meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
99% Invisible

The Fancy Shape

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.827.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2014

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Quatrefoil is the name of the four-lobed cloverleaf shape. It’s everywhere: adorning Gothic cathedrals, more modern churches, Rhode Island mansions, mission-style roofs in California, and decorating victorian homes from coast to coast.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

0:04.0

You know when you notice something for the first time and suddenly it's everywhere.

0:11.0

My friend Julie Shapiro has a thing for personified teeth on dentist signs, where the cartoon tooth often has a smile and teeth of its own.

0:19.0

I always notice these now.

0:21.0

That in anthropomorphize pigs who are selling themselves as barbecue, that

0:24.8

always gives me the creeps, and one day I notice that sign stores, you know the ones that print

0:29.3

homemade banners and posters for you, always without fail have the ugliest collection of signs with

0:34.4

horrible fonts in their front windows. Now I can't pass one on the street without

0:38.4

taking a picture to document the ironic tragedy. Lots of things are like this for all of us on staff.

0:44.4

We can get obsessed with tiny little design flourishes,

0:47.0

and this is what happened to producer Avery Trufflement.

0:50.7

It was just a shape.

0:52.2

A basic little shape.

0:53.0

It's rendered in concrete on a building by my house.

0:56.0

It's patterned in an office doorway down the street.

0:58.0

Here's what it looks like.

1:00.0

Imagine a simple stylized four-leaf clover flattened with no stem, very symmetrical.

1:06.7

I took a walk and I found this shape in ten different places.

1:10.1

It was embroidered on bedding, it was plastered on wallpaper, it was patterned in a public garbage can.

1:15.0

You'll see it anywhere you see great Gothic Revival building, the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York,

1:22.0

the Washington Cathedral. You will also see it in domestic

1:26.5

architecture in the great as they're called cottages down in Newport, Rhode Island.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.