Colophon

I wrote that taste only survives when the reasoning behind a decision is written down. So here are the decisions behind this site, and why.

Type#

EB Garamond for headings, Schibsted Grotesk for reading. A book serif next to a newspaper sans: the page should feel printed, but read like a screen. I started with Geist, which made everything look like a tech product. Schibsted Grotesk was drawn for newspapers, so it was made for exactly this: long reading.

Colour#

Paper and blue ink. One background, one colour for everything, like a page written with a single pen. I tried yellow first. It was too much colour behind long paragraphs. There is a dark mode, but only if you ask for it.

Layout#

Lines stop at around 65 characters: long enough to keep a rhythm, short enough that your eye finds the next line. Images are wider than the text, because diagrams need room and paragraphs don’t. Notes live in the margin, or behind a small number on smaller screens.

Motion#

Motion only appears where it means something. The signature draws itself once. Key lines get a highlighter, once. I tried a scroll progress bar and morphing page transitions. Both were clever, and both turned out to be noise, so I removed them.

Build#

Markdown, one small build script and plain HTML and CSS. No framework, one dependency. The build fails if a link is broken, so a typo never ships. It loads instantly, and it should still open in ten years.

Details you might not notice#

Curly quotes, headings that break into even lines, opening quotes that hang just outside the text edge, a favicon that waves when you switch tabs, and a note in the console for anyone who opens DevTools.