Nicholas Rougeux is a Chicago-based web designer and artist. Literary Constellations is a series of posters designed to resemble constellation maps but instead of being based on real stars, the shapes are based on first sentences from chapters of classic novels.
When a story is well-written, you can become so immersed while reading that it becomes your world. All your surroundings disappear and all that remains are the words on the page guiding you through the story. The first words of a story—and even every chapter—are unique in that they set the stage for what’s to come.
Nicholas Rougeux
The constellations depicted in the posters are created by using the words of first sentences of each chapter to draw a path based on word length and part of speech.
The directions of lines are based on part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) and the length of the line is based on the length of the word. Star sizes are also based on word length:
He then hand-arranges these constellations in a clockwise pattern, with a faint highlight connecting each chapter in order.
I want to paper my bedroom ceiling with these posters and sleep under a literary star-filled sky.