Kerning: a magazine built for reading, not a content grid
Demonstration build · web-design magazine · Portland, OR · $350 scope · see the build
Kerning began as the internal study order #1012. We created it as a demonstration build; nobody commissioned it, no reader or publisher is presented as a client, and no payment is claimed. The working title was simply “Kerning.”
The brief we set ourselves
An independent magazine about web design needs to make a large archive feel edited rather than dumped into cards. A reader should find a current feature, move by topic or author, search the archive and understand how long a piece takes to read. The build also had to show that a content-heavy site can keep its hierarchy on a phone and in dark mode.
Decisions that shaped the magazine
- The lead story gets editorial weight. One feature owns the opening while a compact latest list gives regular readers a faster route into new work.
- Topics use their own accent colours. Design, UX, AI tools, development and trends stay recognizable across cards, article pages and indexes without turning the whole publication into one brand colour.
- Authors and reading time are navigation. Every article exposes who wrote it, when it ran and the commitment it asks from the reader; separate author and topic indexes make the archive explorable.
- Illustrations are part of the files. The abstract article art is inline SVG rather than borrowed stock, so it scales cleanly and does not make an editorial claim about a photograph we do not own.
- Search has a prepared index. A separate `search.json` keeps the magazine's 29 HTML pages discoverable without a server-side CMS.
The recorded numbers
- Portfolio result
- 100 / 100 in `site/work/results.json`.
- Current home-page file
- 29,725 bytes, about 29.0 KB before transfer compression.
- Published structure
- 29 HTML pages plus a separate search index and shared stylesheet.
- Audit rounds and contrast count
- Not stored in the portfolio record; this case does not invent them.
- What we would charge
- $350 for this scope. No customer paid it.
What the price means
$350, delivered in 24 hours, is what we would charge for this recorded multi-page demonstration scope once the content, sections and materials were agreed. It includes the magazine structure, topic and author routes, article templates, search, responsive states and deployment. It is not a claim of revenue from order #1012.
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