Print is where I started, and it never quite let go of me. Before servers there were page grids, proof sheets and the quiet pleasure of a spread that finally sits right. It's a relic of an earlier life, and one I keep close. I still take on books, comics and zines, because getting a page right asks for the same patience as getting a system right.
Book and catalogue layout, comic lettering and page assembly, infographics, typesetting in Slovenian and English, and print-ready files that printers don't send back.
How I work
A clear grid first, then type, then the small things nobody sees: widows, rivers, bleed, colour profiles. Files arrive organised, so the next edition is easy.
Still taking print
Book and catalogue layout, comic pages and lettering, infographics, typesetting in Slovenian and English, and print-ready files that printers don’t send back. Get in touch →
$ ls ./shelf — imaginary books, real layouts
Three science fiction books that don’t exist yet, designed the way I’d design yours: cover, chapter opener, comic page and infographic spread.
BOOK_01
THE QUIET MACHINES
Novel · 320 pages · 13 × 20 cm · Concept
The cover borrows the logic of Romek Marber’s 1961 grid for Penguin: type gets the top third in three bands (series, title, author), the picture gets the rest. Nobody walks this street; the one lit window is the whole story, and it becomes the series mark, a small warm square that turns up again on the chapter opener. Inside, the margins follow the Van de Graaf canon, the text sits on a 16 pt baseline grid, and chapter one starts on the right-hand page, a third of the way down, with a three-line drop cap.
InDesign spec
Trim / bleed
130 × 200 mm · 3 mm bleed · slug 10 mm
Margins
Van de Graaf canon: inner 14.4 · top 22.2 · outer 28.9 · bottom 44.4 mm
Baseline grid
16 pt, starting at the top margin · 23 lines per page
Paragraph styles
Body: Source Serif 4, 10.5/16 pt, justified, Adobe Paragraph Composer, optical margin alignment · Lead-in: small caps +60 · Drop cap: 3 lines, Inter Tight Medium · Chapter title: Inter Tight Medium 24/32 pt · Kicker: JetBrains Mono 7 pt, tracking +200
Colour
Cover CMYK (Coated FOGRA39) + Pantone 7409 C for the window square · interior 1/1 black
Pixel-art cover and a comic spread shown the way the printer sees it: 3 mm bleed, trim and crop marks, a live area for everything important, even panel gutters, and balloons placed in reading order with tails pointing at the speaker.
InDesign spec
Trim / bleed
170 × 240 mm · 3 mm bleed · crop marks offset 3 mm
Live area
top 12.8 · bottom 15.3 · outer 12.8 · gutter 14.5 mm · panel gutters 4.3 mm
Art
72 × 72 px pixel art, scaled 600 % nearest-neighbour, placed as indexed TIFF, never resampled on export
Lettering
comic caps 8.5/10 pt, balloons 0.5 pt stroke, tails to the speaker · SFX hand-drawn as live outlines · captions on a 2-colour box
Colour
CMYK (Coated FOGRA39) · panel borders 100 K · no rich black in type
Paper / binding
150 g/m² silk · sewn hardcover, 2.5 mm board
Export
PDF/X-4 · each spread checked at 300 % zoom for pixel edges
An infographic spread on a six-column grid: running heads, folios on the outer edges, a map, one big number, a chart and a numbered legend, all locked to the same columns.
InDesign spec
Trim / bleed
210 × 280 mm · 3 mm bleed
Grid
6 columns · 4 mm gutters · inner 18.9 · top 29.4 · outer 23.1 · bottom 31.5 mm · 12 pt baseline grid
Paragraph styles
Running head: JetBrains Mono 6.5 pt +180 · Figure title: Inter Tight Medium 15/18 pt · Caption: Source Serif 4, 8/11 pt · Big number: Inter Tight Light 64 pt
Infographics
drawn in Illustrator on the same 6-column grid, placed as live vector, charts from data merged in a CSV
Colour
CMYK + Pantone 2665 C for routes and bars · map dots as overprinting spot tint
Paper / binding
Arctic Volume White 130 g/m² · Swiss binding (open spine), 3 mm board
Export
PDF/X-4 · overprint preview checked · spot kept as separation
$ ls ./spots — spot illustrations
Four chapter vignettes for a drowned-world story: ink and one spot colour each, sized to sit at the head of a chapter.
I · The flood lineII · The ship-cityIII · Antenna raftIV · The lighthouse block
Influences, with gratitude: Moebius for the empty landscapes, Chris Ware for page architecture, Jiro Taniguchi for quiet cities, Simon Stålenhag for machines left out in the weather.