I am a book. I am a portal to the universe.

I am a book. I am a portal to the universe. is a new book by Stefanie Posavec and Miriam Quick. The book describes itself:

I’m different to any other book around today. I am not a book of infographics. I’m an informative, interactive experience, in which the data can be touched, felt and understood, with every measurement represented on a 1:1 scale. How long is an anteater’s tongue? How tiny is the DNA in your cells? How fast is gold mined? How loud is the sun? And how many stars have been born and exploded in the time you’ve taken to read this sentence?

In a refreshing and joyful manner, the book explains various bits about the universe in reference to itself, smartly illustrating curious, and sometimes surprising facts. The graphics and illustrations use FF Quixo Light and Italic exclusively, and very inventively: Quixo is not just used for setting the text, but also as a source for graphical elements.

As a type designer, I sometimes wonder if the time spent on drawing characters like U+00A4 CURRENCY SIGN (¤) or U+2202 PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL (∂) is really worth it – now I can say that it definitely is! Both are used not once, but multiple times throughout the book.