Astronomers who probe the mysteries of galaxy formation traverse a bumpy road. Some galaxies are easy to distinguish by shape: there are spheroidal ellipticals, and spirals, which contain a bulge at the centre of a disk of stars in which spiral arms curl. But how do these different types form? Does one type evolve into the other? A simple new simulation shows how a spiral galaxy might form from a single gas cloud that first collapses into many large stellar clumps.