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Divine pages

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Divine pages

Rune Pettersson & Lennart Strand

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JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY
https://doi.org/10.1080/1051144X.2018.1529886

ARTICLE

Divine pages
Rune Petterssona and Lennart Strandb
a
Institute for Infology, Stockholm, Sweden; bStrand Kommunikation, Eskilstuna, Sweden

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The principle of the Golden Ratio has been used in art and archi- Graphic design; information
tecture for 2,500 years to create aesthetic and harmonious pro- design; Gutenberg Bible;
portions. Many handbooks on graphic design recommend it. visual literacy; divine
Since Gutenberg’s time, books have often been designed and proportions
printed in an upright position that often conforms loosely to the
golden ratio. However, this is not true for the Gutenberg Bible.
The standard medieval margins were in general more generous
than those we have in books today. The common style allowed
for more space at the bottom and the outside margins, as com-
pared with today’s books. It varies a lot where page numbers are
placed in printed books. As it was usually the case in the past,
nowadays too are often placed at the bottom of the page.

Introduction
In fine art many classical formats are based on the divine proportion, or the golden
ratio. Already the Greek Sculptor Phidias had made the statues on the Parthenon fol-
lowing the proportions of the golden ratio. Traditionally, the golden rectangle has
been considered aesthetic in the western world (Bringhurst, 2004; Pettersson & Strand,
2006). The principle of the golden ratio has been used in art and architecture to create
the so-called aesthetic and ‘harmonious proportions’. The golden ratio is a well-known
standard format for fine art, flags, graphic design, symbols and more. During the nine-
teenth century the golden ratio was much used as an ideal in painting academies.
Medieval manuscript Bibles had beautifully handwritten pages with ornamented
drop caps, floral ornaments, and hand-painted illustrations in gold and brilliant colours
in wide margins. When modern printing with movable type evolved, it was necessary
that the Church accepted the new technology, and printed books, rather than the
established traditions with handwritten books and painted illustrations, and also books
printed with a single wood block for each page. The Gutenberg Bible (1452–1454) has
been widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities as well as for the high
technical quality. People often used page formats according, or similar to, the propor-
tions of the golden ratio.

CONTACT Rune Pettersson runepe@telia.com Institute for Infology, Plåtslagarv€agen 55, 146 36 Tullinge,
Stockholm, Sweden
ß 2018 International Visual Literacy Association
2 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

Divine proportion
The divine proportion is an irrational number that is calculated from a line that is div-
ided into two segments, a and b, in a special way. The ratio of the whole line (a þ b)
to the larger segment (a) is the same as the larger segment (a) is to the shorter seg-
ment (b). Thus, (a þ b)/a ¼ a/b (Livio, 2002).
This mathematical relationship forms an irrational number, i.e. a number that never
ends. The divine proportion is also called the divine ratio, golden quota and golden
ratio. We have sometimes also seen other names such as: divine section, extreme ratio,
golden cut, golden mean, golden number, golden proportion, golden section, mean
ratio and medial section.
Around 300 B.C. Euclid of Alexandria (c. 325–c. 265 B.C.), the ‘founder of geometry’,
provided the first mathematical definition of the golden ratio (Livio, 2002). He calcu-
lated with ten decimals the golden quota is 1.6180339887. For at least 2,400 years the
golden ratio has inspired scholars of all disciplines like no other problem in the history
of mathematics (Livio, 2002). In the early 20th century the American mathematician
Mark Barr named this irrational number ‘phi’ in honour of the Greek Sculptor Phidias
(Livio, 2002). Some historians believe that Phidias lived circa 490–430 B.C.
The principle of the golden ratio is comparable to the well-known Fibonacci num-
bers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, and so forth. In this sequence any number, after
the first two, is the sum of the previous two terms. A close approximation of the
golden quota is 8/5 (1.60). A golden rectangle therefore has sides of approximately
the same proportions, 8/5. An even closer approximation of the golden quota is 34/
21 (1.619).
A golden number has a slightly wider ratio (3/2 ¼ 1.5) than the golden ratio. So the
golden quota and the golden number are close, but they are different. This difference
becomes important and obvious in large formats. Both the golden ratio and the
golden number are used quite often. Also the ratio 5/3 is close to the golden ratio,
but different (1.67). This ratio is slightly higher, and sometimes seen in advertising.
This format is also used in art. For example, we can go to a store that sells art materi-
als and buy a ready-made frame with a fully prepared canvas called M10. The size of
Marine 10 is 55  33 cm.
In this paper, we take a close look at a few books that we regard as seminal in the
development of book page design. This especially concerns format proportions, size of
pages, size of text-faces, use of margins, position of page numbers and interaction of
text and pictures. All this is of key interest in the area of information design.

Emblematum liber
In Renaissance and Baroque Europe, the noun emblem was used for pictures contain-
ing allegories, allusions, and symbols (Kluckert, 1999). Emblems influenced celebrations
and festivals, painting, poetry, rhetoric and writing. An emblem consists of three ele-
ments: (1) headline, (2) picture and (3) poem. Usually an emblem has one main mes-
sage, related to moral, nature, politics, religion or virtues. Emblems were developed in
the sixteenth century, and they enjoyed an enormous influence and popularity for at
least the next 200 years, or more.
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 3

The Italian lawyer Andrea Alciato, also called Alciati (1492–1550), wrote 212 moraliz-
ing Latin epigrams in his book Emblematum liber (Book of Emblems). In the first edi-
tion of Emblematum liber, the printer/publisher Heinrich Steyner published the
manuscript with selected woodcuts in 1531. The addition of illustrations and the
apparently promotional use of the phrase Emblematum liber on the title page began
a process that resulted in the recognition that this combination of text and pictures
was a genre in its own right. The proper name for this new genre of illustrated epi-
grams was ‘emblems’ (Bath, 1994, p. 30).
Emblematum liber has been expanded and printed in various editions over several
centuries. Measurements and calculations of on-line pages in a version published in
Spain in 1549, indicate that the printed page in this edition was about 21 cm high and
13.6 cm wide. The page format index (height/width  100) is 154, which is a little bit
lower than the ‘divine proportion’ (index 162), but higher than the ‘golden number’
(index 150). The text-face format index is 174. The text-face is less than half of the
page (41%). In this case, all margins are richly decorated. Here the margins have the
relative sizes: top margin 1.9, outside margin 2.1, bottom margin 2.6 and inside margin
1 (Figure 1).
Glasgow University has a special website for the project Alciato at Glasgow as a
part of Glasgow University Emblem Website. This website gives access to 22 editions
of the emblems of Andrea Alciato. These editions date from 1531 to 1621, in the ori-
ginal Latin, and also versions in French, German, Italian and Spanish. The website pro-
vides keywords that are related to each image as well as to each text in Iconclass, a
subject-specific classification system designed for art and iconography.
A Memorial Web Edition in Latin and English is available online as Alciato’s Book of
Emblems (Barker, Feltham, Guthrie, & Farrell, 2005). There were a total of 171 editions
printed from 1531 to the end of the 17th century. Later production fell off dramatic-
ally, with only five later printings in the 18th century. The edition of 1621 is the princi-
pal source for the images in this Memorial Web Edition. Measurements and
calculations of an on-line page indicated that the printed page was about 18.8 cm
high and 11.6 cm wide, with a page format index of 162, the same as the
golden ratio.
Emblem books are the result of conscious work to mediate messages with symbol-
ically conceived personified abstractions using combinations of form, images and
words. Some of the early work during the Renaissance seems to be in good concert
with aesthetic and functional principles of contemporary information design. Together
with publishers, printers, engravers and woodcarvers Andrea Alciato, and later also
Cesare Ripa (c. 1560–c. 1645) with his didactic encyclopedia Iconologia, managed to
visualize and also communicate allegorical interpretations and moral values in a popu-
lar way to their intended audiences.

De humani corporis fabrica

Professor Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) revolutionized the study and practice of
medicine by his carefully integrated verbal and visual descriptions of the anatomy of
the human body. He is often called the ‘founder of modern human anatomy’.
4 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

Figure 1. The left-hand page 192 from a Spanish edition of Emblematum liber, 1549. With this
book, Andrea Alciato created the ‘emblem’ as a figure in the history of art. The emblem had to
consist of three parts: headline, image and poem. The red line encloses the text-face on the book
page. Note that the page number is in the upper left corner. Source: Wikimedia commons. Alciato.
Emblematum liber (1549), page 192. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Los_emblemas_de_
Alciato_-_traducidos_en_rhimas_espan ~olas_(1549)_(14746960445).jpg]. Retrieved February 4, 2018.

Vesalius was only 22 years old when he graduated the medical school in 1537 in
Padua. The following year he became a professor of Surgery and Anatomy
(Lindberg, 1997).
Based on the observations of the pioneering dissections of human cadavers, he
wrote the first comprehensive, and carefully illustrated textbook of human anatomy,
De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (On the Fabric of the Human Body), known as
the Fabrica. This book presents in seven volumes, a detailed examination of the
organs and the complete structure of the human body.
In 1543 Vesalius supervised the printing of his book in Basel with Johannes
Oporinus (1507–1568), one of the most notable printers of the time. They worked
together with layout, typography, and quality control, and printed the book in a
deluxe folio format (17 5/800  11 3/800 ; approximately 43  28 cm). The page format
index is 154 and the text-face format index is 145 (Figure 2). The text face is four-fifths
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 5

Figure 2. This is the welcome page in the book De humani corporis fabrica (1543). The red line
encloses the text-face on the book page. Source: Wikimedia commons. Vesalius. De humani corporis
fabrica (1543). [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_humani_corporis_fabrica_libri_septem_
Wellcome_L0061044.jpg]. Retrieved February 5, 2018.

of the page (79%). Here the margins have the relative sizes: top margin 2.8, outside
margin 3.2, bottom margin 3.6, and inside margin 1.
The Fabrica consists of 663 pages and 83 plates containing 430 extra high-quality
illustrations. The large images are approximately 32–34 cm tall and 17–20 cm wide,
which is appropriate since many pictures explain the organs in the human body. The
text includes more than 80,000 words. It is written in complex, literary humanist Latin.
The 300 woodcuts in the book were probably based on illustrations made by
Johann Stephan van Calcar and other artists in the studio of Titian in Venice. Some
illustrations were printed with engraved copper plates, called intaglio. This allowed for
very fine details in the pictures.
Fabrica fulfilled an important role as a reference tool in medical science for two
centuries. The first edition was illustrated with woodcuts. A second, revised edition of
the Fabrica was published in 1555. Its typography is even more elegant, and the illus-
trations are spaced better and made more legible. The Fabrica was very popular and
several pirate editions were published. Also, this book is produced in good concert
with aesthetic and functional principles of contemporary information design.
6 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

This epoch-making book was acclaimed, and also highly controversial. Because
Vesalius dared to criticize the prevailing view of human anatomy, he got a lot of aca-
demic enemies. He came into conflict with other professors in Padua and was con-
demned by his teacher in Paris. Previously all physicians based their perceptions of
human anatomy on theories that the Greek physician Claudius Galenos (129–199) had
formulated far more than a thousand years earlier. Although much of what he had
written was completely wrong, his influence on Western medicine continued right into
the 1800s.

Orbis sensualium pictus

The bishop, educator, teacher and writer Jan Amos Komensky, or Latinized Iohannes
Amos Comenius, (1592–1670) was the first person to really show to a broader audi-
ence how visuals and words could interplay in an active way. Comenius forged a phil-
osophy that emphasized educational cooperation, political unity and also religious
reconciliation. He published more than forty titles related to education, including text-
books of an entirely new nature.
Comenius formulated ‘a general theory of education’ (Heinich, Molenda & Russel,
1993, p. 73–75). Didactica Magna (Great Didactic) is a large treatise on education. It
was first published in 1627 in Czech. It was later extended and translated in Latin. This
version was published in 1657 with the title Opera Didactica Omnia. The book con-
tained his educational goals, philosophy and principles. This philosophy presented the
goal of education as the development of universal knowledge among people of all
social classes in all nations, including women and children. Teaching should be
adapted to children’s stages of development.
The teacher shall show everything to everyone, as far as possible, that is: things
that are visible to sight; those that are audible to the hearing. When something can
be perceived by several senses, one should make it available to several senses. To
facilitate learning, teachers should use pictures showing other objects/events than
those children have in their immediate vicinity and therefore can easily
observe themselves.
Underlying Comenius’ use of visuals was a theory of perception that was based on
the idea that we learn through our senses and that this learning imprints a mental
image that leads to understanding. Real objects are preferable, but visuals may be
used as substitutes for them.
Comenius’ conclusion that nonverbal communication between parent and child
both precedes and forms the basis of later language acquisition and development, is
still considered a sound tenet of the theory of visual language (Heinich, Molenda &
Russel, 1993; Moriarty, 1994; Reynolds-Myers, 1985). Moriarty noted that ‘Child devel-
opment scholars would agree that visual communication skills are not secondary,
derivative, impure or peripheral and, in fact, develop earlier than verbal skills in child-
ren’ (p. 15).
Comenius’ illustrated textbook, Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in
Pictures), was first published in 1658 (Figure 3). This book may be the most renowned
and most widely circulated of school textbooks. Here Comenius presented information
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 7

Figure 3. This left-hand page is page 2 of the 1659 edition in Latin and German of Orbis
Sensualium Pictus. In some of the editions this page is mirrored to a right-hand page. The red line
encloses the text-face on the book page. Source: Wikimedia commons. Comenius. Orbis-pictus-002.
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search¼File%3AOrbis-pictus-002.jpg&title¼Special:
Search&profile¼default&fulltext¼1&searchToken¼eqej5tcpd21d4vbnliahrsp9r#/media/File:Orbis-pic-
tus-002.jpg]. Retrieved February 3, 2018.

on the world and on mankind in closely related pictures and words. With 150 illus-
trated chapters the book was designed to teach the pupil Latin with the help of short,
but important and memorable sentences. The page size is 20.2  12.5 cm. The page
format index is 162. The text-face format index is 184. The text-face is less than half of
the page (44%). Here the margins have the relative sizes: top margin 1.1, outside mar-
gin 1.7, bottom margin 2.2 and inside margin 1.
Considered by some scholars to be the first schoolbook designed specifically for
children, the Orbis brought a complete world, combining subjects and modes of life
from near and far into the home. Comenius sought to strengthen the learning of lin-
guistic symbols by visual means. Sensible things are suggested by representative
images, non-representative visual devices (i.e. pictorial signs), and by words (i.e. verbal
8 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

symbols). Artifacts and creatures are shown and also named. Pictorial signs and verbal
symbols indicate various ideas.
The numbers of the illustrations in the book were referred to in the texts. In some
later editions, the text was printed in four different languages. This book was widely
used in both Europe and in the USA for some 200 years. The first American edition
was published in 1810, with texts in Latin and English.

La encyclop
edie
D enis Diderot (1713–1784) was a French art critic, philosopher, writer, and a prominent
person during the Enlightenment. Diderot is best known for his work with the
Encyclopedie. It was a huge undertaking that occupied him for a quarter of a century.
The French encyclopedia Encyclopedie Dictionnaire Raisonne des Sciences, des Artes et
des Metiers (Encyclopaedia or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts)
became the greatest early enterprise in message design and visual information. This
general, great, innovative and epoch-making French encyclopedia is often called only
La Encyclopedie (The Encyclopaedia).
La Encyclopedie included 17 volumes of text, supplemented by eleven volumes of
illustrations. There were 71,818 text articles with a total of 20 million (and one) words
printed on 18,000 pages of text. Illustrations were designed and printed from 2,885
copper engravings by 1772.
A group of publishers in France collaborated to go through with the great encyclo-
pedia project. In 1748 Denis Diderot and the mathematician Jean Le Rond d’Alambert
(1717–1783) were employed as co-editors. Work on the encyclopaedia project quickly
grew in size with several contributors, and employees. This was the first encyclopaedia
to publish the names of the contributors in the books. La Encyclopedie was a collab-
orative effort involving numerous writers and technicians.
Diderot and Jean d’Alambert themselves wrote a large number of key articles.
There would be an inner connection between the articles. The implicit goal of the
entire work was to create a better society. In the article ‘Encyclopedie’, Diderot stated
that the aim of the Encyclopedie was ‘to change the way people think’ (Hunt, 2007,
p. 611).
Diderot and Jean d’Alambert worked together for ten years. Then Diderot assumed
the editorial responsibility. The work continued until 1780. The general attitude was
tolerant, liberal, and above all, rational. Because of the censorship, the editors included
criticism of the church and criticism of the State power in various articles in the huge
encyclopaedia.
The structure of this new encyclopaedia was based on Francis Bacon’s classification
of universal knowledge- the most complete and systematic inventory of areas of
knowledge and human achievement at the time. This assured representation of topics
across the entire spectrum of knowledge.
The page size is 39.3  24.7 cm, the page format index is 159, which is very close to
the golden ratio (Figure 4). The text-face format index is 179. The text-face is more
than half of the page (58%). Here the margins have the relative sizes of: top margin
1.6, outside margin 2.6, bottom margin 2.7 and inside margin 1.
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 9

Figure 4. This is page 2 of La Encyclopedie. The red line encloses the text-face on the book page.
The pages in the 17 text volumes have two columns with text on each page. There are eleven vol-
umes with illustrations. Source: Wikimedia commons. La Grande encyclopedie. [https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Encyclopedie_1pageA.JPG]. Retrieved February 4, 2018.

The three main branches of knowledge are: Memory/History, Reason/Philosophy

and Imagination/Poetry. Unlike prior encyclopaedias, the contributors and the editors
addressed knowledge as a product of human reason rather than divine intervention,
or nature (Darnton, 1979). Knowledge and intellect branched from the three categories
of human thought. All other perceived aspects of knowledge, including theology,
were components of these categories (Brewer, 1993).
The Encyclopedie was primarily intended for the bourgeoisie, and therefore the edi-
tors felt that it was necessary to have comprehensive illustrations. In the first volume,
the editorial staff stated that the illustrations are there to overcome the verbal
language’s inability to describe complex technical conditions and partly to arouse the
reader’s curiosity in order to then proceed to the text for further details. The plates,
namely, the pages with illustrations, are not just supplemental to the text. They can
also be a starting point for further studies in the text (Wlodarczyk, 1997). Already at
the beginning of the 7th century pope Gregorius the Great (about 540–604) had said
10 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

that pictures are used in churches so that those who cannot read at least can look at
the walls and understand what they cannot read in the books (Piltz, 2007; Sandquist
€
Oberg, 2007).
The editors had one huge problem. The accessible printing technology made it
practically impossible to combine text and complicated images in the same book
pages. They had to print the running text with relief printing technology. This only
allowed for very simple line drawings. There were seventeen volumes with text and
two index volumes. All illustrations are organized in 2,885 pages with illustrations,
printed and distributed in eleven image volumes. All illustrations are engraved in cop-
perplates and printed by gravure technique. The illustrations are aesthetic, detailed,
and unique visual reportages. Nowadays these interesting illustrations are easy to
access on the Internet.

Page composition
A blank page of any size can be considered as an ‘available area’. This area may be,
and should often be used in different ways. In all printed matter and media, we can
use space in order to convey the structure of the information. The information can be
grouped and presented in various ways. There used to be plenty of white space on a
printed page. Two of the books presented in the previous section utilized less than
half of the page for the text-face. We should use headings, margins and blank space
to aid communication in a consistent way (Hartley & Burnhill, 1977a, 1977b).
The composition of a page will depend on many factors such as the format of the
page, the ratio between the height and the width of the page, the sizes of the mar-
gins, the text column or text columns, the number of headings, and the pictures.
Different formats have their positive, and their negative characteristics—it all depends
on the needs of the intended audience.
The actual size of a page will depend on many factors such as the purpose of the
document. It can be different to read a novel in bed or search for facts in the heavy
and large volume twelve of your favourite encyclopaedia. Different page sizes have their
positive and their negative characteristics—it all depends on the needs of the users.
The print space, text-face, or type area is the portion of the page that contains the
printed text and often also pictures. This area should be large enough for the purpose,
for the necessary information to fit in. Decorations and pictures might sometimes
reach out in the margins.
In printed documents, the margins have three main functions. The margins provide
space for comments, running heads (or running feet), illustrations, page numbers and
personal notes, and sometimes also decorations. Margins provide space for our fingers
to hold a document while reading it, without obscuring the text. These aspects are
not valid for electronic documents, not intended for printing.

Page formats
We may choose from different page formats in order to fulfill various demands.
People perceive a quadratic page format as safe, stable, and static. The square is often
considered uninteresting, and as such, it is seldom used for books.
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 11

Wide page formats correspond with our vision and our two eyes. In printed materi-
als, wide formats are ideal to present pictures in large sizes with views of cities, land-
scapes and oceans. At the same time, it is very complicated to read texts when lines
often are far too long. However, wide page formats may be needed and successfully
used for documents with complicated technical constructions, instructions, maps
and more.
High page formats are very suitable for presentation of printed text and have long
been the most common formats for books. There are numerous recommendations for
optimum line lengths with variations from 40–50 characters. According to Tschichold
(1991, p. 57) ‘lines should contain from eight to twelve words’. Quite often the opti-
mum line length seems to be about 1 1/2 alphabets–42 characters (Pettersson, 1989;
Walker, 1990).
For hundreds of years, it has been more or less common knowledge in the Western
world that the divine proportion is the ‘right proportion’ for book pages. This propor-
tion has been considered aesthetically pleasing and also harmonious. In the mid to
late twentieth century the book designer, calligrapher and typographer Jan Tschichold
popularized page construction based on methods and rules that had been gradually
developed over many centuries (Tschichold, 1991).
Also, several handbooks in graphic design and typography recommend the use of
the golden ratio (format index 162) or the rather similar golden number (format index
150) as the main guideline for graphic design. In her book, Creative Advertising,
Moriarty discussed the rather similar format 3/5 (or rather 5/3 with format index 167)
and wrote: ‘Most quality books and magazines use page sizes that are close to a 3:5
ratio. The amount of type on the page relative to the overall page size is roughly 3:5.
The proportions of the page margins to the text area are also 3:5’ (p. 237). The
Penguin publishing house has used the page format 18.0  11.1 cm (format index 162)
for more than half a century (Bringhurst, 2004). The following section, The New
Typographic Style, provides more information on this topic.
However, when groups of university students from Sweden and USA were asked to
fold a large white paper (45  45 cm) to a book page that they felt was the ‘most har-
monious book page’, the results showed a large variety (Pettersson & Strand, 2006).
On average the most harmonious book page was 22.7 cm high and 16.6 cm wide. The
mean area was 382 cm2. Very few subjects created book pages according to the prin-
ciple of the golden ratio. The mean page format index was 135 for women and 137
for men. The corresponding format index for a golden ratio page is 162. The devia-
tions from the divine proportion were 27 for women, and 25 for men. To confirm with
the divine proportion the ‘most harmonious book page’ created by the students has
to grow from a height of 22.7 cm to 26.9 cm- an increase of close to one fifth (18.5%).

Page sizes
In traditional publishing, as well as in desktop publishing, the available paper sizes
have defined the possible page sizes for all kinds of documents. The use of standard
page sizes can aid communication and it is often the only paper size that is economic-
ally possible for a project. Hartley and Burnhill (1977b) are strong advocates of
12 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

international standard paper sizes. Their experimental materials are all printed on
A4-paper.
Traditionally, a large number of different paper sizes were defined for large sheets
of paper. Different paper sizes were used for different purposes. Today there is one
widespread international ISO-standard and a local standard used in North America. All
ISO paper sizes are based on a single aspect ratio of the square root of two, approxi-
mately 1:1.4142. The base for the system is the A0 paper (A zero). An A0 paper has an
area of 1 m2, with the sides 84.1 and 118.9 cm (33.1  46.8 in). The A-series of paper
sizes can be traced back to a French law from 1798 for certificate papers. Successive
A-series paper sizes (A0–A10) are defined by halving the preceding paper size along
the larger dimension. In our daily lives, we often use A4 or Legal paper sheets for cop-
ies and computer printouts. A standard A4 sheet is 21.0 by 29.7 cm (8.3  11.7 in). A
legal size sheet is 21.6 by 35.6 cm (8.5  14 in).
The available paper sizes are no longer adapted to classical formats based on the
proportions of the divine proportion. This means that it now is more expensive to
print books and other documents in formats according to the divine proportion. Thus,
formats produced according to the divine proportion are less common now than
before 1798, that is, more than 300 years ago.
There are two practical requirements regarding printouts. It must be possible to
insert single-sided printouts into loose-leaf binders. It must also be possible to bind
double-sided printouts into book form. Thus, right-hand and left-hand pages should
be identical. However, in traditionally printed and bound books, graphic designers
often use different inside and outside margins, and they adapt the page layout for
even more convenient reading.
During the first centuries of book printing, it was not possible to produce books
according to exact specifications. Page sizes of old books vary between different cop-
ies, and also between different volumes (British Library, 2018; So€rensen, 2018). These
size differences may be several millimetres. This does not have to influence the size of
the text-face with printed text and pictures. However, obviously, the margins will be
somewhat different.

Text-Face
The appearance of a book page is governed by the fact that Western readers begin at
the top left of a page and read to the right, one line of text at a time until they get
to the bottom of the text column. Depending on the page size, the page may be
used for one or more columns of text and pictures. Hartley and Burnhill (1977a,
1977b) have done extensive research regarding psychological research on typography
based on basic principles of typographic decision-making. They worked with the fol-
lowing three main principles:

 Use typographic space in a consistent way in order to convey the structure of the
information.
 Use standard page sizes.
 Use grids for pre-planning of pages.
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 13

By clearly grouping headings, paragraphs, illustrations and captions the designer

helps communication. A blank line might separate paragraphs, two lines subsections
and three or four line sections. In this process, the principles from the Gestalt theory
can be utilized (Pettersson, 2017). When we use space to group graphics components,
we apply the proximity principle or proximity law. When we use a consistent type to
signal a particular kind of graphic component, we apply the similarity principle. When
we use grid systems, these are based on a combination of the closure principle and
the continuity principle.
In addition to these principles, many publishers also need to consider the cost of
paper, printing and distribution. In many situations, this means expanding the text-
face, as well as using smaller typefaces than optimal and tight margins. This will
reduce the number of pages and, as a result, reduce the cost.
If one wants to fill the whole width of the page with text, the text must be written
or printed in a large type, with ample distance between each line. It is preferable to
have narrower lines than the whole width. If pictures are used, it might be suitable to
allow them to fill the entire text-face from margin to margin. Essential explanatory
information such as the chapter title, and the page number, may be provided in the
lower or in the upper margins.
In documents with only text, or with text and very few pictures, two columns of
text may function very well on an A4 page. In such a layout, a column width of 8 cm
with text in twelve points is quite satisfactory. However, in documents that have
plenty of pictures, two or more columns will often pose some difficulties and demand
a good deal of extra work. As long as a document is subject to recurring amendment,
supplementation and other updating measures, a layout with only one column
is preferable.

Margins
On each page, the text-face is surrounded by four margins. The right-hand page has a
top margin or header, an outside or outer margin, a bottom margin or footer and an
inside or inner margin (Figure 5). The left-hand page has the same margins in mirrored

Figure 5. The classic model for page design creates large outside margins and very large bottom
margins. Here the gutter has the same with as the outside margins. Drawing by Rune Pettersson.
14 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

positions. In all corners, two margins overlap each other. Taylor (1964) noted that a
surrounding of white space brings attention to any object being surrounded.
Headers, or running heads, may appear at the top of every page. They should
provide information that will help the reader navigate a document. In some books,
every left-hand page has the title of the book and every right-hand page has the
name of the chapter. Headers may also carry page numbers. Lipton (2007) noted
that ‘More generous space at the top can help the eye fall into the type at the
start of the page. They generally do—and should—match from page to page’
(p. 120).
Footers may appear at the bottom of every page. They should provide information
that will help the reader navigate a document. Footers often carry page numbers.
There may also be footnotes.
The text-face is placed closer to the back of the book and to the top of the page.
The idea is that the text columns shall be put closer together. When we view a spread,
the two inside margins (1 þ 1), namely, the gutter, more or less equal to each outside
margin. Thus, each spread has three equally, or approximately equal, wide verti-
cal columns.
When we are reading a book, the pages curve in toward the binding. With very
thick books, the part of the page that is bound will have a section that is very hard to
see and subsequently, read the text. Thus, thick books need to have wider inside mar-
gins than other books.
The standard medieval margins in printed books were, in general, more generous
than those we have in books today. In classical layout and typography of printed
books, margins differ in size. For many centuries the ‘classic’ and ‘ideal’ model for
book page design created large outside and bottom margins. In total, all margins
occupied about two-thirds of each page (about 67%). Right-hand pages in medieval
books could have the following relative margin proportions: top margin 2.6, outside
margin 2, bottom margin 5.3 and inside margin 1 (Wikipedia, 2018).
According to Hartley (1994), Lichty (1994) and Misanchuk (1992) readers today
expect margins to occupy 40–50% of a standard 8 1/2"  11" page, although this
amount is often reduced in professional or scholarly texts. Some guidelines still call for
even larger margins (Burns, Venit, & Hansen, 1988). In fact, available guidelines for
margins really vary a lot. Recommendations for top margins are often between
1.4–3.5 cm, for outside margins 0.6–5.3 cm, for bottom margins 1.4–3.4 cm and for the
inside margins 0.8–2.8 cm (e.g. Ander, 2003; Hellmark, 2000a, 2000b; Lohr, 2010;
Misanchuk, 1992).
For desktop publishing, Bradshaw and Johari (2000) suggested that a general
guideline might be to make all margins one inch on a standard 8 1/2"  11" page. The
American Psychological Association, APA (2001) provided the same guideline. This
guideline results in margins that occupy 37.5% of the space on the page. One inch is
also good for A4 pages. However, for electronic documents that are not to be printed,
all margins can be rather narrow.
When Pettersson, Strand, and Avgerinou (2008) studied margins, and also place-
ments of page numbers in books, they identified these three research perspectives: (1)
Opinions expressed by readers; (2) How experts design their own books; and, (3) The
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 15

actual situation in printed books in our bookshelves. There were 71 readers, 11 experts
and randomly selected 36 non-fiction and 36 fiction books in this study (Table 1).
For this article, we have added another random selection of 24 fiction books and
calculated the relative values for all these 178 expressed opinions about the sizes of
margins, and on book pages. We calculated that the relative values are: top margin
1.2, outside margin 1, bottom margin 1.1, and inside margin 1.
We realize that our measurements and calculations of margins and text-faces will
only provide approximate data. Sometimes it is difficult to measure pictures of pages
in old books and calculate the required information. However, the main problem is
the variation of the actual page sizes. As previously noted, experienced librarians
know that sizes of old books vary between different copies, and also between differ-
ent volumes in a series of books. For this study, we have not been able to measure a
number of copies for each book. We will never know for sure if the pages we have
measured should be considered small, medium, or large (Table 2). However, the
Gutenberg Bible (discussed at the end of this article), De humani corporis fabrica, and
La Encyclopedie, all have large pages. In this case, a few millimetres of incorrect meas-
urements are not very important for our calculations of the relative values of the dif-
ferent margins. We may have more problems with the much smaller books
Emblematum Liber and Orbis Pictus.

Page numbers
In all kinds of reference materials, it is important to have page numbers, i.e. folios. The
reader can easily find information in the material by using the table of contents and/
or the index, or indexes, and the page numbers. Page numbers usually indicate arbi-
trary divisions of the text. For technical reasons, many books may contain more than

Table 1. Median values of margins on right-hand pages in books, in millimetresa.

Margin Readers Experts Non-fiction Fiction
Top margin 22.0 19.4 16.5 16.9
Outside margin 22.0 15.9 13.6 22.2
Bottom margin 30.0 21.1 20.4 29.1
Inside margin 20.0 15.0 15.2 18.4
N 71 11 36 36
a
For easy comparison all values in this table were converted into values on the size of the ideal page,
22.7  16.6 cm, according to Pettersson & Strand (2006).

Table 2. Relative values of margins on right-hand pages in books.

Relative values of margins
Documents Top Outside Bottom Inside
1. Gutenberg Bible (mean of 6) 1 1.5 2.1 1.1
2. Emblematum Liber 1.9 2.1 2.6 1
3. De humani corporis fabrica 2.8 3.2 3.6 1
4. Orbis Pictus 1.1 1.7 2.2 1
5. La Encyclopedie 1.6 2.6 2.7 1
Mean values 1–5 1.7 1.6 2.6 1
6. Penguin books 1.3 1 2 1
7. Our present study 1.2 1 1.1 1
Mean values 6–7 1.3 1 1.6 1
16 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

one series of page numbers. For example, technical manuals and instructional materi-
als often use a separate numbering series for each chapter. Then a single chapter can
be updated without reprinting the whole manual. Here, the running head often
includes the name of the publication, the issue date, or other material.
Page numbers should be clear and always easy to find in the same position in a
document. There are many possibilities for placement of the page numbers and there
are many opinions.
Misanchuk (1992), Lohr (2010) and Lipton (2007) prefer page numbers in the out-
side corner of the top margin.
According to Lipton (2007) readers are likely to first look for page numbers in
the margin at the bottom of the page. The position in the middle of the bottom
margin is normally a good place, regardless of the size of the page (Bohman &
Hallberg, 1985; Pettersson, 2007). Several authors recommend that page numbers
should be put in the outside corner of the bottom margin (Bergstro €m, 1998;
Berndal & Frigyes, 1990; Hellmark, 2000a, 2000b; Pettersson et al. 2004; White 1983;
Wileman, 1993).
Ander (2003) and Koblanck (1997) recommend the middle of the outside margin
for page numbers. It may be hard to read page numbers in the inside margins, and
graphic designers advice against any such placement. It is very rare to find the page
numbers somewhere in the text-face. It happens but we do not recommend it.
For the currently presented study, we added more data to our 2008 study
(Pettersson et al., 2008). From a total of 178 positions of page numbers on a right-
hand page, 48% was put in the lower right corner, 30% in the middle of the bottom
margin, and 16% in the upper right corner of the page. The remaining locations were
middle outside margin (2%), bottom left corner (2%), and middle top margin (1%).
Based on these findings, we recommend that page numbers be put in the bottom
margin, in the middle or in the outside corner in printed documents.

A classic model for page design

Today often the main part of the page is the text-face. White or blank space on a
page can contribute to the creation of a harmonious and functional product. Several
graphic designers have made reconstructions of historical methods that may have
been used in book design to divide a page in pleasing proportions. One old method
of deciding the appropriate sizes for all margins and the two text-faces on a two-page
spread, where pages have the proportions 8/5, is based on geometry. This is a sum-
mary of the process:

1. Draw two diagonals on the spread, from the upper outside corners to the lower
outside corners.
2. Draw a vertical line in the middle of the paper, through the crossing 0f the
two diagonals.
3. Draw two diagonals from the lower outside corners to the point where the
upper corners meet the top of the vertical line (2).
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 17

4. Draw two vertical lines from the top of each page down to the points where
diagonals cross on each page.
5. Draw two lines from the two points where the vertical lines meet the top of the
two pages, down to the lower left corner on the other page.
6. Draw a line to the right, parallel to the page edge, from the point where diag-
onal 3 and line 5 cross, to diagonal 1. Line 6 will establish the top margin on the
right page.
7. Draw a line, parallel to the page, from the point where diagonal 1 and line 6
cross, down to diagonal 3. Line 7 will establish the right margin on the
right page.
8. Draw a line, parallel to the page gutter, from the point where line 5, line 6 and
diagonal 3 cross. Line 8 will establish the left margin on the right page.
9. Draw a horizontal line from the point where diagonal 3 cross line 7 to the left.
Line 9 will establish the bottom margin on the right page.
10. Mirror steps 6–9 to establish the four margins, and the text-face on the
left page.

As can be seen in the illustration below this method creates large margins, with
the text-face covering only one-third of the page. West called this model ideal and
classic (Figure 6).
The proportions between text-faces and pages are maintained for books printed in
different sizes. Since Gutenberg’s time books have often been designed and printed in
an upright position, that conforms loosely to the golden ratio. These page proportions
are often described with Fibonacci numbers, such as 2/3, 5/8 and 21/34. However,
since all these pages are printed in upright positions we prefer to describe these pro-
portions as 3  2, 8  5 and 34  21. The format indexes for these formats are 150,
160, and 162. They are all approximations of the divine proportion with the vertical
proportion 1,618/1, and the horizontal proportion 1/1,618 (Figure 7). A slightly
changed version of the classic model for page design has been used for many books
during the 20th century, with page proportions 3/2. For these books, the format index
is 150.

Figure 6. This is an illustration of the construction of a classic model for page design. The shaded
areas are the text-faces with the same proportions as the pages. Drawing by Rune Pettersson.
18 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

Figure 7. This picture shows the proportions and the format indexes for six different book pages.
The alternative called Choice represents the most harmonious book page according to two groups
of university students from Sweden and USA (Pettersson & Strand, 2006). Some copies of the
Gutenberg Bible have the same proportions. Drawing by Rune Pettersson.

A modern model for page design

For many years many fiction books in Sweden had the page format 21  13 cm, with
the following margins: top margin 1.6 cm, outside margin 2.2 cm, bottom margin
3.2 cm and inside margin 1.5 cm (Hellmark, 2000a). The area of this page is 273 square
centimetres, and the text-face is 150.7 square centimetres. Thus the margins occupy
45% of the book page.
For the slightly changed modern version of the classic model for page design with
page proportions 3/2 the relative margin proportions for a right-hand page is: top
margin 1.5, outside margin 2, bottom margin 3 and inside margin 1 (Wikipedia, 2018).
Here, the text-face is slightly larger (36%), and the margins occupy about 64% of
each page.

The new typographic style

Book design and other printed matter changed dramatically visually in the 1920s and
1930s with a new movement, called the Swiss Typographic Style, or the International
Typographic Style. Its roots can be found in avant-garde art movements in Russia,
Germany and The Netherlands. A major influencer was Jan Tschichold (1902–1974), a
German-born in Leipzig, later Swiss citizen.
Tschichold, typographer and designer of books and posters, came back from visit-
ing a 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, with a different view of visual thinking. He started to
promote the importance of art in print design. Two years later, at the age of twenty-
three, he designed a 24-page special issue of the technical journal Typographische
Mitteilungen. In the article Elementare Typographie (1925) he laid out the principles
for the new typographic style in black and red ink. Praise came from El Lissitzky in
Moscow: ‘My dear Tschichold, bravo, bravo, with all my heart I congratulate you on
the beautiful brochure’ (Peloff & Reed, 2003, p. 247).
In books and articles, Tschichold mentions Constructivism, Dada, Expressionism,
Futurism and Suprematism. Influences from these -isms can be seen in his graphic
works. Tschichold codified the principles for the new typography. His first book, Die
Neue Typographie (1928), is generally considered as his most important textbook. With
240 pages in A5-format filled with examples, illustrations and diagrams, Die Neue
Typographie became the progressive designers’ textbook. This book has not been out
of print since then.
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 19

Tschichold was now a known name, for good and for bad. In Germany, the Nazi
party regarded modernism as non-German. Traditionally Blackletter Typography used
to be common. After Tschichold had started to work as a teacher in Munich, he and
his colleague Paul Renner (designer of the modernist typeface Futura) were called cul-
tural Bolshevists. A few days after the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933,
Tschichold was taken into protective custody. After a month in prison Tschichold and
his family fled to Switzerland, with the help of a German policeman. As Tschichold
was a well-known name in design circles, he had no problem to find work in
Switzerland.
In 1947 Tschichold was called to London with a mission to give the Penguin paper-
back a facelift. The idea of inexpensive paperbacks had come from Allen Lane, pub-
lisher at The Bodley Head Publishing House in London. He had become inspired after
visiting Agatha Christie, and found that there was no inexpensive book at the train
station- a convenient book format to have in your pocket when traveling. Allen Lane
wanted quality. His idea was to publish ‘good-looking reprints of fiction and non-fic-
tion in paperbacks’ (Baines, 2005, p. 12).
Mass-market paperback did not exist in Britain until the first Penguin Book came
out on Thursday, 30 July 1935. The original Penguin format was 181  111 mm (page
format index 163). Penguin has used other formats, and still uses other formats, for
certain books and series.
From 1947 to 1949 Tschichold was in charge of typography and production at
Penguin, where he became known as a master of spatial arrangements. Tschichold
worked with the original format, 181  111 mm, (7 1/8  4 3/8 in) with margins sized
14–11–22–11 mm (Baines, 2005). He wrote Composition Rules with precise instructions
for cover designs, asymmetrical layouts, type size and positions for all elements on the
covers. He promoted grids, and a consistent use of the Gill Sans sans-serif typeface,
designed by the English sculptor and type designer Eric Gill. In all, Tschichold gave
the Penguin Book a look that became a logo in itself (Figure 8).

The golden canon

The design model golden canon of book-page design is based on a set of very simple
geometric rules for proportion. These rules are not at all related to the proportion
rules of the golden ratio. Some researchers believe that medieval scribes and printers
of early modern Europe sometimes used these geometric rules when they planned
their page layouts and wanted to produce specific text-to-page ratios
(Tschichold, 1991).
In this geometrical system and design model, the text areas will always have the
same proportion as the pages. The outside margin will always be twice the width of
the inside margin and the bottom margin will always be twice the width of the
top margin.
The ratios of inside margin to top margin, and outside margin to bottom margin,
are always the same as the ratio of the width of the page to its height. The relative
sizes of the margins are approximate: top margin 1.4, outside margin 2, bottom
20 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

Figure 8. The horizontal tripartite division and the penguin were introduced with the first Penguin
Books in 1935. Behind this look was Edward Young, production manager at Penguin. Type-faces
were Bodoni Ultra Bold and Gill Sans. The red line on the book page (right) encloses the text-face.
Source: Wikimedia Commons. Penguin Books. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:
Penguin_Books#/media/File:Nineteen_Eighty-Four_cover_by_Penguin.jpg]. Retrieved February 2, 2018.

Figure 9. Here are the basic lines for design of left-hand and right-hand A4-papers with help of
the golden canon. In this case, the text-face has the A5 size. Drawing by Rune Pettersson.

margin 2.8, and inside margin 1. Researchers have found many examples of medieval
books that fit this model. However, there are also many examples of the opposite.
If one wants to use an A3-paper in order to make a golden canon design of a left-
hand and a right-hand A4-paper with a text-face A-5, this is the process (Figure 9):

1. Draw two diagonals on the A3-paper, from the upper outside corners to the lower
outside corners.
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 21

2. Draw a vertical line in the middle of the A3-paper, through the crossing 0f the
two diagonals.
3. Draw two diagonals from the lower outside corners to the point where the upper
corners meet the top of the vertical line (2).
4. Position an A-5 paper on the A3-diagonal (1) on the left-hand page and move it
along the diagonal until the upper right corner meets the left A4-diagonal (3).
Mark all the corners and connect them.
5. Repeat 4 on the right-hand page.
In this A3–A4–A5-case the margins have approximately the following sizes: top mar-
gin 2.9 cm, outside margin 4 cm, bottom margin 5.8 cm and inside margin 2 cm.
Max (2012) used a special computer program to analyze photographs of old manu-
scripts as well as printed books. The Geometer’s Sketchpad calculated the degree to
which the golden canon might have been used to place the text area on the pages.
In many cases, the layouts closely matched what the proportional rules predicted. One
object of study was the Gutenberg Bible. However, in this case, Gutenberg should
have used 43 wider lines in order to meet the criteria. Here the outside and bottom
margins have more space.

The Gutenberg Bible

The goldsmith Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1395–1468) developed a revolutionary technol-
ogy of printing books with movable type. The new technology came to dominate
Western production of books until the 1800s.
Medieval manuscript Bibles had beautifully handwritten pages with ornamented
drop caps, floral ornaments, and hand-painted illustrations in gold and brilliant col-
ours. In order to get acceptance from the Church, Gutenberg wanted his printed Bible
to look like medieval handwritten books, and the Gutenberg Bible, or the 42-line Bible,
has been widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities as well as its tech-
nical quality.
After many initial experiments with different kinds of page layouts on different for-
mats, Gutenberg decided on a double folio format. The size of the paper is known as
royal folio. Already at that time, this was a fairly standard size of paper. Each sheet
measured about 43.0  62.0 cm, before being folded (British Library, 2018). Gutenberg
printed two pages on each side of the sheet. The pages are set in two columns with
42 lines (Figure 10).
The complete Gutenberg Bible has a total of 1,272 pages. Most copies were div-
ided and bound in two volumes. Heavier copies on vellum were sometimes bound
in three or four volumes. Today some 48 substantially complete copies of the
Gutenberg Bible remain in various libraries, of which 12 are printed on vellum and
36 on paper. Many scholars consider these copies to be the most valuable books in
the world.
Gutenberg and his staff probably produced about 180 copies of the Bible. They
printed 30 books on parchment and vellum and needed some five to six thousand
sheepskins and calfskins. Some 150 books were printed on paper, imported from Italy.
They printed two sheets of paper at a time. Each sheet gave four pages in the book.
22 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

Figure 10. This is a right-hand page in the 42-line Gutenberg Bible. The red line encloses the text-
face on the book page. There is space for decorations in the margins. On this page, there are also
decorations between the text columns. Illuminations were individually added to some of the
printed pages. Source: Gutenberg. Biblia latina, 42 lines. British Library. [https://www.bl.uk/collec-
tion-items/gutenberg-bible]. Retrieved February 5, 2018.

Then, they needed one goatskin for the cover of each book. In total, they may have
printed about a quarter of a million pages.
n tipogra
In his book, Divina proporcio fica (Typographical Divine Proportion) Rosarivo
(1961) analyzed Renaissance books with the help of compass and ruler. His book was
first published in 1947. Rosarivo described the use of the nu mero de oro, the golden
number, with the ratio 2:3 (here 3:2, format index 150). According to Rosarivo, and
later also Jan Tschichold (1991) Gutenberg had used the golden number as a canon
for page design of his Bible in order to establish the harmonic relationships between
the diverse parts.
Rosarivo and Tschichold suggested that Gutenberg had found the position, and the
size of the text-area, by dividing the page into nine by nine geometrically uniform rec-
tangles based on the height and width of the page. A page with format index 150,
and a height of 43 cm will be 28.7 cm wide. Here each of the 81 rectangles will be
4.8 cm high and 3.2 cm wide. Thus the margins should have the following measures:
top margin 4.9 cm, outside margin 6.6 cm, bottom margin 9.9 cm and inside margin
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 23

Figure 11. The left page has the proportions according to the golden number. The right page is
the proportion of the Gutenberg Bible. Each page is divided in 81 rectangles. Drawing by
Rune Pettersson.

3.3 cm. The corresponding relative values are: 1.5, 2, 3 and 1. The text-face will cover
48% of the page.
However, on the folio size paper, 43  31 cm, each of the 81 rectangles is 4.8 cm
high and 3.44 cm wide. Thus the margins should have the following measures: top
margin 4.8 cm, outside margin 6.9 cm, bottom margin 9.6 cm, and inside margin
3.44 cm. Here, the text-face will cover 46.7% of the page. However, this model does
not work for the Gutenberg Bible: neither for the position nor for the size of the text-
face (Figure 11). It is clear that Gutenberg did not use the golden number for layout
of his bible.
A folio size paper, 43  31 cm, has the paper format index 139. Gutenberg planned
for the same proportions for the text-face. According to the historian John Man
(2002), Gutenberg had chosen this paper format in order to come close to the divine
proportion (format index 162). As previously noted Max (2012) found that the
Gutenberg Bible should have had wider lines, and also one more line of text in order
to meet the proportions of the golden ratio. A 44.5 cm high paper has the proportions
of the divine proportion when the width is 27.5 cm.
After printing a quarter of a million pages all the sheets had to be folded, cut and
bound to books. All pages are smaller in the books. Furthermore, the sizes vary a bit
between different book copies. For the present study, we have studied pictures of a
few pages made available on the Internet by various libraries. Luckily some libraries
have provided the measurements of book pages and also of the corresponding text-
faces. In our sample of six pages, the smallest page was 39.1  28.6 cm, and the largest
page was 41.5  30.2 cm. In fact, the text-faces too vary in size, as well as the margins.
In one book the top margin is 3.8 cm, outside margin 5.6 cm, bottom margin 7.8 cm
and inside margin 4.0.
Some other pages have other measures. In fact, the pages in the Gutenberg Bible
have many different proportions with format indexes between 136.6 and 140. This is
quite similar to the proportions of the most harmonious book page (Pettersson &
24 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

Strand, 2006) when university students from Sweden and USA were asked to fold a
large white paper (45  45 cm) to a book page. Here, the mean page format index
was 135 for women and 137 for men. However, the university students preferred a
much smaller page size. On average the most harmonious book page was 22.7 cm
high and 16.6 cm wide.
So, in the Gutenberg Bible format indexes vary for pages, but also to some extent
for text-faces. It is possible that the actual binding of this book was very complicated,
and therefore pages are likely to differ in size. As noted earlier binding problems will
not influence the size of the text-face, with the printed text. However, measurements
of margins may be somewhat different on various pages. Based on the pictures of the
few book pages that we have studied, the relative margin proportions for a right-hand
page are: top margin 1.0, outside margin 1.5, bottom margin 2.1 and inside margin
1.1. The text-face covers about half of the page.
During the period 1452–1454 Gutenberg and his staff printed the Gutenberg Bible
in Mainz, in Germany. The text is the first translation of the Bible into Latin. It was the
first major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe
(Bringhurst, 2004). Gutenberg used 290 metal types of varying widths to create beauti-
ful lines with letters and other characters. Later, it became normal with about 120
characters in each line. The Gutenberg Bible is printed in the black-letter type styles
with initials in red and blue on ivory laid paper. The type styles became known as
Textualis and Schwabacher. Here straight vertical strokes are combined with horizon-
tal lines.
The Gutenberg Bible lacks modern features such as title pages, pagination, indenta-
tions and paragraph breaks. Although the printed texts look alike, each book is
unique. Some copies of the Bible were never decorated, but some actually were highly
decorated. Spacious margins allowed illuminated decorations to be added later by
hand. Some illustrations have motifs with dragons, falcons, and peacocks.
Before Gutenberg’s time, there was a rather authentic relationship between words,
images and graphical form. All expressions were gathered in the same hand-written
page or printed from the same block of wood. The Gutenberg Bible had a huge effect
on the history of the printed book. The development of the new printing technology
resulted in a dynamic and easier dissemination of the printed word. Many copies com-
bined the new technology of printing with the old way and contained hand-painted
decorations to imitate the appearance of an illuminated manuscript.
The production of images was equally demanding and as time-consuming as previ-
ously, with complicated handwork. In the earlier printed books, images were printed
from woodcuts. During the 1600s and 1700s, copperplates dominated. This meant that
the technical quality of printed images increased significantly while there was a great
distance to the text. In the 1800s, lithography dominated. It became possible to print
pictures in colour, but the technology meant that it was no longer possible to print
continuous texts and images in the same printing presses. Words and pictures were
irretrievably separated from each other for a long time. Development of the offset and
other printing methods during the 1900s laid the foundation for a real change. The
previous technical barriers are now eliminated with the help of computer-aided pro-
duction of graphical products.
 JOURNAL OF VISUAL LITERACY 25

Table 3. Suggested measurements for margins in standard paper formats (in millimetres).
Type of margin A5 210  148 G5 239  169 A4 297  210 US Letter 279.5  216
Top margin 18 20 25 25
Outside margin 18 20 25 25
Bottom margina (23) (25) (30) (30)
Inside margin 18 20 25 25
Height of text-face 169 194 242 224.5
Width of text-face 112 129 160 166
Text-face, % of page 61 62 62 62
a
Please note that the size of the bottom margin should be adjusted to the choice of typography, especially the size
of type. The height of the text-face should be adjusted to the needs of a specific number of lines.

If you want to buy one of the very few copies that still remain, it will not be that
easy. An entire 1455 Gutenberg Bible would likely fetch around $100 Million
(Greatsite.com, 2018). For one single leaf in good condition, you will have to pay
$95,000 to $195,000. For most of us, a better alternative is to visit the British Library
on the Internet. The British Library has two copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the
Grenville copy, and the King’s Copy. One is printed on vellum, and the other on paper.
These digital versions are both available over the Internet. It is an extraordinary possi-
bility for anyone to be able to study these copies. It is possible to compare the printed
pages on the computer screen, enlarge the pictures and study details. We can observe
that some headings were added by hand, that each book has different lettering col-
ours, and also that illuminations were individually added to some printed pages.

Conclusions
Based on our studying the sizes of margins, pages, and text-faces as presented above,
we have arrived at the following conclusions. The relative values for pages in contem-
porary books (1.3 – 1 – 1.6 – 1) correspond neither with the relative values for pages
in the classical page model (1.7 – 2 – 3.3 – 1), nor with the mean values in our sample
of five titles of old books (1.7 – 1.6 – 2.6 – 1).
We confirm our previous recommendations (Pettersson et al., 2008) for sizes of mar-
gins in four standard paper formats (Table 3). For the US letter-format, our guidelines
confirm the guidelines provided by Bradshaw and Johari (2000), and by the American
Psychological Association (2001). In many situations, it is appropriate to divide the
text-face into two or more text columns.
The rapid development of affordable handheld computing devices has provided
new options for us to share texts. Electronic books, e-books, refer to publications in
digital form, often available via the Internet. e-Books may be read on any computer
screen, but also on an e-book reader -such as the Amazon Kindle, Adobe Digital
Editions and others- sometimes even on mobile telephones.
Based on the size of the G5-format (23.9  16.9) combined with the rapid develop-
ment of digital devices we suggest a page format of 24  16 cm for e-books. This is a
3/2 page, with the page format index of 150. This e-book page-format will work on
many digital devices, even the smaller ones since they usually have very good screen
resolutions.
We have divided the page area (24  16 cm) in twelve by eight (96) equal squares
(2  2 cm) in order to define the margins and the text-face. Our practical tests have
26 R. PETTERSSON AND L. STRAND

shown that a text-face (10  6 squares, 20  12 cm), surrounded by equal margins, 2 –

2 – 2 – 2 cm, is good for non-fiction books. Here the text-area will cover 62.5% of the
page. The text-face index is 166.7. Pictures and tables have plenty of space to stretch
outside the text-face with one column of text into the side margins. In an e-book, it is
a great advantage to be able to enlarge pictures and study interesting details.
Furthermore, the author may include sound and video in the e-book.
However, for fiction books and classical texts with longer periods of continuous
reading, we recommend a lower text-face (9  6 squares, 18  12 cm), surrounded by
margins 2 – 2 – 4 – 2 cm, and one column of text. Here the text-area will cover 56.2%
of the page, and the text-face index is 150.
In both groups of books, a good place for the page number is in the middle of the
bottom margin, a bit below the text-face, on all pages. A natural way to read text on
different digital devices is one page after another, and not spread by spread. There
will never be problems with lines bending, curving, and disappearing into the gutter.
All pages will be flat and easy to read. Sometimes it may be possible to listen to the
authors, or actors, reading parts of their scripts.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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