> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Oxide Books: a series system for a small press - URL: https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/oxide-books/ - Published: 2026-08-23T09:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-23T09:00:00.000Z - Description: Three fixed things and freedom for everything else: a family of covers that still lets every book be itself. - Author: Tomás Reyes - Tags: Editorial, Branding, #work, #Import 2026-09-30 05:40 Oxide Books is a small independent publisher that prints about twelve titles a year: essays, translated fiction and the occasional book of poems. For ten years every cover was designed by a different freelancer. The books were beautiful one by one. On a shelf, they looked like they came from twelve different publishers. Oxide asked us to design a series system: a way to make every new book look like part of a family, without making them all look the same. ## The problem with templates The easy answer would have been a template: same layout, same typeface, a different colour for each book. Many publishers do this well. But Oxide's list is too varied for a single template. A short book of poems and a four-hundred-page history of shipbuilding should not wear the same clothes. So instead of a template, we designed a set of rules. The rules fix a few things and leave everything else free. > A template tells you what to do. A system tells you what not to do, and trusts you with the rest. > > **Tomás Reyes** ## Three fixed things Every Oxide book now shares exactly three things. - **The spine.** Same typeface, same position for the title, author and logo. On a shelf, the books line up perfectly, even when the covers are very different. - **The grid.** Every cover is built on the same six-column grid, with the title always starting on one of three lines. It is a quiet structure that readers feel before they see it. - **The paper.** A warm, uncoated stock with a slightly rough surface. It makes every book feel like an Oxide book in the hand, before you even look at the cover. Everything else changes from book to book: the colour, the image, the size of the title, whether there is an image at all. ![](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/press-print-1.jpg) ![](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/press-paper-1.jpg) ![](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/press-spread-1.jpg) Printing tests, paper samples and the first proof of the new interior layout. ## Inside the book A publisher's identity is not only the cover. Most of the time, a reader is looking at the pages inside. We redesigned the interior at the same time, with one goal: make long reading comfortable. The text typeface is a sturdy book face with generous spacing and a slightly larger size than most paperbacks use. Margins are wide enough for a thumb. Chapter openings are simple: a number, a title and a lot of white space. We removed every decoration that did not help the reader find their place. 📖 We printed the first chapter of three different books in five typefaces and gave them to a group of regular Oxide readers. We did not tell them what we were testing. The typeface they found easiest to read was the one we had liked least on screen. ## Working with translators and authors Oxide publishes many translations, so the system had to handle long author names, two names on a cover and titles in languages with very long words. We tested the grid with the hardest cases we could find: a twelve-word title, a German compound noun and a book with four translators. Authors get a say in their covers. The system makes that easier, not harder. Because the fixed parts are already decided, the conversation with an author is about the one thing that matters most: the image or the colour that captures their book. ![The series in a bookshop in Amsterdam. Booksellers told us the spines are easy to spot from across the room.](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/press-shelf-1.jpg) The series in a bookshop in Amsterdam. Booksellers told us the spines are easy to spot from across the room. ## A shop, a website and a newsletter With the books done, we extended the system to everything else Oxide makes: a simple online shop, a monthly newsletter and the tote bags they sell at book fairs. The website uses the same grid as the covers. Each book page shows the cover large, a long extract and a short note from the editor about why they chose it. The newsletter is the part Oxide's readers love most. Every month, the editor writes about one book in progress, with photographs from the printer. We designed it to be read, not scanned: one column, generous type and no more than three images. ## Results The first season of books in the new system sold about 30% more than the season before, although the publisher is careful to say that good books had more to do with it than good covers. Bookshops reordered faster. Two of the covers were shortlisted for design awards. And for the first time, readers began collecting the series: several wrote to Oxide asking for a complete list, so they could fill the gaps on their shelves. ![The system is only a success if people forget it and read the book.](https://folio.ghost-themes.apps.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/press-reader-1.jpg) The system is only a success if people forget it and read the book. ## The logo Oxide's old logo was a detailed drawing of a printing press, which disappeared completely when it was printed small on a spine. We replaced it with a simple solid circle with a narrow notch cut out of it, like a reel of paper seen from the side. It is small, strong and works at any size, from a four-millimetre mark on a spine to a large sign above a stand at a book fair. The circle also works as a frame. On some covers it holds a photograph or an illustration. On others it becomes a sun, a moon or a full stop at the end of a title. Designers who work on future covers are encouraged to play with it, within the rules of the grid. ### A guide for future designers Oxide will keep working with freelance designers for many of its covers, so we wrote a short guide to the system: twenty pages that explain the three fixed things, show good and bad examples and leave plenty of room for creativity. The first freelance designer to use it finished her cover in half the usual time and said the rules made the job easier, not harder. ## Credits Design direction by Tomás Reyes. Interior typography by Tomás Reyes and Lena Brandt. Website by Aiko Tanaka. Photography by the Folio team.