On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the French National Research Agency (ANR), we conceived and designed a publication for the MOJO project – one of six scientific projects honoured during the anniversary evening held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The event celebrated two decades of research funding by giving a platform to the scientists and projects that have shaped the ANR’s history.

The MOJO project is grounded in the research of Alessandro Morbidelli, a planetary scientist at the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, at the J.-L. Lagrange Laboratory, and Professor at the Collège de France. Funded by the ANR in 2013, the project investigates the role of giant planets in the formation of planetary systems.

Developed by Yasmine Abouchar, Quentin Dissard, Kevin Forest, and Hélène Trinh, the project explores a visual language inspired by orbital dynamics, gravitational phenomena, and scientific representations of the cosmos. The art direction is built around a precise, rigorous, and calibrated use of typography, centred on Mabrok and Renai Serif – two typefaces distributed by the Babelfont type foundry. Their formal contrasts and editorial discipline structure a graphic system that weaves together, illustrations, diagrams, and pictograms, in order to visually convey the notions of movement, collision, and trajectory inherent to planetary dynamics.

Les Perséides / Le Papier du Mois is a collaboration between Fedrigoni, Spaciofino and L’imprimeur Simon. Every month, Fedrigoni organises a collaboration between a design studio and a printer to showcase their range of papers. Responsible for the August 2025 edition, Spaciofino took inspiration from the Perseids, a meteor shower that occurs every summer. The result is a leporello – measuring 560×205 mm and printed on Cocktail Blue Moon 120 g/m² paper, contained in a pocket revealing a poem by Pierre Reverdy, “Étoile filante” (“shooting star”). On the back, the studio has drawn a star collection reminiscent of a naturalist’s board.

The typography uses Neue Haas Unica by Monotype. Fedrigoni’s branding on the other hand (as seen on the envelope) is set in Forma DJR by David Jonathan Ross.

From Monika Rohner’s website:

One year ago (August 2021) Swiss Post contacted me and asked if I would be interested in taking part in a competition for a stamp to celebrate the research station on top of Jungfraujoch. Swiss Post invited three studios for the briefing to the “Top of Europe”. We spent an amazing day at 3’500 meters above sea level and came back with a lot of impressions, information and fotos on our smart phones. After a clearly defined design process, a committee at Swiss Post decided whose stamp design should be produced. I was the lucky winner and, in addition to the stamp, was also allowed to design the sheetlet of 10 stamps and the first day envelope with a special stamp.

The stamp depicts the Sphinx Observatory, one of the highest astronomical observatories in the world, which has a viewing platform at a height of 3,572 metres (11,719 ft). The typeface chosen by Rohner is Steradian.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Chad. License: All Rights Reserved.

A history of our knowledge of the solar system – from the observations of Babylonian astronomers to the modern theories of Albert Einstein.

The Kingdom of the Sun is a non-fiction book by Isaac Asimov. First published by Abelard-Schuman in 1960, Collier brought out a paperback edition in 1962. Four years later, the publisher commissioned S. Neil Fujita with a new cover design, which is shown here. For the title and author name, Fujita used Inserat-Grotesk a.k.a. Neue Aurora VIII, in all-lowercase letters.

In 2022, the Patrick and Lina Drahi Foundation came to us for the creation of a one-of-a-kind educational program.

Space Ed is dedicated to the understanding of our universe as a whole: physics, astronomy, art, society, sustainability on earth… The program is aimed at children, students, and even adults.

An apt use of Ben Bold, a squarish sans with high contrast and rounded corners, for The Sky at Night 3 by Patrick Moore, published by the BBC in 1970.

Ben Bold was first shown by British type provider Photoscript in 1968. Typeshop copied it under the alias Blackpool. Its designer is unknown.

From the inner flap of the jacket:

Patrick Moore has now been presenting his Sky at Night programme on BBC television every month for over thirteen years, and as a member of the studio team for the BBC’s coverage of the Apollo flights he is familiar to countless viewers. This is the third collection of The Sky at Night material and covers the period from July 1967 to the end of 1969.

From the author’s preface:

Two previous volumes of The Sky at Night have been published, and this present book takes the story up to the end of 1969. It has been a momentous period. Men have reached the Moon; there have been soft landings by automatic probes on Venus, and spectacular pictures of the craters on Mars. In the field of stellar astronomy, those strange objects the pulsars have made their entry, and we have even seen a brilliant nova or new star. By taking events in chronological order, I hope I have managed to present a record which will be of some historical as well as current interest. This, at least, has been my intention; whether or not I have succeeded must be left to the reader to judge.

Peace Bird EP vinyl cover (front)

The music of the Swedish Genius of Time is characterized by a certain elegance and grace – using tension and wonderful percussive elements to create a novel blend of Deep House. Peace Bird is the 8th EP by the Swedish duo, published by Running Back in 2019.

The cover and layout were designed by Lastminutepanic (Charalampos Lazos), and feature only the free MICR-based typeface Twobit, by Pixel Sagas.

[More info on Discogs]

The association for the re-alignment of magnetic dust (RAM) presents its first volume with Earth Moon Earth And Other Round Trips—a collaboration between experimental electronic pop/leftfield musicians Orlando and Tom Furse. Each contributed a side on the concept of round trips.

The cassette tape is limited to 25 copies. All text on the cassette layout is set in the medium weight of Neue Helvetica (1983), except for the release code on the spine (RAM 001), which is set in the bold weight of Myriad SemiCondensed (1992).

[More info on Discogs]

Pink Premier Shaded with its low-waisted A for the jacket of The Planets, a book by Richard Baum (1930–2017), astronomical writer and trained artist, and Director of the Terrestrial Planets Section at the British Astronomical Association.

See also Water in the Garden for another book published by David & Charles in 1973 that also fetaures Premier Shaded, and probably was designed by the same person.

Nestled in the designated dark sky area of the Sperrin Mountains, OM Dark Sky Park and Observatory at Davagh Forest offers a unique indoor and outdoor visitor experience.

Inside the building – itself designed in sympathy to the forest surroundings – an engaging and fun visitor experience with hands-on physical interactivity and state-of-the-art digital interventions can be found.

The exhibition makes connections between ancient archaeology and astronomy, including how ancient farmers used the movements of the sun and moon to understand the change in seasons.

Interpretation design helps visitors understand and explore our own solar system in more detail. Tandem’s role extended from inside to the exterior and surrounding landscape.

The typefaces chosen for this project were based around our views on interpretation design. Interpretation design must inform, provoke and inspire the visiting public. When choosing how the content would essentially 'speak' to the visitors, we were conscious of legibility along with how the content could be approachable.

FS Me is used for running texts. It was designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities. The font was researched and developed by Fontsmith with – and endorsed by – Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disabilities.

Montserrat by Julieta Ulanovsky, a typeface inspired by the old posters and signs in the traditional Montserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires, embodies warmth. As it’s been developed and inspired by the urban typography that emerged in the early half of the twentieth century, it acts like a direct tone of voice to the world and the visitors. In this project, it is used for headlines. Its default a was replaced by the alternate, single storey form.

Both of these typefaces are extremely accessible to visitors and work well together to communicate the knowledge clearly, while being visually intriguing.

The site and observatory is one of only two dark sky parks on the island of Ireland to receive international Dark Sky accreditation.

Presented at the Louvre Abu Dhabi in spring 2018, Le Monde en Sphères (Globes. Visions of the World) was an exhibition designed by BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) presenting almost 200 impressive works, objects of art and knowledge, from the collections of the BnF and from private collections, which embody on spherical vision of the world: terrestrial and celestial globes, armillary spheres, astrolabes and manuscripts.

For the exhibition Michelines Studio designed a catalogue that explores the history of the spherical representation of the world from antiquity to contemporary times showing terrestrial and celestial globes, armillary spheres, astrolabes and manuscripts.

The catalogue uses Pathos from R-typography paired with Prensa by Occupant Fonts. The cover typeface appears to be Linotype’s Neuzeit S or similar.

Title screen

The Planets is a 2019 BBC television documentary series (five episodes) about the solar system presented by Professor Brian Cox. The visually spectacular series looks at each planet in detail, using extensive computer-generated imagery and footage from space missions. Brian Cox links the segments with pieces from various desolate locations around planet Earth.

All on-screen text uses Gill Sans. It’s been the BBC’s house typeface for many years, and the association with Gill goes back to the 1930s.

But Gill Sans will soon be leaving the BBC’s orbit. While they’re continuing to use it for their logo, they’ve recently started introducing their own typefaces, Reith Sans and Reith Serif, that are now appearing across their extensive web site, including most of the Planets page. The starry header image manages to avoid using either font, using Gotham instead.

Audiobook cover

Mars caption

Venus caption

Web page for The Planets (2019)

Hoefler & Co’s Archer typeface is used in nearly all typography for Anaptár — a unique, informative poster calendar, which is not only a work of beauty but also a source of fascinating new discoveries. This is much more than a traditional calendar. It provides lots of information beside enumerating days, like visualizing data on the sun and the moon in a new way. The calendar shows the movement of these planets in the sky, and because of the radial arrangement this huge amount of data is incorporated in a spectacular, complex and yet easily comprehensible system.

There have been other calendars with circular designs, but this data visualizing method is unprecedented. It literally makes astronomic correlations visible.

“I conducted a survey some years ago on how people see a year. It turned out that almost everyone saw it linearly. It seemed that it was cyclical only in my head, that is I saw it in a unique way. The Moon has fascinated me since I was a child. I wonder why it appears at different heights and in different sizes in different phases of its cycle. This curiosity led me to design the first Anaptár, the creation of which is a rather meticulous but loveable task for me.” — Anna Farkas

Anaptár is the result of exceptionally meticulous work: all the versions made for various cities are different because the represented data are specific to the given city only.

Lined up in a grid, the moon phases form a beautiful gradient, that looks different every year. The 2019 moon calendar uses Graphik for displaying the dates and additional information. It can be viewed and ordered on Helder Brand Design's website.

A theoretical complete rebrand for Griffith Observatory, the iconic public observatory in Los Angeles. Focused on emphasizing the playful interactivity of the space and its accessibility to visitors of all ages.

384.400 is the distance (in miles) from earth to moon and it is also the name of this fanzine designed by Leticia Ortín (Ara Estudio) and Miguel Anønimo. The magazine presents photographs that NASA captured on the Apollo 11 trip in 1969, when humans set foot on the moon for the first time.

2018 lunar calendar print, designed by Masha Davydova and Kevin Sullivan. Screen printed in Providence, RI by Sawtooth Editions. The poster features a large, translucent moon, and the days of each month are arranged into circles. The title and month names are set in Moon — a distinct sans serif released ca. 1972–76 (designer unknown) that was never digitized.

Two colorways are available for purchase at m00ns.com, where you can also find out more about the prints.

Cover image by Jessica Dessner

4AD:

Planetarium is an album co-composed by four musicians: Bryce Dessner, James McAlister, Nico Muhly, and Sufjan Stevens. Flanked by a string quartet and a consort of seven trombones, this unique collaborative ensemble has assembled an expansive song cycle that explores the Sun, the Moon, the planets and other celestial bodies of our solar system (and beyond) through soundscape, song, science and myth.

The Vinyl Factory:

With a concept that shoots for the stars, it’s not surprising that the vinyl release is equally expansive. To do it justice, eleven artists were commissioned to create eleven astral portraits of nine planets, the sun and the moon, all of which are presented on individual 12″ cards slipped into the album’s gatefold.

Artwork: Cecily Brown (Earth), Jessica Dessner (cover image), Marcel Dzama (Moon), Stephen Halker (Mars), Jim Hodges (Neptune, inner gatefold image), David Huffman (Uranus), Karl Jensen (Sun), Ragnar Kjartansson (Pluto), Mehreen Murtaza (Mercury), Nathlie Provosty (Jupiter, back image), Matthew Ritchie (Saturn), Saya Woolfalk (Venus)
Layout: Alison Fielding

The typography pairs two typefaces that were both first released in 1972, Rosmarie Tissi’s Sinaloa — see also The Tomita Planets (1976) — and ITC Serif Gothic by Herb Lubalin and Tony DiSpigna, which appeared in the advertising for Star Wars (1977), among other places.

Double LP

Lyrics

Vinyl labels

Back cover with an image by Nathlie Provosty

CD cover

Announcement poster

A detail of the calendar

Designed and produced by Johannes Lang, using DJR’s Input Mono Condensed. Not to be confused with Just van Rossum’s 2017 moon calendar that also uses Input. High-res PDF available here.

Designed and produced by Just van Rossum using DJR’s Input Mono. High-res PDF available here.