The paragraph is the unit
Layout trends arrive every few years and leave again. The block of text they are arranged around has not changed in five centuries, and it is still the thing readers came for.
Read →Notes on type, reading, and the web.
An editorial template for people whose work is the words. No hero image, no card grid, no carousel. Just a type scale that holds up and a measure that stays readable.
Against the hero image
A photograph at the top of an article is usually there because the template has a slot for one, not because the article needed it.
Reading on a phone in the dark
Most contrast decisions are made at a desk in the afternoon. Most reading happens somewhere else entirely, and the difference is larger than it looks.
Footnotes deserve better
The footnote is the oldest hypertext we have and the web has spent thirty years being worse at it than a printed page.
What a type scale is for
Picking sizes from a ratio is not numerology. It is a way of making the decision once instead of forty times.