First impressions are important, even if we don’t want them to be. My first impression of these ancient manuscripts is they are extremely ornate. Color is used extensively and most of the colors are bright colors. I will focus on the Bible from Ethiopia to illustrate the four principles of design. The first C – Contrast: The bright colors on the pages of the book create one contrast. Another example of contrast is the different stripes on the pages of the canon tables. The canon tables themselves are an example of R – Repetition. Each page has a table with a similar design. The symbols drawn on the pages with text are also an example of repetition. A – Alignment: The pages with text have columns that have justified alignment; the pages that are illustrations all have the same amount of margin. Last, the illustrations all have elements in them that show P – Proximity. All of the pictures that have multiple parts to the story have the characters of each part close together. The parts of the page are obvious yet they create a cohesive page.
All of the parts of the books that are shown on the British Library virtual books pages have a common thread. To show importance on the pages the artists used color. Royal colors show titles and headings, reds, blues and golds. In the Bible from Ethiopia, the symbols on the pages with text are all reds and golds and they are numerous on the pages, indicating importance.
When I looked at the books, the beautiful drawings made me want to keep turning the pages, to see what would be on the next page. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t read them without help, they were worth looking at.
To view the ancient manuscripts used in this assignment visit the following website: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks.
