The book „Recueil Historique de la Vie et des Ouvrages des Plus Célèbres Architects“ by the french author Jean-Francois Félibien des Avaux presents itself in a typeface, which is strongly characterized by it’s serifs. Besides from the title at the beginning of the book, the text as well as the headings are written in italic letters.
There is a heading on every page, each time placed in middle and written in slightly bigger letters than the text. The headings give information about the chapter respectively about the preface at the beginning. The font size varies between 12pt for the text, 18pt for the headings and around 25pt for the title.
The type area doesn’t change throughout the book. The text is located towards the top middle on each page. This leaves every page left with a margin on the bottom of the page and towards the edge of the book.
It is noticeable that every now and then there are word explanations written right next to the text following the line of the explained paragraph.
The illustrations in this book are less of explanatory nature than of decoration. First of all it is remarkable that there are very few schematics and architectural drawings. They appear at every beginning of a chapter and aren’t numbered or referenced any further. This leaves me to the conclusion that the text doesn’t primarily refer to these illustrations. It seems to be more an academic study than a book which tries to focus on the practice of architecture by comparing sketches and drawings.
The book consists of four chapters, which are named „First book“, „Second book“, etc. It is noticeable that with every new chapter the whole title of the book is being mentioned again with its big typeface covering a whole page.