Eclipse
As a personal project, I decided to design a set of glyphs. I love the sense of intrigue that space and sci-fi evokes as a genre, and I was inspired to explore the feeling through this design.
Starting with the concept of an 'eclipse' as my base, I decided to build each glyph with shapes overlapping a solid circle.
Each shape used was inspired by various fictional and non-fictional sources such as monoliths, imperial starships, and crescent moons.
By working within these restrictions, I pushed my creativity and was forced to truly examine each individual letter in order to identify its recognizable traits.
In the end, I feel I've achieved a set of glyphs that are still recognizable as Latin letters yet provide an 'alien-like' tone.
To show off the glyphs, I decided to create a set of posters that act as a space glossary. These images are free-to-use images that NASA provides through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website.
Click or tap the title to learn more about each picture.
Astronaut
An astronaut (or cosmonaut) is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft.
This particular astronaut is Buzz Aldrin of the famous Apollo 11 moon mission.
Booster rockets
Mobile Launcher Platform (MLP) number 3 and a set of twin solid rocket boosters, atop the crawler-transporter, inch along the crawlerway in support of the second engineering analysis vibration test on the crawler and MLP.
The crawler is moving at various speeds up to 1 mph in an effort to achieve vibration data gathering goals as it leaves the VAB, travels toward Launch Pad 39A (framed between the boosters), and then returns.
Curiosity
Curiosity is a car-sized robotic rover exploring Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL).
This self-portrait is actually 66 combined exposures taken by the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager.
Discovery
Discovery flew 39 space missions during its operational life, the first in 1984 and the last one in 2011.
It notched more spaceflights than any other space shuttle, or any other spacecraft for that matter.
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System’s four terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to accommodate life.
Full moon
This outstanding view of the whole full moon was photographed from the Apollo 11 spacecraft during its trans-Earth journey homeward.
When this picture was taken, the spacecraft was already 10,000 nautical miles away.
Galaxy
A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas and dust, and dark matter.
This particular image is of the Andromeda galaxy, which is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way.
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit by Discovery in 1990.
This image is of the Hubble Space Telescope as it began its separation from Space Shuttle Discovery in February 1997.
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. It is arguably the most expensive single item ever constructed at an estimated $150 billion in 2010.
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in the Solar System.
A distinct feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope.
This colour map of Jupiter is a combination of images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft as it was on its way to Saturn.
Kennedy Space Center
The John F. Kennedy Space Center is the NASA facility supporting Launch Complex 39, originally built for the Saturn V which is the largest and most powerful operational launch vehicle in history.
This image from 1970 shows the Apollo 14 spacecraft leaving the Vehicle Assembly Building. The interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather, including rain clouds that form below the ceiling on very humid days.
Lunar module
The Apollo Lunar Module, was the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft built for the US Apollo program to carry a crew of two from lunar orbit to the surface and back.
This photograph shows Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin in front of the lunar module.
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury.
Named after the Roman god of war, it is often referred to as the “Red Planet” because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance.
Neptune
Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System.
This image was taken at a range of 4.4 million miles from the planet, 4 days and 20 hours before closest approach.
Observatory
Observatories are a room or building housing an astronomical telescope or other scientific equipment for the study of natural phenomena.
This particular observatory is one of the Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) located at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawai'i, United States.
Probe
A space probe is a robotic spacecraft that leaves Earth orbit and explores space. It may approach the Moon; enter interplanetary space; fly by, orbit or land on other planetary bodies; or approach interstellar space.
This is an image of Voyager 2. It is currently in interstellar space after more than 37 years of travel. It is expected to continue until around 2025, when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough power to operate any of its scientific instruments.
Quasar
A quasar is a highly energetic core in a young galaxy believed to be powered by a big black hole.
This is an image of Centaurus A, an active galaxy at a distance of 10 million light years from Earth.
Rosetta Comet Mission
The Rosetta mission was a European Space Agency mission with contributions from its member states and NASA.
It is the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the Sun, and deploy a lander to its surface.
This view shows Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as seen by the OSIRIS wide-angle camera on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft on September 29, 2016, when Rosetta was at an altitude of 14 miles (23 kilometers).
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter.
This image was captured by the NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and shows the characteristic hexagon of Saturn which is wider than two Earths.
Titan
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. It is the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth where clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.
This image shows the south polar region of Titan and a depression within the moon’s orange and blue haze layers near the south pole.
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System.
This is a view of Uranus taken by Voyager 2. This image was taken through three color filters and recombined to produce the color image.
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty and second to the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky.
This is a composite and colourized image made from the multiple Venera spacecrafts that were sent to Venus. Each craft lasted for roughly an hour in temperatures near 482 degrees Celsius and an atmospheric pressure 92 times stronger than what we feel on Earth.
Wolf–Rayet star
Wolf–Rayet stars are evolved, massive stars which are losing mass rapidly by means of a very strong stellar wind, with speeds up to 2000 km/s.
This is an image of nebula M1-67 around Wolf–Rayet star WR 124 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Space X
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is an American space transport services company. It was founded in 2002 by Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk, with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars.
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Russian Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.
On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.
Zodiacal light
Zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, diffuse white glow seen in the night sky that appears to extend up from the vicinity of the Sun along the ecliptic or zodiac. It is best seen just after sunset in spring, and just before sunrise in autumn, when the zodiac is at a steep angle to the horizon.
This image is composed of 520 photos from the Hubble Telescope and shows the entire Orion Nebula in visible light.
