Publication

Publication is a content-first, editorial system descended from print magazines and fine book design. It puts typography in the lead — confident serif headlines, carefully measured reading columns, and a disciplined baseline grid — so that long-form text feels effortless and authoritative. The mood is calm, literate, and trustworthy, the kind of page you settle into rather than skim. Reach for it on blogs, magazines, essays, documentation, and newsletters where the words are the product and reading comfort is paramount.

Design principles

• The text is the design; everything else exists to serve readability and rhythm.
• Respect the measure — keep reading columns at 60–75 characters so the eye never strains.
• Build on a baseline grid so type, rules, and images all align to a shared vertical rhythm.
• Use hierarchy from a real type scale: distinct display, heading, deck, body, and caption roles.
• Decorate sparingly — hairline rules, small-caps kickers, drop caps, and a single editorial accent.
• Whitespace is structural, not leftover; generous margins frame the content like a printed page.

Color

The canvas is a warm paper #FBF9F4 that reduces glare and evokes quality stock, with featured surfaces and image frames stepping up to pure #FFFFFF. Ink is a soft near-black #1A1916 for body text, easing the contrast for long reading sessions. Secondary text — decks, captions, bylines, kickers — uses a warm gray #5C584E. The single editorial accent is a classic ink-red #B23A20, reserved for links, pull-quote rules, drop caps, and section markers so it always signals editorial emphasis. Hairline rules and borders use #E7E2D6. A dark "evening edition" variant flips to a #17161F ground with #EDEAE0 ink, #2A2832 rules, and a brightened #E0603F accent for comfortable night reading.

Typography

Headings use Fraunces, an expressive high-contrast serif, at large display sizes with tight -0.015em tracking for that magazine-cover impact. Body copy is set in Source Serif 4 at 19–20px with a roomy 1.7 line-height for sustained reading comfort. Decks (subheadings under a title) and captions use the same body face at smaller sizes in muted gray. Kickers and bylines use small-caps with +0.08em tracking. Mono appears only for code and data in IBM Plex Mono. The scale is a generous major-third (1.25), giving a clear ladder from display down to caption. Italics in the serif faces are genuine cuts, not slanted — lean on them for emphasis.