Joannis Fernelii ambianatis Cosmotheoria, libros duos complexa : Prior, mundi totius & formam & compositionem : ejus subinde partium (quae elementa & caelestia sunt corpora) situs & magnitudines : orbium tandem motus quosvis solerter reserat. Posterior, ex motibus siderum loca & passiones disquirit : interspersis documentis haud poenitendum aditum ad astronomicas tabulas suppeditantibus. Haecque sejunctim tandem expedite praebet Planethodium. Cujusque capiti, perbrevia, demonstrationum loco, adjecta sunt scholia.
Joannis Fernelius, a Renaissance physician and astronomer from Clermont-Ferrand, published this Latin cosmology and astronomy treatise in Paris in 1528 for scholars and students of the heavens. Its pages are dense black-letter text set in justified columns, with decorated initial capitals, diagrams of orbits, and ruled tables of planetary distances, orbital periods and motions. A designer might take the tables' tidy grid, the bold historiated initials and the compact text blocks as models for structured information layouts.
