# Exploded, with every part numbered

> An exploded diagram pulls an object apart along its assembly axes and labels every piece. Applied to a controller that never existed, it's a design fiction with a parts list.

August 18, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/controller-button-diagram

A controller with three handles, pulled apart into its components along straight axes. Springs,
membranes, a board, a shell in two halves. Thin leader lines running out to numbers, and a parts
list down one side.

There is no such controller. Somebody drew a repair manual for a machine that was never built.

## Why is an exploded diagram satisfying?

Because it explains a thing completely, without words.

Every component is shown separately, in the order it goes together, at the position it occupies.
You can read assembly, count parts and understand a mechanism you've never held. It's one of the
great achievements of technical illustration and it works on people with no interest in the object.

It also flatters whatever it's applied to. Anything drawn this way looks considered.

## Why a controller specifically?

Because it's the object people actually touched.

Consoles sat under a television. Cartridges lived in a box. The controller is the thing that was in
your hands for thousands of hours, that got sticky, that had a stuck button everyone knew about,
that was fought over. It's the most physical relationship anybody has with a game.

Drawing it as a serviceable machine treats that relationship as real, which is more affectionate
than a joke about it would be.

## Can I draw a real controller?

Those shapes are industrial designs and trade dress, and they're defended.

A controller silhouette is one of the most recognisable pieces of design any console maker owns —
several are registered as marks precisely because the shape alone identifies the brand. Button
layouts and symbol sets are the same. Licensable, as ever, but this is a category where the shape
*is* the trademark, so a near-miss still reads as the real thing.

An invented controller sidesteps it entirely and is more fun: three handles, an unexplained dial,
a button nobody knows the purpose of.

## What makes an invented one convincing?

Plausible engineering, not fantasy.

The parts should be things that actually exist in controllers — a membrane, a rubber dome, a
ribbon cable, a spring, a shell with screw bosses. Getting those right is what makes the fiction
land, because the diagram's authority comes from looking like it was drawn by somebody who had one
open.

That's the same standard as
[a wiring diagram that has to be correct](/stories/electrician-trade-shirt) — the built-in
risk is that the people you're trying to impress can check.

## Does it work for other objects?

Anything with parts, and the more mundane the better.

A kettle. A bicycle. A pen. A specific broken thing in somebody's house. Exploded-view treatment
applied to something trivial is a genuinely funny format, and applied to something loved it's a
form of respect.

The parts list is where names can hide — components named after people, or after what they actually
do in that household.

## Is the parts list readable?

It shouldn't try to be, entirely.

A real parts list is a dense column of tiny type, and reproducing that gives texture rather than
information. The printed version wants perhaps a dozen entries at legible size, with the rest
implied. Somebody standing close should be able to read several and want to read the rest.

## Does it print well?

Yes — it's pure line work.

Uniform thin strokes, hard edges, no fills, no gradients. The only risk is line weight: true
technical hairlines will drop out on fabric, so everything wants to be a step heavier than a manual
would draw it, with leader lines particularly bold.

Charcoal, black and deep grey grounds. Two inks — cream for the drawing, scarlet for the numbers
and leaders, which makes the labelling readable rather than uniform.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the machine at [JustOG](/) — what it is, how many parts, and what they're called. Pick a
direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and
shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Part fourteen is the spring that always went missing.