How Domino Builders Create Spectacular Displays
Domino is a game in which players place domino tiles on a table so that they touch one another at both ends. Each tile has an arrangement of dots, called pips, on one side and is blank or identically patterned on the other. When a player puts down a domino, it starts a chain of tiles that gradually increases in length. A player can only play a domino that matches the number on one end of the chain or that is a duplicate of a previous domino in the chain.
The tiles may be arranged in 3D shapes, flat arrangements or even lines of dominoes. They’re usually stacked on top of one another in a careful sequence, and if the first piece is ever so slightly tipped, the entire domino structure falls, or “dominates,” in a cascade. Domino builders can create spectacular displays that make the laws of physics seem to break down before your eyes.
Hevesh is a professional domino artist who has built structures for movies, TV shows, and events—including a music video launch for pop star Katy Perry. She also hosts a popular YouTube channel and has created a series of intricate domino art installations. Hevesh creates the complex, 3-D sections of her designs first, then adds the flat arrangements and the lines of dominoes that connect them together. She sometimes works on projects involving hundreds or even thousands of dominoes. Hevesh spends months creating her elaborate setups and then films them in slow motion to check that they’ll fall as planned.
She’s worked on several projects with a total of more than 300,000 dominoes. Her largest creations can take several nail-biting minutes to fall. Hevesh has a great deal of experience with dominoes, and she knows that it’s important to test each section before adding the others. She also carefully arranges each section to ensure that the whole structure will work, including all of its details.
While Hevesh has a lot of practice with her craft, she’s not the only person to have stumbled upon this intriguing pastime. Many people have discovered that there is something very satisfying about building a line of dominoes and then watching them tumble in a beautiful, rhythmic cascade. It’s this phenomenon that gives rise to the phrase “domino effect,” a term that can refer to either the literal, observed series of domino collisions or to a metaphorical description of a causal chain that affects multiple people.
When a domino effect occurs in a business, it typically means that a company’s strategy is working well and that its policies are being implemented effectively. For example, Domino’s CEO Don Meij appeared on an episode of the show Undercover Boss where he sent himself to work in Domino’s restaurants and monitor how employees were treating their customers.
He quickly saw that some of the ways that Domino’s used to do business were no longer effective. He implemented new changes, such as a relaxed dress code and leadership training programs for employees, and made sure to communicate with the employees to find out what they wanted from the company. The result has been a consistent level of quality in the Domino’s restaurants and an increased customer base for the company.