Brand Broadsheet

broadsheet

ink on newsprint, set tight, and it assumes you can read.

Newsprint. A hairline rule under the masthead, body copy in real columns at a 62-character measure, and the only colour on the page is one ink-red kicker above the headline. Sober, dense, authoritative.

Use when the piece has a byline and a date. Essays, reporting, results, anything the reader will cite later.

Avoid when the page is one product with one button, or the reader is on a phone and in a hurry.

Native mode: light. Family: editorial. Router: brand-router. Contract: the twelve surfaces and the craft floor.

Tokens

Verified contrast: light fg/bg 16.56:1, muted/bg 6.29:1, accent/bg 8.08:1. Dark fg/bg 15.29:1, muted/bg 6.11:1, accent/bg 5.19:1. All pass 4.5:1.

The dark mode is the late edition. Not an inversion — the same press run printed on the paper the night desk uses. The red lifts to #d9614c because #8c1d13 on #12110d is 2.07:1 and invisible. Nothing else changes character.

Type. Display "Libre Baskerville", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif 700, tracking -0.015em, leading 1.06. Body "Source Serif 4", Georgia, serif 400, tracking 0em, leading 1.52. Mono "IBM Plex Mono", ui-monospace, monospace 400, tracking -0.01em, leading 1.45. Scale ratio 1.2. Google families: Libre Baskerville:wght@400;700, Source Serif 4:wght@400;600, IBM Plex Mono:wght@400;500.

Radius 0. Shadow: none — ink on paper casts none. Hairline 0.5px solid #14120e.

Texture — halftone. Apply as a ::before overlay on the canvas:

background-image: radial-gradient(circle at 50% 50%, rgba(20,18,14,0.10) 0.7px, transparent 0.8px);
background-size: 3.5px 3.5px;
background-position: 0 0, 1.75px 1.75px;

Motion. Ease cubic-bezier(0.22, 1, 0.36, 1), duration 520ms. One authored moment: on first paint the hairline under the masthead draws left to right across the full column measure, and the dateline is uncovered by the rule as it passes, like a press bar clearing the sheet. It happens once. Nothing on this page moves on scroll, ever. Animate transform: scaleX() from the left origin — the rule and the dateline are already in the DOM at full opacity, so a screenshot and a crawler both see them. Respect prefers-reduced-motion: the rule is simply there.

1. Voice and writing

Tone. A staff writer filing at deadline: the fact first, the qualifier second, and no adjective that is not load-bearing.

Casing. Sentence case in headlines, always. Kickers in small caps with 0.08em tracking. The masthead is the only thing set in full caps.

Sentence rhythm. Declarative and medium-length. Fragments are allowed only in the kicker. Every paragraph leads with its own conclusion, so a reader who stops after the first sentence still has the news.

Do say. "Reported this week" · "The number is 14,000, and here is where it came from" · "Correction:" · "Three people who were in the room disagree" · "As of Tuesday".

Don't say. "just dropped" · "hot take" · "insane" · "sneak peek" · "we're excited to announce" · "thread below".

The tell. The attribution clause. Every claim carries where it came from inside the sentence that makes it, not in a link at the end.

2. Landing page

The masthead is the hero: POORIA ARAB in Libre Baskerville 700 small caps at 28px with 0.14em tracking, flush left, then a full-width 0.5px #14120e rule 16px below. No image above the fold.

Under the rule, the lead piece: kicker in #8c1d13 small caps 14px, headline in Libre Baskerville 700 at 64px sentence case held to a 62-character measure, then the standfirst in Source Serif 4 at 21px.

Sections divide by rule, never by card, never by background change. Two columns appear only above 1180px, where each column still holds 62 characters; below that the page is one column and the rules stay.

Whitespace is column gutters (48px) and the space under a rule (24px above, 16px below). There is no hero padding — the page starts at the masthead.

The carrying element: the kicker. One red thing per page. If a second red appears, the direction is gone.

3. X / Twitter avatar

Black-and-white portrait rendered as a 60-line halftone, cropped from the collarbone up with the face filling 70% of the frame, on #f4f1e8. A 0.5px #14120e rule crosses the bottom eighth of the square, with the surname under it in 8pt small caps.

At 48px that spec fails. A 60-line halftone becomes mud, a 0.5px rule vanishes, and 8pt type is one grey smear. Export a separate 48px variant:

• Same portrait, halftone dropped entirely, converted to a 2-tone threshold at 55% — #14120e on #f4f1e8, no midtones.
• Face fills 82% of the frame, cropped at the chin.
• Rule becomes 2px, at 88% of the square height, full width.
• No name. It is unreadable at 48px, so it is a lie to include it.

Ship the halftone at 400px for the profile page and the 2-tone file as the one X downsamples.

4. X header and YouTube banner

2560×1440. The phone-safe area is 1546×423 centred: x 507–2053, y 509–932. Everything outside it is decoration and must be ignorable.

Six 0.5px #14120e column rules run the full 1440px height on #f4f1e8, spaced evenly across the full 2560 width. That is the decoration.

Inside the safe area: one sentence of no more than 11 words in Libre Baskerville 700 at 72px, sentence case, sitting on the baseline of the third column rule (flush left against it, not centred). Nothing else in the frame. No name, no handle, no URL — the platform already shows them.

5. Open Graph card

1200×630, read in feed at roughly 400×210. Nothing under 28px survives.

Newsprint field with the halftone at 60% strength. Masthead POORIA ARAB top-left at 24px small caps, 0.14em tracking, 64px from the left and top. A full-width 0.5px rule beneath it. Then the headline at 56px Libre Baskerville 700, sentence case, held to a 62-character measure, maximum 12 words over three lines. Dateline bottom-left in IBM Plex Mono 26px: city, comma, date.

Drop for the shrink: the standfirst, the kicker, the author photograph. A kicker at 14px scaled to feed size is a red dash and reads as damage.

6. LinkedIn banner

1584×396. On desktop the profile photo covers the lower-left. Keep the leftmost 300px and the bottom 80px completely clear.

Column rules run the full height across the whole 1584px, unchanged — they read correctly even where the photo covers them, because they are a field, not a message.

The message sits from x=360 to x=1500, vertically centred: one line, Libre Baskerville 700 at 40px, sentence case, maximum 9 words. Above it a kicker in #8c1d13 small caps 16px. Nothing in the bottom 80px.

7. LinkedIn post image

1200×627. This is the most conservative room the brand enters, and broadsheet is the direction that needs the least adjustment for it — a newspaper already reads as credible in a room full of suits.

Dial down by one step, not more: drop the halftone texture to 40% strength and set the headline at 48px instead of 56px so more of the argument fits. Keep the kicker red. Keep the dateline.

Structure: masthead, rule, kicker, headline, then a two-line standfirst at 22px Source Serif 4. Left-aligned, 72px margins. The bottom right holds the piece number in IBM Plex Mono 20px, e.g. no. 41.

Do not add a photograph of yourself. On LinkedIn that reads as a personal brand post; broadsheet reads as a filed piece, and the difference is the whole point.

8. Instagram carousel

1080×1350. Margins 80px on all sides. Halftone at full strength on every slide.

An honest deviation: broadsheet's deck rule is two columns, never one. At 1080px wide a second column cannot hold 60 characters at a readable size, so the carousel runs one column and keeps the column rules as the decoration instead. Do not fake two columns on a phone.

Cover slide. Masthead POORIA ARAB 28px small caps top-left. Full-measure 0.5px rule under it. Kicker in #8c1d13 small caps at 30px. Headline in Libre Baskerville 700 at 96px, leading 1.06, sentence case, flush left, maximum 9 words over three lines. Dateline bottom-left, IBM Plex Mono 22px. No image.

Swipe cue. A single 0.5px #14120e vertical rule 40px in from the right edge, running from the masthead rule to the bottom margin, with 1/7 set on it in IBM Plex Mono 18px, rotated 90°, sitting a third of the way down. It reads as a folded page edge.

Interior slide. Same rule at the top, without the masthead. One column of Source Serif 4 at 30px, leading 1.52, flush left — 65 characters across the 920px measure, so the measure holds. Maximum 9 lines. A subhead in Libre Baskerville 700 at 40px is allowed once per interior slide. The slide number sits bottom-right in IBM Plex Mono 18px. No red on any interior slide.

End card. The ask is a subscription, not a follow. Masthead, rule, then one line in Libre Baskerville 700 at 56px: "The letter goes out on Sundays." Under it in IBM Plex Mono 24px, the URL. The red appears here for the second and last time in the carousel, as a 0.5px rule under the URL only.

9. YouTube thumbnail

1280×720, designed for the ~210px wide version.

Kicker top-left in #8c1d13 small caps at 72px, 3 words maximum. Under it a 2px rule — 0.5px does not survive the downsample, so this is the one place the hairline gets thicker. Then the headline in Libre Baskerville 700 at 120px, sentence case, 9 words maximum, broken over three flush-left lines. The portrait is knocked out into the right third only. Type never sits on the face.

The recognisability rule: the kicker-rule-headline stack in the left two thirds, every time, in that order. What changes is the headline and the crop. What never changes is the stack. Two thumbnails side by side read as two editions of the same paper, not two designs.

10. YouTube edit style

Cut rhythm. Slow. Hold a shot for 4–8 seconds. A cut is allowed to land only on the end of a sentence, never mid-clause. Never cut on a beat — this direction has no beat.

Titles and lower thirds. Lower third sits at x=120, y=840 on a 1920×1080 frame: kicker in #8c1d13 small caps 28px, a 2px #14120e rule, then the name or claim in Libre Baskerville 700 at 46px on a #f4f1e8 plate with zero radius. In: the rule wipes left to right over 520ms with cubic-bezier(0.22, 1, 0.36, 1) and uncovers the type, exactly as on the web. Out: it wipes back the same way. Hold for 4 seconds.

B-roll. Desaturate to 15% chroma, lift blacks to #14120e (never pure black), add 4% monochrome grain. Speed is 100% — no ramps, no slow motion.

Transitions. One only: the hard cut. No crossfade, no whip, no zoom. A dip to #f4f1e8 is permitted once per video, at the section break, over 8 frames.

The cold open. Three seconds: the frame holds on #f4f1e8, the masthead rule draws across it, the kicker and the claim are uncovered, hard cut to the first shot. No music before the cut. That silence is the hook.

11. Podcast cover

3000×3000, shown at 150px. At 5% scale the halftone is invisible, a 0.5px rule is nothing, and body copy is a grey block. Simplify hard.

Keep three things: the field #f4f1e8, the masthead, and one red mark.

• Show title in Libre Baskerville 700 at 420px, sentence case, 3 words maximum, over two lines, flush left with a 300px margin.
• A 12px #14120e rule above it, full width inside the margins.
• A #8c1d13 square of 180×180 hard in the top-right, 300px from each edge.
• Nothing else. No portrait, no episode count, no halftone.

12. Deck and talks

16:9, read from the back of a room.

Title slide. Masthead top-left at 40px small caps, full-width 2px rule, then the talk title in Libre Baskerville 700 at 120px, sentence case, maximum 8 words. Dateline bottom-left in IBM Plex Mono 24px: city, comma, date.

Section divider. Kicker in #8c1d13 small caps 32px, rule, section name at 88px. Nothing else on the slide.

Data slide. The number is set in Libre Baskerville 700 at 200px, and the source is set directly beneath it in IBM Plex Mono 22px. A chart is allowed only if it is a line or a bar, #14120e on #f4f1e8, with no gridlines and no legend. Never a pie.

Slides with a lot of words. Two columns per slide, never one — at 1920px each column holds 62 characters at 28px, so the measure survives. Slide number bottom-right in IBM Plex Mono 22px. The red appears once in the whole deck, on the pull quote.

Cost to run

Moderate. The design is cheap: one type pairing, one rule, one red. A template in Figma or an HTML component covers every surface, and a post takes about 15 minutes once it exists.

The cost is the copy. Every asset needs a real headline, a real kicker and a real dateline, and a byline you cannot back up is worse than no byline. If you publish weekly and you write anyway, this is sustainable. If you publish daily and you do not write, this direction will expose that in four weeks.

Pairs with / clashes with

Pairs with dispatch — the same newsroom, different desk. broadsheet is the considered piece, dispatch is the wire copy. Use broadsheet for the essay and dispatch for the short update, and the two read as one publication.

Pairs with annual — a results letter set in annual slots into a broadsheet page without argument. Both treat a figure as something you have to source.

Clashes with risograph — riso's misregistration is the opposite claim about print. broadsheet says the press is exact; riso says it is charmingly not. Pick one.

Clashes with stadium and arcade — a stadium headline on newsprint is a tabloid, and a tabloid is a different brand with different credibility.

Careful next to manuscript — same paper family, and at a glance they can read as one direction. They only coexist if broadsheet holds the reported work and manuscript holds the essays, and the split is visible.

The failure mode

It becomes a serif blog. Drop the kicker, the dateline and the masthead rule and nothing is left but Georgia on cream, which is the default look of every writing platform since 2012. The three structural marks are not decoration; they are the direction.

The second failure is red creep. Two reds on a page, and the ink-red kicker stops meaning "this is the one thing" and starts meaning "this is a colour we use". One red. One place. Per page, per card, per deck.

The third is borrowed authority: a byline and a dateline over an opinion with no reporting behind it. Newsprint promises that somebody checked. If nobody did, the form is lying, and readers who know newspapers will feel it before they can say why.