When snow began to fall while he was walking across the Charles Bridge in Prague late in 1610, the eminent astronomer Johannes Kepler asked himself the following question: Why do snowflakes, when they first fall, and before they are entangled into larger clumps, always come down with six corners and with six radii tufted like feathers? 

Johannes Kepler (1571-1631) was a crucial figure in the seventeenth-century astronomical revolution. This contemporary translation was a pleasure to work with. The book is formatted with facing Latin and English translations, and embedded throughout are illustrations by Capi Corrales Rodrigáñez. We also designed certain passages into shapes such as the six-cornered shown above. I have long been in love with all things typographic and this book gave me the opportunity to consider all the typographic elements, from the front cover typographic lock-up, through to the footnotes, and the overall layout which is inspired by early manuscript design and their dependence on the golden mean ratios.  

“…snowflake drawings and a snowflake poem from 1990 are also included, the latter typographically displayed in snowflake form on the pages. Even the endnotes in this wonderful little book are interesting and educationally fun to read.”
—Jay Pasachoff in The Key Reporter

Publication Design

Cover Design