This book is a kind of toolbox for creating new forms. It deals with grid-based design and teaches the reader techniques for developing new shapes, fonts, logos, and patterns. The concept represents a design process in which individual decisions follow much larger and deeper principles than immediate and spontaneously intuitive actions.

Each chapter includes a detailed description of the process, from shape analysis to the creation of design rules and their application, illustrated with a variety of examples. This publication serves both as a workbook and a source of inspiration, providing designers and architects with the tools they need to discover analog, algorithmic, and exploratory forms that are never arbitrary.

The described methods allow for an almost unlimited number of possibilities. Thus, the designer transforms from an inventor to an interpreter or curator, capable of swiftly examining individual forms for logos, fonts, or patterns while ensuring that the design process remains efficient and goal-oriented.

The Ultimate Atlas is an attempt to answer exactly these questions. The starting point is a blank page. It represents the sum of a value, such as the Earth's surface. This total value can be divided into partial values, such as countries, whose areas are represented by white spaces between black vertical lines. This leads to a kind of barcode map, displaying less dense lines on the left side and denser lines on the right side of the page.

Each page of the Ultimate Atlas is a graphical binary code, thus speaking the two-digit language of our time: it is accessible to every known form of intelligence, as it requires the least computational power from both computers and humans.

The Ultimate Atlas, as a logbook of the spaceship Earth, must forgo any embellishment.