As we look at the developments that were seen in graphic design and bookmaking during the Renaissance, we’re analyzing the work of scholar, writer, illustrator, designer and publisher Geoffroy Tory. Among the design projects that Tory published were designs for “lettres fantastique” which was a full alphabetic system composed of images of various hand tools, like an axe or a set of shears. You can find a reproduction of Tory’s alphabet in Megg’s History of Graphic Design, on page 116 of the printed book, or page 441 of the ProQuest e-book hosted through the CUNY library system.
- After studying the visual alphabet that Tory developed, come up with some “fantastic letters” of your own—objects that could be drawn in a way that would be visually similar to one of the twenty-six letters in modern English.
- As you design your letters, think about the differences between Tory’s process of looking at objects that could be seen as visual references to existing letterforms and the process that we experimented with earlier in the semester, where pictograms became abstracted into the shape of an alphabetical letter.
