Last November, I spent four mornings in a studio above Canal Street comparing three layouts for the same essay. The one that stayed on the wall had the fewest lines, the calmest margin, and a headline that felt carved rather than typed.
A humanist face does that without asking for admiration. Its flared stems hold a trace of the hand, so the page reads with the authority of inscription and the ease of a modern sans serif.
Restraint is not absence. It is a sharper way of placing attention.
When the margin does the work
That was the reason to keep the rail narrow and factual: section links, reading time, one annotation. The result feels less like a website trying to entertain me and more like a well-kept print object that happens to scroll.