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When we look at the universe, how much of ourselves do we see?

2023

When we look at the universe, how much of ourselves do we see? is a set of illustrated books, one enclosed within the other. The smaller book represents us humans, the larger book represents the vastness of our universe.

The two books only make sense when read together, yet users can mix and match pages to form their own narrative. Full of space speculation questions, it is a short and introspective read about humanity's history with our universe, using space as a medium to pose questions about the complexity of human nature.


There are 2 perspectives to approaching space:
  • Human-centric (where humans are the centre of the universe)
  • Humans as cosmically insignificant, and just a small speck in our galaxy

To portray this, I wanted to have two books, one smaller book representing us encased within a larger book representing the universe. Since the human book is much smaller than the universe book, it shows how we are a small speck in the universe. Yet if you open the two books up, the human book takes up the center of the universe.

A thin book sleeve (obi) with the words "us" and "universe" bind both books together, reiterating our relationship with space.

When read together, the two books form a coherent narrative.





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Illustrations

This book is printed with white ink on black paper and uses exposed spine binding. All illustrations were drawn on Procreate. The illustrations for each page spread can be seen below.

Only one typeface, Kepler, was used throughout the book due to its connections with astronomy.


Pick-your-own reading experience

Certain spreads in the larger book were designed such that multiple pages of the smaller book could match the illustrations in the larger book.

One example is shown below, where 4 pages of the small book can be matched to 1 page of the large book.

This makes the reading experience more dynamic and fun for the reader.


Towards the end of the book, a reflective surface was pasted when the main question, "When we look at the universe, how much of ourselves do we see?" was asked.