Diagrams were an important part of Dustin Parsons’s childhood. Parsons’s father was an oilfield mechanic, and in his spare time he was also a woodworker, an automotive mechanic, a welder, and an artist. His shop had countless manuals with “exploded view” parts directories that the young Parsons flipped through constantly. Inspired by those manuals, Exploded View's “graphic” essays play with story-telling conventions through a mixture of machine-like illustrations and lyrical text.