Recently, my family went to a big family reunion. To identify ourselves, and just because it was cool, we made up shirts for our family tree, starting my my parents and listing my family, and my brothers and their families.

The basic idea of the shirt was a chemical symbol, with each person being one atom. I did some research on how chemicals symbols are illustrated, and hexes seemed to be the way to go. I also wanted to encode a lot of other information in the design, like marriage or blood relations, generation information, and names. Marriages are indicated by a solid line, and blood relations are a double line. Generations are listed by the size of the hex, with my parents being the largest, then my brothers and I (and out wives) being smaller, and the grand-kids being the smallest hexes. The age order of my brothers and I starts with myself in the upper left (the oldest), and goes left-to-right by rows down to Will (the youngest).

I had it easy for names. Each hex shows just the first and middle initial of each person. Because my parents only had boys, we all have Wedig for our last name, so everyone on this shirt is a Wedig.

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