Home>Linden Editions

At a glance

The problem

Linden had been publishing a print quarterly for six years. Their existing website was a WordPress theme that displayed posts in reverse chronological order — fine for a blog, wrong for a journal that wanted readers to browse issues, the way you would in a library.

What I did

Audit. Read all 24 back issues. Catalogued the recurring sections (essay, fiction, poetry, review, interview), the typographic conventions (drop caps, em-dash conversations, full-bleed photography), and the editorial voice (long-form, slow, deliberate).

Type system. Built a four-face type system: Newzald for body, Söhne Mono for footnotes, Tiempos for display, Reckless for poetry. All four sit on a shared 24px baseline. The system has 11 tokens — small enough that the editor maintains it herself.

IA. Issues, not posts. The home page is a stack of issue covers. Each issue has its own permalink and table of contents. Individual pieces are nested under their issue, never floating loose.

Build. A static site (no CMS) with a markdown workflow the editor manages from her local machine. Total page weight: 38 KB on the home page, 84 KB on a typical essay. No JavaScript on the reading experience.

Outcome