Design Elements from the Past

This week I explored the British Library website's "Online Gallery". Using the tool, "Turn the Page", I had the opportunity to look through the pages of a Bible from Ethiopia. This book is hundreds of years old and the language itself is not at all understnadable to those who have not studied this ancient language for years, but it is remarkable that even then, design elements were used to keep a visual interest in the text being recorded.
The first design element, contrast, is noted on almost every page with the use of different colored words to distinguish the importance of different lines of text. The second element, repetition, is noticed in the layout of typically having a picture on the left page and the text on the right. The third element, alignment, is seen in the pictures being center aligned with the biblical character being larger than other objects in the picture. The fourth and final element, proximity, is seen in the way the pages portraying the life of Jesus are presented together, before going into the gospels of each disciple.
It is very interesting to me to see how we are going back to our "roots" in the way we design our communication. All of the design elements that we incorporate into modern communication were actually used hundreds of years ago to make the message understandable and enduring to all who see it.