. It loads too slow.

[falcolas]

Adam Savage is a compulsive knoller - if you watch his podcasts you can frequently see him arranging items in front of him into parallel and perpendicular shapes.

[bch]

> Adam Savage is a compulsive knoller

And is friends with another famous knoller - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxLxwbm7FMA , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-CTkbHnpNQ

[hkon]

If you have knolled everything you own but still want more, check out this: http://stupiddesk.com/

[NTripleOne]

Holy shit, I had no idea this had a name - I've been doing this all my life.

I guess it also explains why I find angular designs more attractive than rounded/circular ones - sitting here at my desk looking at the circular monitor stand bases, cylindrical bluetooth speaker, coins and some cables coiled up, these things can't be knolled, so I tend to stack round things instead (in diameter order, of course).

[spraak]

I never knew it was Knolling that is in almost every stock photo of a desk for a startup's landing page

[makeset]

Ha! I remember discovering this as a teenager, that I didn't have to actually tidy up my room/desk to avoid getting yelled at, as long as I aligned everything in place at right angles. It's always good to put a name on the phenomenon.

[ronjouch]

Didn't know this practice has a name! Thanks HN :)

Sharing the excellent bandcamp of two musicians whose profile picture is a knolling of themselves and their gear. Bandcamp: https://qdrpd.bandcamp.com/ , knolling: https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0000904983_10.jpg

[e12e]

Recommend one of the "See also"-links from the Wikipedia page, for those not familiar with the term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_place

[afishisafish]

I own several peaces of Knoll furniture. Certainly not the cheapest, but the build quality is superior and the chairs are extremely comfortable. Great company!

[ttoinou]

.. But, why ?

[DKnoll]

Don't ask me.

[keyle]

aside/fun: What would be knolling code be like? :)

[bitwize]

I worked at a shop that insisted on one parameter per line in function calls.

[leandrod]

How long for deletionists to get wind of it?

[cJ0th]

I can't be the only one who expected this to be about a certain Google project that aimed at organizing knowledge ;)