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---

## At a glance

- **Client**: Linden Editions (independent literary journal)
- **Year**: 2024
- **Role**: Design lead
- **Duration**: 10 weeks
- **Team**: Me + 1 developer (the journal's editor)

## 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

- Average session length doubled (1m 12s → 2m 41s) in the four months after launch
- The journal's print-to-digital subscription conversion went from 4% to 11%
- Editor reports the markdown workflow takes "about 20 minutes per issue, where the old WordPress backend took an afternoon"
