A new book by Stephanie & Isaac Budmen

Applied Curiosity

If you've hit the point where no one has the answer, because no one's done this before: this is a field guide for exactly that.

Stephanie and Isaac Budmen, drawn in a dense pen scribble: Stephanie smiling under Isaac's arm

Stephanie and Isaac Budmen have spent fifteen years in the unknown on purpose.

Here is some of what came out of it.

Press coverage in:
CNN Fox News Forbes Wired Architectural Digest

Everything interesting is on the other side of something nobody's done.

Which means the moment you can't find the answer is not the moment you're lost. It's the moment you got somewhere worth being.

  • The airplane.
  • The computer.
  • The lightbulb.
  • The song that changed the genre.
  • The thing your industry didn't see coming and can't stop talking about now.

Every one of them started right where you are. In the dark. With no map.

The unknown is the doorway.

This book is for you, if you're a maker. A founder. A teacher. A musician. An artist. A curator. A creator. Or someone good at the job who's ready for something else.

The part you need doesn't exist. So you're going to have to make it.

You've read every playbook. None of them help you build your company.

Twenty-eight students in front of you, and you can feel the exact moment they disengage.

You can hear it in your head. Nothing you play sounds like it.

The concept in your head and the work on the canvas are not lining up.

The thing is too fragile to touch and too important to hide.

You've made the thing everyone liked. You don't want to make it again.

You're good at the job, but you are ready for something new.

Pre-order · $32 · ships September 18

How do you navigate the unknown?

Applied Curiosity is a practice. Like daily exercise. The practice requires two things: a method and principles. A way to move and a way to be while moving.

Creative Discovery Method

Four steps. A cycle. A path through the unknown.

Ten principles

A way to stay oriented when there is no map.

Four steps. Ten principles. One book.

Applied Curiosity is the complete field guide: the method, the principles, and seven projects where we used them.

Inside the book

436 illustrated pages. No two alike.

Every illustration made by hand, in watercolor and pen plotter.

One line for each of the 436 pages.

436 illustrated pages · $32

For practitioners, by practitioners

We didn't have a map either.

Fifteen years of walking into the unknown on purpose, asking questions nobody had answered, and building our way to the other side. Every one of those projects came with the same problem: no instructions. So we kept notes on what worked.

This book is those notes.

Stephanie teaching at a workshop table, leaning in over the students' work
Isaac presenting on stage, microphone in hand, Scarab Vase slides projected behind him

Our work has been welcomed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

If you follow the method, you can change something too.

Four printed copies of Applied Curiosity on a wood table: three stacked flat showing their thick page edges, one standing upright on top with the orange cover facing out

Pre-order Applied Curiosity.

Here's what changes.

A project stalls, and you don't sit with it. You know the next move. You hit a wall with no one to ask, and you work it through yourself. It breaks, and it will, and you know that breaking is part of it, not the end of it. The search comes up empty, and that stops being the end of the road. It becomes the starting line.

And the part that doesn't exist yet? You build it.

436 illustrated pages by Stephanie and Isaac Budmen. Pre-orders ship September 18. When a printing sells out, we print more.

People come to this book for different reasons. Here is an honest door for each.

For your own stuck work

You have a project that stalled and a question no search can answer. The method in this book exists for exactly that.

As a gift

For the curious person in your life, the one who is always mid-project. Shipped to them, or to you for the handing over.

Give a copy →

For a team or a classroom

Studios, schools, museums, and companies order in quantity, often paired with a talk or workshop from the 2026 tour.

Write to hello@budmen.com →

Bring Applied Curiosity to your people.

The authors, Stephanie and Isaac, come to schools, museums, libraries, design programs, and companies: talks, workshops, and short residencies.

The format is whatever the room needs: a reading, a conversation, a build session with materials on the tables, a week working alongside your people on something specific. They've done all of it, and they're good at adapting.

See tour dates and ask →
Stephanie and Isaac presenting the Buildini printer on the dome of a full planetarium
Stephanie and Isaac laughing across a worktable while assembling a wooden structure in their studio