Editorial · 2024
Field Notes
Twelve years of field research, four hundred pages, and no system for any of it.
- Client
- Field Notes Press
- Sector
- Independent publishing
- Year
- 2024
- Scope
- Editorial system, Grid and typography, Cover series, Production
The brief
The press published one book a year, each designed by whoever was free. Readers who loved the 2016 volume could not recognise the 2022 one as the same series.
We were asked for a system durable enough to survive a rotating cast of designers without flattening what each volume is actually about.
The move
One grid, one type pairing, one image treatment, and exactly two decisions left open per volume: the accent ink and the cover crop. Everything a future designer is allowed to change is written down, and everything else is set.
The covers became a series that reads as one shelf: same lockup position, same rule weight, same title register, with the crop carrying all of the difference. Spines were redrawn so twelve years line up as a sentence.
Two designers have worked on it since and I cannot tell you which volume belongs to which.
12
Back volumes reissued in the new system
2
Decisions left open per volume
27%
Lower production cost per copy
What we made
- 01Editorial grid and type pairing
- 02Cover series system
- 03Image treatment specification
- 04Production and stock guide
- 05Designer handover manual