This Isaac Newton quote probably refers most particularly to the work of 2 great scientists who came before him: Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei. Although Newton is still regarded as one of the greatest scientists to ever live, having made major contributions to the fields of mathematics, optics, celestial mechanics, and of course, the study of gravity, over 300 years ago, he had to acknowledge that his leaps would not have been possible had he not studied the foundational works of those who came before.

In other words, read a book.

As for the image, there are fairy tales that involve smaller birds flying higher and farther than stronger birds by riding on their backs, and there are several sets of photographs of this phenomenon which you can Google at your leisure. It’s a documented fact that little birds sometimes hitch a ride on bigger birds.

The kerning on this one is off, because I only had a really limited time to work (I actually wanted to put in clouds, but as it was it took 30 minutes longer than I wanted) and didn’t measure properly. The letters were cut pretty haphazardly, no guidelines, no rulers. I just counted the occurrence of the individual letters and cut them of folded paper, so I only had to do each shape once.

In addition, I spilled a 1/4 bottle of rubber cement all over my shirt/the cement without noticing. That’s a first for me.