#Voynich manuscript 2016 how to
#Voynich manuscript 2016 full
#Voynich manuscript 2016 free

The first assigned a reference number to each page of the manuscript the second was a sequential record of each page as it was photographed. When photographing each page of the manuscript, the Beinecke Library had worked with two numbering systems. Everyone involved wasВ understandably anxious about accuracy. Many members of the enthusiastic audience for this new facsimile publication are already familiar with the entire Voynich Manuscript, so any mistake in sequencing its pages would prove seriously embarrassing.

#Voynich manuscript 2016 full

I started with quarter-size models, and then increased to 50 percent, and finally full size. (Design boards are full-size, color-laser proofs showing the bookвЂ™s jacket and the textвЂ™s design.) However, the Voynich project clearly required a great many intricate, time-consuming comps (working models). The need to print design boards for client presentations has mostly disappeared now that sending pdfs of design pages and spreads to clients has become so expedient. In its way, a part of each copy of this book is handmade.

#Voynich manuscript 2016 how to

Even after we agreed on how to present the facsimile pages in our book, its foldout section, defying all automated binding capabilities, required extensive hand-work to insert the foldouts into the standard text sections prior to binding. The manuscript is unusual in that it features two sections of very complex four-, six-, eight- and even twelve-page foldouts.

#Voynich manuscript 2016 free

We watched as a conservator leafed through and described the manuscriptвЂ™s pages in the Beinecke LibraryвЂ™s climate-controlled, dust-particle free conservation laboratory. We really began to understand how the manuscript was structured when we visited New Haven for a showing of the actual object. Several leaves, indicated by dashed lines, were removed or lost at some time.] The quantity and size of the foldouts (quires 9вЂ“11, 14, 15, 17, and 19) are unusual for the time. The Voynich Manuscript consists of 20 quires held together in a bookbinding technique typically in use in 15th-century Europe.

RenГ© ZandbergenвЂ™s excellent website, The Voynich Manuscript, helped us understand this obscure-looking diagram:

We also received a diagram showing how the parchment pages were grouped into quires, groups of four or more pages folded, gathered, sewn, and bound into the original wooden binding nearly 600 years ago. I first saw the manuscript on the Beinecke LibraryвЂ™s website. Typically I reserve cover-to-cover reading of an illustrated book IвЂ™m designing until the bound book is delivered. Once IвЂ™ve begun a layout, however, text becomes one navigation point among many, including art placement, chapter openers, and folios. As a result, IвЂ™ve spent a great deal of time resolvingВ the tension between focusing on a projectвЂ™s content and surveying its form in order to provide a seamless and pleasurable reading experience.В My work requires me to review a manuscript to understand the subject and determine which points are important to highlight. Many of my design clients are editors, authors, curators, or scholars. Unable-or unwilling-to sell the strange manuscript in his lifetime, it became part of his estate, later to be sold to another dealer, who ultimately gave it to Yale UniversityвЂ™s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1969. Its history includes centuries of intrigue, subterfuge, political upheavals, and deception, which brought it to its namesake, the rare books dealer Wilfrid Michael Voynich, at the start of the 20th century. Scientific analysis of its physical properties dates the manuscriptвЂ™s creation to the late 15th century. A wealth of information is contained in this roughly six-by-nine-inch book, but neither its language (affectionately referred to as вЂњVoynicheseвЂќ) nor its enigmatic illustrations have ever been deciphered.

The Voynich Manuscript contains more than 200 parchment pages filled with densely packed, beautiful calligraphy intertwined with brightly colored botanic illustrations tiny, meandering human figures and convoluted, symmetrical designs. Occasionally I find it difficult to understand the complex subject matter of a book that Wordesign has been commissioned to produce, so I took heart in learning that, inВ this case, I was not alone. The book would include the first full-size reproduction of the entire manuscript, along with a collection of essays that explore the manuscript from different perspectives. In 2014, Yale University Press approached Wordesign Services to copyedit, design, and produce a facsimile edition of the Voynich Manuscript, a very old, mysterious, beautifully illustrated text. The Absolutely Unique Challenges of Publishing the Voynich Manuscript Fascsimile Book