How to determine your Type in Human Design
The Type in Human Design (in Russian it's written both as a transliteration, “khyuman dizayn,” and as “dizayn cheloveka”) isn't chosen by description, like a sign in a magazine horoscope. It's derived from the chart by a strict rule: two people looking at the same bodygraph and counting by the same rule must name the same Type. If the Types differ, there can be two reasons: different input data or different rules. Below you can see how to tell one from the other.
First the arithmetic. The calculation takes two moments: birth and the point when the Sun stood 88 degrees earlier along the ecliptic — roughly 87–92 days before birth, depending on the time of year: the apparent motion of the Sun along the ecliptic is uneven. For each moment the positions of thirteen objects are taken, 26 activations in all, and each falls into one of the 64 Gates. There are 36 channels and nine centers. A channel counts as whole only when both of its Gates are active, and then it defines both centers it connects. A single Gate without its pair defines nothing.
Then three questions, strictly in order. First: is there at least one defined center? No — Reflector, no need to look further. Second: is the Sacral Center defined? Yes — it's a Generator or a Manifesting Generator. Third: is any motor connected to the Throat? With a defined Sacral, “yes” gives a Manifesting Generator, “no” a Generator. Without a Sacral, “yes” gives a Manifestor, “no” a Projector.
Nothing else takes part in determining the Type: not the Profile, not the Authority, not the zodiac sign. The calculation page has everything needed for these three questions: below the bodygraph are the cards “Defined centers” and “Active channels.” Which two centers a channel connects is written in the channel guide — every channel in the list links to it. So the rule can be checked by hand.
Generator or Manifesting Generator: how to tell from the chart
The whole difference between a Generator and a Manifesting Generator — and in exactly the same way between a Projector and a Manifestor — is in the third question: is a motor connected to the Throat. There are four motors: the Sacral Center, the Heart (Ego), the Solar Plexus and the Root. The Throat, in the system's description, is the place where energy becomes word and action. 13 channels lead to the Throat, and only four of them go directly from a motor: 20–34 from the Sacral, 21–45 from the Heart, 12–22 and 35–36 from the Solar Plexus. The Root has no direct channel to the Throat at all.
But the connection doesn't have to be direct. A chain is counted: motor, intermediate center, Throat — as long as each segment is a whole channel. An example: channel 25–51 connects the Heart with the G Center and by itself gives a Projector. Add channel 1–8 from the G Center to the Throat — the Heart reaches the Throat through the G, and the site's engine calls such a chart a Manifestor. Same with the Sacral: channel 5–15 alone — Generator, 5–15 together with 1–8 — Manifesting Generator.
The reverse trap: “both the Sacral and the Throat are colored in” means nothing yet. Channels 3–60 and 1–8 define the Sacral, the Root, the G Center and the Throat, but those are two separate islands, and there is no road from the motor to the Throat between them. The result is a Generator.
How common this case is, we calculated with our engine: 2000 random dates from 1950 to 2015, 24 hours in each, 48,000 charts in all. Among the charts of Manifesting Generators, in 26% the motor-to-Throat link ran only through a chain, without a single direct channel; among the charts of Manifestors, in 17%. If a calculator looks only at direct channels, it will call such charts a Generator and a Projector. So when two services give different Types for the same data, open the list of channels and trace the chain from the motor to the Throat with your finger.
What percentage of people is each Type
The site's guide gives these shares: Generator — about 37%, Manifesting Generator — about 33%, Projector — about 20%, Manifestor — about 9%, Reflector — about 1%. They add up to a hundred.
Schools differ already in the count. In some accounts there are four Types, and the Manifesting Generator is a variety of the Generator; then Generators account for about 70%. In others, and with us too, it's singled out as a fifth, because there is a mechanical difference — that very motor that reaches the Throat.
Where the percentages themselves come from. These are estimates circulating in the Human Design literature, not a census: we haven't come across a count of living people by Type. We checked them from the other side — in the same 48,000 random charts the share of each Type diverged from the guide by no more than three percentage points. Most for the Projector (we got about 23% instead of 20) and the Manifestor (about 7% instead of 9). But that is a share of moments in time, not of people: births are unevenly distributed over the year and the day. And rarity says nothing about value: there is no hierarchy of Types in the system, and we have no need to invent one.
The Strategy of each Type — in brief
Within the system the Type is needed for one thing — the Strategy, that is, the rule for how to enter into things. Everything below is a description of the system, not an established fact about people: Human Design has no evidence base, and we know of no studies that confirm these rules. Read them as hypotheses to test.
Generator: wait for a response — don't invent a task from your head, but answer with a bodily “yes” or “no” to what has already appeared in front of you. Manifesting Generator: the same, and after the response — inform those who will be affected. The signal of failure for a Generator the system calls frustration, for a Manifesting Generator — frustration and anger.
Manifestor: inform before acting — don't ask permission, but tell; the signal of failure is anger. Projector: wait for the invitation in big things — work, relationships, moving — and don't hand out unsolicited advice; the signal of failure is bitterness. Reflector: stretch big decisions over a lunar cycle, about 28 days; the signal of failure is disappointment.
There's no need to retell the nuances of each Strategy here — the blog has separate pieces: “Sacral Response of the Generator: What It Actually Sounds Like,” “Manifestor: Why Anger Is a Sensor, Not a Vice,” “Projector: How Not to Burn Out in an Ordinary Job” and “Reflector: The Rarest Type and Life by the Lunar Cycle.” The links are at the end of the article.
How to test your Type's Strategy: a week with control days
A Type description can't be tested: formulas like “the engine of life” or “a mirror of the community” will fit anyone. A Strategy can, because it's an action, and an action has a result. You need control days: without them any week looks like confirmation. In the articles about the Generator and the Manifestor the same experiment is laid out for their Strategy — with their own examples of a “day by Strategy.” For the Reflector the experiment is monthly; it's covered in the next section.
Preparation — the evening before. Write down the main task for each of the next six days — before it's known which days are which. Then flip a coin: heads — days 1, 3 and 5 go by Strategy, tails — 2, 4 and 6. The other three days are ordinary: enter into things as always. That way the easy tasks won't end up in the “right” days by your own choice.
What a “day by Strategy” means. For a Generator and a Manifesting Generator — take up the main task only after a bodily “yes” to what has already appeared in front of you, not by a plan from the head. For a Manifestor — before the main task, briefly tell those it will affect. For a Projector — don't offer help or advice until asked, and start with whatever you were invited to. The rule for the day is written down in advance, together with the tasks.
Every evening — two marks: the main task “done” or “not done,” and how it went — “easily” or “with effort.” Only the pair “done and easy” counts. This matters: four Strategies out of five tell you to wait, on such a day you take on less, and “easy” comes out simply because less was done. Don't reread past marks until the seventh day, so the tally doesn't hint today's answer.
On the seventh day, count. The threshold is set in advance: the Strategy passes if “done and easy” in its days is at least two more than in the ordinary ones — three against one, two against zero. An edge of one day doesn't count, and here is why. If the Strategy changes nothing, and a good day comes up like a coin toss, an edge of at least one day will occur by itself in 22 of 64 arrangements — roughly every third week. An edge of two — in 7 of 64, roughly every ninth; with a different share of good days (we recalculated from 20% to 80%) — even more rarely. It didn't pass — then this part of the calculation didn't fit you. That is a result, not an error of the experiment.
How to test the Reflector's Strategy and what the test doesn't prove
The Strategy “wait out a lunar cycle” isn't alternated by days: it doesn't fit into a week, and a test that can't be carried out can't be failed. So the experiment is different. Take three decisions that can wait a month. Write down today's answer to each in one word, put the note away and do nothing. After 28 days, without looking at the note, answer again — and only then compare. All three answers out of three matched — waiting gave nothing, this part of the calculation didn't fit. Another variant, a diary of one decision, is described in the article about the Reflector. The diary from that article shows whether your attitude to a decision changes over a month; the sealed note tests something else — whether the answer after a month differs from today's. These are different questions.
Now the limits. Both tests can only fail the Strategy, not prove the system. You know what day it is today, and waiting can itself make it easier; six days is a tiny sample, and even with a two-day threshold chance passes it about once in nine weeks; an answer a month later changes without any Moon at all. A passed test means one thing: the rule is worth holding for another month and recounting the same way.
A short version of this experiment — without the coin and the threshold — is at the start of the PDF reading on the site. And about what shouldn't be decided by Type: quitting a job, breaking up, getting treated or not. A Type is three questions to a scheme of nine centers, calculated from the positions of the planets. Whether it's useful as a language of self-observation is found out in a week with a notebook. As a source of knowledge about the world it hasn't been tested.