Meridian Press
An editorial platform for a contrarian essay imprint — reading-first, ad-free, and unmistakably theirs.
Client
Meridian Press
Disciplines
- Editorial system
- Design & build
- Reading UX
Credits
- Creative Direction
- Mira Salovaara
- Editorial Design
- Lena Ostrowski
- Engineering
- Nocturn Studio
01 — The problem
Meridian had a devoted readership trapped inside a generic CMS theme. Essays were the product, but the typography fought the words and the homepage buried the writing under widgets. They wanted a platform that respected long-form attention.
02 — The approach
We designed a strict editorial grid with a single brutalist display face and a body type chosen for two-thousand-word stretches. No infinite scroll, no related-content traps — just a clean reading column, a draw-on progress rule, and an index that treats each essay as a poster. Performance was a feature: every page ships static and scores a perfect Lighthouse.
03 — The outcome
Read-through climbed to 72% and newsletter conversion more than tripled. Meridian now publishes directly into the system and has stopped apologising for their old site in pitch meetings.
By the numbers
“For the first time the design gets out of the way of the writing. Our readers stay to the last line.”