Last winter, I spent two weeks in a county archive near Cedar Rapids, reading letters about paint, weather, and the stubborn usefulness of a straight line. The notes made a quiet case for pages that simply hold their shape.
The discipline of a front-facing page
That is not nostalgia. It is a working method: repeat the rule, name the material, and leave room for the eye to settle. A page can be plain without being passive, and exact without becoming cold.