Over the past few years I’ve worked on 70+ stories and templates in Shorthand, from annual reports and brand stories through to more editorial pieces. Each one had its own tone and content, but the job was typically the same, work within the platform, figure out what would best suit the story, and build a layout that felt considered without getting in the way.

Some stories could stay within the standard toolkit and some needed a bit more. For projects like The Artist Series, I used custom code to push the platform further and give the stories a more tailored feel. A lot of that work was about balancing what looked good with what would still hold together across different screen sizes and content lengths.

Alongside the story work, I also built reusable templates for things like annual reports, brand books and newsletters. That meant distilling different formats down into a solid starting point, mixing in different Shorthand features, and keeping enough flexibility that other people could make them their own without breaking the layout.

Doing this over and over has been a good way to sharpen layout, pacing and restraint. The goal was never to over-design the stories. It was to give writers and content teams a strong structure to work from, and to make the platform feel more flexible than it might at first glance.