The Bottom Explains the Top

The Bottom Explains the Top

Produce ONE image, 16:9 landscape: an iceberg diagram. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.

First — do you have the fields?

If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.

Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.

The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.

If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.

Fields — replace these six lines only

• The subject, and the line under it: {a title, and one sentence}
• The three visible symptoms: {three}
• The causes below, each tagged to the symptoms it produces: {four or five, each with its symptom numbers}
• The closing line: {one sentence}
• The proportion: {how much bigger the submerged mass is}
• The palette: {below, above, and an accent}

The causation law

An iceberg is not a way of saying *obvious things* and *less obvious things*. It is a claim: what you cannot see is producing what you can. The diagram has to show that, or it is a tapered list.

Every symptom above the water is traced to at least one cause below. Number the symptoms 1, 2, 3. Then each cause carries the numbers of the symptoms it produces, set beside it in the accent colour.

• Every number 1, 2 and 3 must appear at least once below the water. A symptom nobody explained is a hole in the argument.
• A cause that explains nothing above it is background, not a cause — cut it or find the symptom it produces.
• One cause may produce several symptoms, and one symptom may have several causes. That is the useful part.

A reference run of this style put three symptoms above and five causes below, beautifully drawn, with nothing linking them. Two separate lists in one picture, asserting hidden causation and demonstrating none.

The proportion law

The ratio is the argument. An iceberg is chosen precisely because almost all of it is out of sight, so the submerged mass must be several times the visible peak — the fields say how much.

A diagram split evenly across the waterline says the hidden part is about as important as the visible one, which is not what anybody draws an iceberg to say.

The layout

• The waterline runs across the frame, roughly a third of the way down, with the surface disturbed and light scattering through it.
• Above: pale sky, the peak, and the three symptoms placed around it, each with a number badge, a short bold label, one line of detail, and a thin leader to the ice.
• Below: deep water darkening with depth, the great submerged mass, and the causes listed down it — each with a small line icon, a bold label, one or two lines of detail, and its symptom numbers.
• The closing line in a quiet block at the lower right, set as a contrast: treating the top against treating the bottom.
• Two section labels — one above the water, one below — naming what each half holds.

The image fills the frame. No portrait sheet floating inside a wider canvas, no blurred side panels, no border.

Nothing invented

Symptoms, causes and their tagging all come from the fields. No percentages, counts, dates or named organisations. This diagram reads as diagnosis, and an invented cause is an invented diagnosis.

Style

Photographic or cleanly rendered ice, but the type is flat and graphic: modern sans, white above and below, one accent for the numbers. Everything legible against its ground — pale type on the dark water, dark or white type on the pale sky, never mid-grey on mid-blue.

Never

• ✕ a symptom with no cause tagged to it
• ✕ a cause that explains nothing above the water
• ✕ the two halves drawn as unconnected lists
• ✕ a waterline near the middle, or a submerged mass barely bigger than the peak
• ✕ the diagram inset inside a larger canvas, or given side panels
• ✕ percentages, counts, dates or named organisations

The result

A diagram that argues instead of arranging: three things anybody could have told you, a great dark mass of the things they could not, and a line drawn between them so the connection is the picture rather than the implication.