How to use the Design Encyclopedia

Welcome

The Design Encyclopedia is a curated, interconnected reference for industrial and transportation design. It is built as a reference work, not a blog — every entry has a structured definition, cited sources, related entries, and metadata designed to help designers work faster and think deeper.

It is a static site: fast, private, and available offline after first visit. No account needed, no tracking, no ads.

Quick start

Three ways to begin:

1. Search — type into the homepage search bar or press ⌘ + K anywhere to open the command palette.
2. Browse — visit Categories to see everything by discipline, or Index for an alphabetical list.
3. Learn — visit Learn for guided sequences that build understanding step by step.

Search & discover

The homepage search

The search bar on the homepage is fuzzy: it matches partial words, misspellings, and alternate names. Type "ram" and you'll find Dieter Rams. Type "acr" and you'll find ABS (its chemical name is Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene). Filters below the bar narrow the results by type (person, material, product, concept) or category (industrial, transportation). Click a filter to toggle it; click again to remove.

Command palette

Press ⌘ + K (or Ctrl + K on Windows/Linux) anywhere on the site to open the command palette. It searches both pages and entries. Use ↑ ↓ to navigate, Enter to open, and Esc to close. This is the fastest way to jump anywhere.

Tag hubs

Every entry has tags at the bottom of its sidebar. Click any tag to see all entries with that tag. Tags connect entries across categories — for example, #minimalism links a designer, a principle, and a product.

Random entry

Click the dice icon in the header (or press R anywhere) to jump to a random entry. This is the best way to discover terms you wouldn't have searched for.

The knowledge graph

Visit Graph to see every entry as a node, with edges connecting related terms. Each color represents a type (designer, product, material, method, concept, vehicle). Click any label to open its entry. Drag nodes to rearrange. Use the fullscreen button for a focused view. Every entry also has a mini-graph at the bottom showing only its direct neighbors.

Timeline

Timeline shows every dated entry chronologically, grouped by decade. Useful for tracing movements, people, and objects side by side across time.

Reading an entry

Every entry follows a consistent structure:

• Type badge — the entry kind (Designer, Product, Material, Method, Concept, Vehicle) with an emoji and color.
• Cover image (when present) — a 16:9 hero above the title.
• Title and one-sentence description — always the first thing to read.
• Metadata line — last-reviewed date, reading time, source count, and (when applicable) dates.
• Material swatch (for materials) — a colored, textured swatch representing the material's surface.
• 3D model (when present) — an interactive viewer you can drag to rotate and scroll to zoom.
• Body text — the entry itself, with anchor-linked headings that appear in the sidebar's On this page menu.
• Gallery (when present) — clickable thumbnails that open in a full-screen lightbox with keyboard navigation.
• Measurements (when present) — metric/imperial toggle, remembered across the site.
• Lineage (for designers) — master-apprentice relationships shown as a three-column diagram.
• Sources — numbered references with author, publisher, year, and links.
• External references — Wikidata, museum collections, and other authoritative sources.
• Cite this entry — APA, MLA, Chicago, and BibTeX formats with one-click copy.
• Was this helpful? — quick feedback and an error report button.
• Related entries — a mini-graph and cards linking to connected entries.

Glossary links

Any link between entries shows a hover preview with the entry's title, type, and first sentence. This lets you explore without losing your place.

Sidebar

On desktop, the sidebar shows the entry's details (category, type, dates, alternate names), contributors, tags, and a clickable On this page table of contents. The active section highlights as you scroll.

Learning paths

A learning path is a curated sequence of entries that builds understanding step by step. Paths are hand-written — they're what the editor recommends, not an algorithm.

Visit Learn to see all paths. Each path has a progress tracker (saved to your browser): check off entries as you finish them and the path's progress bar updates. You can uncheck at any time. Progress is per-device.

The current path — Introduction to Industrial Design — is five entries and about 45 minutes.

Bookmarks & history

Bookmarks

Click the bookmark icon at the top-right of any entry to save it. A badge in the header shows how many you've bookmarked. Visit Bookmarks to see them all. Your bookmarks are stored locally on your device — no account, no sync.

Recently viewed

The homepage shows a strip of your last few visited entries. This makes it easy to return to something you read yesterday without bookmarks. History keeps the last 50 entries.

Recently added

Below the hero on the homepage, the newest entries are shown. As the encyclopedia grows, this becomes your "what's new" feed.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? anywhere to see the full list. The most useful ones:

About the data

Each entry is written in MDX with typed frontmatter. The content is validated at build time:

• Broken cross-references fail the build. A related slug that points at a missing entry stops the deploy.
• Fewer than two sources produces a warning. Kept as a warning rather than an error so entries can be written incrementally, but every entry in the catalog has at least two cited sources.
• Unknown tags produce a warning. Tags must be declared in content/tags.json, which keeps the vocabulary stable and the tag hubs useful.

The full content is available as JSON at /api/entries.json, and a plain-text index for language models at /llms.txt.

Accessibility

The site is designed to be usable across input methods:

• Full keyboard navigation for search, the command palette, the graph (arrow keys + Enter on nodes), and every page.
• A visible skip-to-content path via Tab from the top of any page.
• Every image has descriptive alt text; every interactive element has an accessible name.
• Reduced-motion preference is respected — animations and smooth scrolling are disabled for users with prefers-reduced-motion.
• High-contrast typography on both light and dark themes; the accent color is randomized but always meets contrast on both backgrounds.

Privacy & technology

• No cookies. No third-party trackers, ad networks, or fonts served from external CDNs.
• Local-only personal data. Bookmarks, reading history, and learning-path progress live in localStorage. Clear your browser data and they're gone.
• Static site. Every page is pre-rendered HTML served from Cloudflare's edge network. No server, no database.
• Offline reading. A service worker caches visited pages. Reload while offline and previously visited entries load.
• Privacy-respecting analytics. If enabled, Plausible (a cookie-free analytics service) records page views and search queries anonymously. No personal identifiers are stored.

Contributing

There are three ways to help:

1. Report an error. Every entry has a Report an error button that opens a pre-filled email with the entry's title and URL. Add a description of what's wrong and, if possible, a source.
2. Suggest a term. Missing a designer, material, or method? Email [email protected].
3. Write an entry. If you have expertise in a specific area and want to contribute an entry, mention your background and one or two sources in the email. Entry authorship is credited in the sidebar of the published page.

FAQ

Still have questions? Get in touch.