a small book of the big bang
Easily one of my most ambitious projects, 'a small book...' is my MA degree project at Coventry University. As the name suggests, the book, which I painstakingly wrote and designed (groans) is about a little part of our universe. I tried making it child/youth/noob-friendly and a whole less technical to make astronomy an easily-approachable subject for beginners.
The Ingredients
Since trying to fit the entire expanse of our universe into one tiny book would be nearly impossible, I decided to divide it into sections, beginning with the beginning - the creation of the universe and historical astronomy, and ending closer home. Each section and piece of text was accompanied by flat, minimal illustrations in pastels. These ranged from star systems to conversations between galaxies, still trying to maintain a more casual approach to the subject.
Star Maps
Another self-proclaimed stellar part of the book would include start charts which almost accurately detail out the positions of the most commonly found Messier objects, divided by time of the year. Accompanying these charts are little bits of information and tips for people trying to explore star-gazing. A great deal of reading, comparing and analysing went into this section since near-accuracy would be difficult to achieve in itself.
Collaterals
Now we cannot possibly expect anybody to read an entire book during a degree show, so I had a bunch of supporting items ready for the audience to interact with. These included, apart from the book of course, a sky-wide star map, constellation and star related flashcards and a ton of pretty little origami stars.
This was a tiny story of small book of the big bang.
