I was going to title this post "Codex Seraphinianus / Best Fake Encyclopedia Ever." The Codex Seraphinianus is a 350+ page illustrated book, published in the late 70s (I think) by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini.
The Codex documents an imaginary world in an a indecipherable language represented in an unreal script (dang!). Topics include flora, fauna, anthropology, anatomy, history, language and architecture. The images - strange, delightful, curious, wry - are juxtaposed with the writing - inscrutable yet familiar in form. Inherently, by providing us with a visual explanation while depriving a verbal exposition - but implying there is one - the structure brings us back to our first experiences with written stories: as children, unable to read our favorite books, we flipped through the pages, prompted by the structure, by the learned understanding of what reading is, and made up our own stories based on the pictures, goaded by the presence of an alphabet, by our desire for a narrative and our ability to create one. In this way, The Codex takes us to two worlds - one we'll never see and another often lost.
I learned about The Codex Seraphinianus a few years ago in The Believer. Read the article, "The Codex Seraphinianus," by Justin Taylor, here to get a great understanding/insight into the book's story (there are also more images). I saw the book for the fist time when a guest speaker brought it to my graphic design class a couple of years ago (he also shared these scans). I wish I owned it.
Here are a few of my favorite illustrations. Enjoy!
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