Open AccessPatterns and the Visual Organisation of Written Artefacts

23 April 2025

Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Kalpasutra. India (Gujarat), late 14th c. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc. no. 1997.133. Image in the Public Domain.

The conventions that govern the production and use of written artefacts are often taken for granted. Yet they are essential to ensure that these artefacts can fulfil their role within a particular writing and reading culture. A new Occasional Paper focuses on the visual organisation of written artefacts.

In all cultures of writing, both the design of the written artefact as a whole and that of the individual material elements constituting it – for example pages or openings – are typified and formalised to varying degrees. These may be specific to particular settings and functions of use: a textbook, a liturgical manuscript, or a written artefact designed to be used as an amulet may all contain the same text, for instance, a portion of the Qur’an, the Bible, or a sutra, but may differ significantly in size, material, visual organisation, and even form. If one identifies such organisational structures and the frames that are necessary to interpret and use the manuscript, and examines how these conventions that underlie them can in turn inform the producers’ and users’ choices, then a cross-cultural comparison and recognition of differences and similarities becomes possible.

The latest publication in our Occasional Paper series offers a basis for such a comparative analysis within and across writing cultures. Focusing on the visual organisation of written artefacts, it explores how the spatial arrangement of visual signs interacts with their form and format, including layout, structure, and mise en texte. Central to the paper’s approach is the concept of pattern, which was first introduced to the comparative study of written artefacts in Occasional Paper 3. Patterns signal the application of interpretive frameworks that shape the production, perception, and use of written artefacts. The new paper explores the significance of patterns of visual organisation for the transmission and shaping of content.

Special attention is given to multigraphic artefacts, which bear different kinds of visual signs, each of which comes with its own conventions and rules. They pose particular challenges for both their producers and their users, while highlighting how patterns of visual organisation work, and how producers worked with them.

Written by Bruno Reudenbach, Hanna Wimmer and other members of the ‘Formatting Multigraphic Artefacts’ research field (RFI), the paper is available here: