Origami Diagram

折り図 / 1950s– / Style / Diagrammatic Expression

The dotted-line-and-arrow language systematized by Akira Yoshizawa for writing three-dimensional folding onto flat pages. Mountain and valley folds read across languages, and the crease pattern became an object of mathematics.

Origami Diagram — Origami crease pattern (CC BY 4.0) · © Nicoguaro — Origami crease pattern (CC BY 4.0) · CC BY 4.0 · © Nicoguaro

Origami Diagram — Origami folding diagram, Rooster — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Hadi Tahir — Origami folding diagram, Rooster — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Hadi Tahir

At a glance

Visual cues

Mountain and valley line styles
Arrows guiding each step
Sequential step diagrams
The geometry of crease patterns

Best used for

Guiding a stepped procedure to the end without using any words
Publishing a fold so another person reaches the same result

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Dictionary entry

Type: Dash dot for mountain, dashed for valley, never varied across figures
Composition: One action per figure, its result confirmed at the top of the next
Material: Front and back in two tones, turns and flips marked by arrows
Caution: Packing several folds into one figure hides where to begin, the paper stops matching the drawing, and the reader cannot finish.
Further study: Yoshizawa and the Yoshizawa-Randlett system / Robert Lang's computational origami / the diagrams' international legibility

Related entries

Blueprint (ブループリント)Shared effects: Technique.Compare Origami Diagram and Blueprint
Jianzhi (Chinese Paper Cutting) (剪紙)Shared effects: Play.Compare Origami Diagram and Jianzhi (Chinese Paper Cutting)

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