Essay
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5 min read
Colour, measured in afternoons
Our palettes are not picked from swatches. They are recorded between two and five o’clock, on site, in pencil.
There is a particular kind of attention that only arrives when nothing is asking for it. Scribes knew this. They left wide margins not to save vellum, but to give the reader somewhere to rest — and somewhere to answer back.
The page as a room
We think of every layout as a room with furniture in it. The text is the table; the margin is the space you walk around it. Remove that space and the room still functions, but nobody wants to stay.
The margin is where the reader writes the second half of the book.
In practice this means our grids are generous and our type sizes are modest. It means saying no to the extra paragraph, the extra image, the extra call to action. It means trusting that people will read slowly if you give them a reason to.
What we keep
Every project ends with a printed proof, annotated by hand, kept in a drawer in Antwerp. They are the most honest record we have of how we think — and a reminder that good work is mostly the work of leaving things out.
V
Written at the Antwerp desk, proofed twice in red.
Vellum Studio
Est. MMXII
Made slowly, read closely.
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Setting the type
Vellum Studio
Est. MMXII
Made slowly, read closely.
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Setting the type