A mnemonic picture used to recall Luke’s Gospel. Sebastian Brant, Hexastichon, 1509.

This charming illustration appears in the 1738 book by Voltaire, Eléments de la Philosophie de Newton, where the discovery of the decomposition of white light is described. The beam of light passes through a hole in the window, crosses a prism and falls on the wall where a rainbow spectrum appears. And Newton watches, astonished.

The Creation of the World, engraving from a book printed in Nüremberg in 1493.

Scheme to learn how to write the ideogram town, with the correct shape and order of the strokes, from Flash Cards for Elementary Chinese.

When I was a child and was learning to write, I used to write the capital letter “E” with several horizontal strokes. This was because I couldn’t remember how many it had. I suppose that three is difficult for a five or six year old boy to remember. Years later, I saw this poster in an Italian market and it reminded me of those times. Just as an aside, wouldn’t the Euro sign be better like this?

Chinese flag, as it appears in the first volume of engravings in the Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, avec leur explication — The Diderot and D’Alembert Encyclopædia— printed in Neufchatel in 1779.

I love this road sign. This is a good example of the expressive use of drawing that a designer would never use.

Image that can be seen either way up.

Bar code done by my five year old niece, Edel, on the back of a storybook which she drew herself.

The wonderful cardboard Coca-Cola chef for displaying menus. A species in extinction.