idea No. 409 (April 2025 issue)

[Feature]
In Search of Beautiful Books: Manuscripts and Design in Medieval Europe

A manuscript is a book in which characters were copied by hand in the era before the invention of movable type printing. Medieval European monasteries had writing rooms called "scriptoriums," where "scribes" copied characters onto paper (parchment) made from the skin of animals such as sheep or calves.

Medieval manuscripts are known for their lavish use of gold leaf and color, as well as beautiful calligraphy, such as the Duke of Bury's Most Sumptuous Book of Hours, said to be the most beautiful book in the world, and the Book of Kells, a national treasure of Ireland. These manuscripts are not just religious books, but are also highly regarded as works of artistic value.

Not much attention has been paid to the design aspects of manuscripts that took into consideration the convenience of the reader, such as page margin design, layout, and color schemes. However, the scribes who created manuscripts could be said to be the forerunners of modern-day graphic designers, as they not only adjusted font size and color schemes, but also sometimes used infographics to provide visual aids to help readers understand.

This special feature focuses on the "design" of the books created by these scribes, and by analyzing the manuscripts from the perspectives of layout, format, binding, color scheme, and typeface, we explore the connection to modern graphic design. We would like to reconsider what makes a beautiful book by exploring the ingenuity and passion of people who created books, such as the process common to modern DTP and design, such as setting guidelines to arrange the text beautifully, reserving space in advance for illustrations and decoration (illustration) initials, which an illustrator would fill in later, and the playfulness that scribes and decorative artists showed in the little "free space" (such as the margins of the pages) that remained amid the "constraints" that have existed in any era.

Planning and composition: IDEA Editorial Department Cooperation: Toshiaki Koga Design: LABORATORIES (Kensuke Kato, Sae Kamata)
Font collaboration: De Aetna revival (Riccardo Orocco, Michele Patane)

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IDEA No. 409 (April 2025 issue) | Seibundo Shinkosha Co., Ltd. (seibundo-shinkosha.net)