Human Design was formulated in the late 1980s by Ra Uru Hu (Robert Alan Krakower), who combined the I Ching, astrology, the chakra system and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life into a single chart, the bodygraph. The five types are one of its central features. The atlas presents the system as a contemporary construction with a datable origin, describing its terms without endorsing its claims.
The atlas gives each type its defining condition and its strategy. The nine centres that determine the types, and the channels and gates that connect them, are treated in their own categories, within Modern Synthesis Systems.