A series since 2019
On the page
Measure, margins, figures and the stranded line: the decisions made once that govern every line after them.
This is the series VERSAL started with. Each piece takes one decision a typesetter makes before the first line is set, and follows it all the way down the page.
None of it is a rulebook. The point is that the decisions are coupled: change the measure and the leading moves, change the leading and the margins are wrong. Read in order, the essays build the argument that a page is designed in a sequence, and that most bad pages started in the wrong place.
In reading order
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Essay · Start here
The margin is not empty space
Why the outer margin is wider than the inner, why the bottom is the biggest of all, and what happens when a page is designed by someone counting paper.
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Note
Old-style figures in a modern paragraph
Text figures sit down inside a line of prose. Lining figures stand up like capitals. Most pages use the wrong one in at least one place.
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Essay
Widows, orphans and the honest fix
Three ways to get rid of a stranded line, two of which lie to the reader, and what happens to the problem once there are no pages at all.
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Essay
The measure decides everything
Pick the line length first. The typeface, the size, the leading and the margins are all downstream of it, and most bad pages started somewhere else.
New pieces in On the page arrive with the letter.
Free, every second Thursday. Members also get each series’ next piece a week early.