Every constraint shapes what it touches. Some liberate. Some destroy. The difference isn't obvious — until you see the shape.
In 1350, a group of monks had a problem.
They needed to write numbers up to 9,999 — but only had space the size of a fingernail. Six centuries later, fashion designers faced a similar challenge: fit every woman’s body into a single sizing system.
Monks invented a 2D encoding: a single vertical stroke with four quadrants, each representing a digit through rotation and reflection. Lossless compression in a fingernail. The constraint produced elegance.
Designers created sizing by scaling a size 8 template up and down, assuming all bodies are the same shape at different scales. Median waist: 37.7″ = size 18. Most brands stop at 16.
Both started with the same constraint: compress many into few. One created elegance. The other excluded half of all women. What makes the difference?
Eight dimensions reveal the answer. Distilled from Oulipo literature, game design, quantum complexity, typography, and four other domains. Select a specimen or calibrate the sliders.