The Elements of Euclid

A redesign for the first six books of THE ELEMENTS OF EUCLID, written by Oliver Bryne. The assignment was to layout all 35 definitions used in the book in an interesting and modern way that would be more appealing for a younger audience.

The book uses colored diagrams and symbols to explain geometry, instead of using letters and numbers, and sticks to a very strict color palette of red, yellow and blue. I liked the original design of the book, so I knew I wanted to stick with a similar concept, but just in a way that would be more eye pleasing and easier to read, since the original book is very cluttered and can be confusing to figure out. Instead of using the primary colors, I changed the, brightness, hues and saturations to end up with a beautiful palette of turquoise to represent the blue, magenta to represent the red, and a light/dark grey to represent the yellow.

Following the original concept’s idea, I used colored diagrams and symbols on each spread so the reader would be able to see the written definition, but also examples of what they’re reading surrounding it. Since I was sticking with only four colors through out the entire book, I worked with a pattern: for every page I would use a different color for the background, the definition number, the definition itself, and for all the different shapes, and would switch it every other spread. That way, the book would have cohesion but wouldn’t be too repetitive.