165 design references

Zero University · an illustrated world to explore

Reel by Andrew Chornyy

A company building is an icon. It becomes a choice only when the job is written on it, not just the logo.

Visit website · Zero University

What to look at

An overhead city fills the view. A green dome in the middle reads Join the waitlist. Around it are company buildings, including Amazon, Samsung, OpenAI, Intel, Uber, Airbnb, Stripe, and a red N. A pointer rests on the OpenAI tower, and a card opens over the map: Business Analyst, ChatGPT Conversion Analysis, one sentence about users who are not upgrading, then Codex, Canva, and Google Sheets, plus Join Beta. The view pans. A second card takes its place: the same role at Spotify, Restoring Free-to-Premium Conversion, with Claude, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, and no extra sentence. A white caption stays: "This website is a city."

The OpenAI card names the role, the task, and the tools. The city stays behind it, with no job written on the towers.
The OpenAI card names the role, the task, and the tools. The city stays behind it, with no job written on the towers.
After the pan, a Spotify card has replaced the OpenAI card. Same role, different task, and the map is still covered.
After the pan, a Spotify card has replaced the OpenAI card. Same role, different task, and the map is still covered.

Why it works

Those buildings behave like icons. Nielsen Norman Group says an icon stays ambiguous unless a text label sits with it, and it quotes Bruce Tognazzini: "a word is worth a thousand pictures." Amazon on a tower has information scent for Amazon, not for a business-analyst task. The card is the label: role, task, and tools. Holding that label back until the card opens is progressive disclosure, and the same group says the first screen should hold only a few important options, with an obvious way forward. A field of towers is not a few options. The only plain words on the map are Join the waitlist. The page title, which calls Zero a place to get hired, is not written on the city. Andrew says a visitor will remember the design. That is his claim, not a test.

Try it

  1. Write the page's own line on the city: this is a place to learn a job and get hired, not only Join the waitlist.
  2. Put the role on the building, next to the logo, so the city can be scanned without opening a card.
  3. Keep the task card, and leave the chosen building visible beside it instead of covering the map.
  4. Add a plain list of the same roles for anyone who cannot use the map, or whose canvas does not finish loading.
  5. Turn pinch zoom back on. The card type is already small in a screen recording.

What it costs

A logo city is easy to remember as a picture and weak as a menu. Someone who does not already know the brands cannot tell which tower holds a job. The card covers the map, so the building disappears behind the task. The page sets user-scalable to no, which blocks pinch zoom, and the city is a WebGL canvas. If that picture does not load, the HTML has the title and not the jobs.

Words worth knowing

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