Domino is a large, flat, thumbsized rectangular piece of wood or other material bearing from one to six pips or dots (28 such pieces form a complete domino set). The term may also refer to any of several games played with such pieces. The games are generally won by causing one domino to fall over and then arranging adjacent ones in lines or angular patterns.
Hevesh started collecting and building dominoes at age 10. By 18, she had created her own YouTube channel where she shared videos of her intricate domino creations. Her art ranges from straight lines to curved, gridding arrangements that form pictures and 3D structures like towers and pyramids. She has worked on projects involving 300,000 dominoes and holds a Guinness World Record for the most dominoes toppled in a circle—76,017. Each of her elaborate layouts take multiple nail-biting minutes to set up and are subject to the laws of physics.
The key to a successful domino construction is timing: each subsequent domino must hit the previous domino at exactly the right moment for the cascade to work. The same is true for stories: a story that feels overly long (heavy on minutiae) or too short (missing important moments of discovery, tension or plot points) is unlikely to work.
It is the power of this one-and-a-half times-your-size chain reaction that fascinates many people when they watch professional domino builders create elaborate sequences and reactions before a live audience. It is why people are drawn to a variety of domino-related activities, including competitive domino shows and the popular YouTube hobby of creating domino art.
Even Domino’s, the largest pizza chain in the US and a perennial target of late-night comedians, has taken steps to modernize its image. In recent years, it has rolled out custom-designed delivery vehicles, launched new digital verticals, and launched a line of home-decorating products in partnership with Crate & Barrel. Some of these initiatives may be driven by a desire to boost sales, but they also show that Domino’s is serious about its commitment to innovate and compete with independent pizza makers who have more resources to invest in better ingredients, technology and ambiance.
The most obvious example of this is Domino’s new Pizza Lab, a research facility in California that aims to “create the next generation of pizzas, delivery vehicles and customer experiences.” The company recently announced a partnership with Ford to develop a self-driving vehicle that can carry up to four pizzas at once. The vehicle will be capable of autonomously driving on highways and city streets, and can be operated remotely via the Domino’s app or by an onboard computer. The project is expected to be ready for commercial use in 2023. This is a small step toward Domino’s vision of a fully automated, driverless future that it hopes will lead to eventual pizza-delivery drones. However, many critics argue that Domino’s has not invested enough in improving the quality of its product to justify the effort required to implement its automation plans.