The CODE-X series catalogs a vast codex of source codes (aka “signs”) extracted from past audits.

Note that signs on their own, while sometimes interesting, only become truly revelatory and useful once they’re sorted into thematic complexes, and the complexes into codes, and the codes into a meaning map. We call this process “thick description”; the Code-X series is thin description.

“TEQUILA RELEASE” NORM: The tequila experience is — crucially, though not entirely — about shedding inhibitions, going a little wild, having good stories to tell the next day.

“TEQUILA RELEASE” FORMS: In the US popular imagination, going “south of the border” to Mexico has long meant, at some level, shedding the husk of repressed northern-ness and cutting loose.

From a 2015 audit of the Tequila category.