Dear Commons Community,

In December and early January, I read a book  by Christopher de Hamel about illuminated manuscripts (see my blog posting). Having read several other books on the subject, I found it intriguing how individuals, mostly monks, working by themselves for months painstakingly produced magnificent copies of historic material that included colorful images to accompany the text.  Some are short pieces dealing with a single religious theme while others are quite lengthy.  The vast majority of illuminated manuscripts were produced between the fifth and sixteenth centuries. There are still a few “limners” who practice the art today in the traditional fashion. However, de Hamel’s book got me thinking what it would be like in our modern world to produce such work,  specifically, how digital technology would be used.  Hence, the birth of my “technuscript.”

An illuminated manuscript  is by definition produced by hand.  A technuscript (if you look in a dictionary or on Google, there is no such word) would use many of the same design elements that characterized the medieval illuminated manuscripts but would employ digital technology to produce the finished product.  On a whim, I set out to try and emulate in an all-digital document, the design features employed by the manuscript copiers.   

I decided to create my technuscript from  an article I published in the Online Learning Journal in 2017, entitled “Theories and frameworks for online education:  Seeking an integrated model.”   I selected this article because it has a number of colorful images with which to work.  However, I enhanced the article substantially by adding images produced by generative AI software.  The design features I took from traditional illuminated manuscripts included:

1. Using bright,  jewel-toned colors (reds, blues, yellows, greens) in the images;
2. Employing a variety of image sizes from small thumbnail to full pages;
3. Placing borders on images;
4. Using an antique block font on a vellum-style page background for the text;
5. Colorizing the first word of each paragraph.
   

Below are some sample pages to illustrate the style I used.  The entire technuscript is available at: Article Matted Matura Script PDF

I would love to receive feedback from any of you reading this posting as to what you think about my efforts.  As an aside, this project became a labor of love and a six-week diversion with my wife, Elaine, encouraging and critiquing me along the way.

Tony

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