A Practical Look at the First Week

When you start a new editorial project, the first week sets the tone. You choose the grid, the typeface, the paper stock. You decide how much space a headline deserves and whether a caption can break the margin. These are not abstract choices. They are practical decisions that define how the reader moves through the page.

In this case, the brief was clear: a technical bulletin for a local engineering firm. The content was dense, with tables, diagrams, and footnotes. The grid had to be rigid enough to hold the data but flexible enough to let the illustrations breathe. We settled on a 12-column modular grid with a 4 mm gutter. The body text was set in Lora at 10.5 points, with a leading of 14 points. The headings used a heavier weight of the same family, keeping the hierarchy clean without introducing a second typeface.

The tradeoff came with the diagrams. They needed to sit close to the related text, but the grid did not always align with the image dimensions. We decided to let the images span two columns when necessary, but only if the reference text was on the same spread. This rule kept the layout consistent without forcing every element into the same cell.

By the end of the week, we had a working template. The client approved the structure, and the next phase would focus on the cover and the color palette. The first week was not about perfection. It was about making decisions that could be tested and adjusted.