About

The Explanatorium is the work of Connal Hughes, a graphic designer living in Oakland, California. When not thinking of new ways to explain things I’m working with my wife at Cabbage Design Company, a design studio we founded 4 years ago.

What is The Explanatorium? A site full of things whose sole purpose is to explain something to you. The name was born from a conversation with my brother a number of years ago. There’s an amazing science museum in San Francisco called the Exploratorium. It’s an “experimental, hands-on museum” with hundreds of great exhibits designed to be touched, thrown, listened to, yelled at and jumped on. It is the very definition of exploration. Discussing the last time he visited the museum, my brother misspoke, referring to it as the Explanatorium – and the concept of the worst museum ever was born. A place where you were not allowed to touch anything and all demonstrations consisted of a polite docent telling you (but never showing you) how things worked. It also spawned the condescending expression “Let me take you on a little trip to the Explanatorium.”

For this site, I resurrected the name, though hopefully not the original concept.

If you have any questions or comments, drop me a line at connal {at} explanatorium.info.