Hex Signs: Barn Star Maker

Arcadia

In-app purchases

About this app

Hex Signs is a workshop for the painted stars and rosettes of the Pennsylvania German barns. Build your own sign layer by layer on a circle, share it as a picture, save it as a vector, or set it as your wallpaper. Then let the app walk you through painting it on a real board, with a compass and a straightedge.

Every design is built the way a painter would build it: a circle divided by compass and rule into 4, 5, 6, 8, 12 or 16 equal parts. Seven, nine and eleven cannot be drawn that way, so they are not offered, and the Lore explains why.

DESIGN
• Symmetry of 4, 5, 6, 8, 12 or 16
• Layers: discs, rings, scalloped borders, rosettes, stars, and motifs (birds, tulips, hearts, leaves) set round the circle
• Six palettes, or your own colours
• Undo, save, and open any design again later
• Export as PNG, as SVG, or as a phone wallpaper

PAINT IT
• Give the diameter of your board in centimetres or inches
• Step by step: where to put the compass, how far to open it, where to lay the straightedge
• Lengths, never angles: no protractor needed
• The drawing grows with each step, from the first circle to the painted sign
• Euclid's own propositions named where a construction comes from

GALLERY
• Sixteen starting designs in the traditional manner: six-petalled rosettes, compass stars, birds and tulips, hearts round a star
• Every one opens as a copy you can change

LORE
• Stars on the barns: what was painted, and when
• The word hex: where the name came from, and the two stories told about it
• The sign trade of the 1940s and 1950s, and where the "meanings" came from
• Talisman or decoration: the two ways of reading the signs
• The daisy wheel scratched into beams and doors across Europe
• Why seven points are missing: Gauss and the drawable polygons
• Every claim is marked: documented with its source, a revival story from the twentieth-century sign trade, or our own reading

BRAUCHEREI
• 167 entries from John George Hohman's Long Lost Friend (1820), the book of blessings, charms and household remedies of the same Pennsylvania German community
• Each quoted as the book prints it, with a note on who used it, for what, and how it was read

A home-screen widget shows a barn star of the day from the gallery.

Everything is drawn on your device. No account, no sign-in, no network needed to design or to read.

Free to install, with ads. A single one-time purchase removes them.