02 · Long Document
Reads like a memo, a letter, or a journal entry. No marketing structure. Continuous prose with inline section heads. The page is literature about the product.
- Heading: inline with body — section heads emerge from the paragraph flow as small caps or bold short phrases.
- Body: single column, generous line-height (1.65+), measure 60–65ch.
- Divider: negative space; the gap is the divider; occasionally a centered ornament for emphasis.
- Button: typographic link inside a paragraph, not a separate block.
- Image: inline, sized to text measure; never full-bleed.
- Reveal: none. The page is just there.
Reach for it for case studies, founder posts, mission pages, products whose sale is philosophical. The brief is "tell a story", not "list features".
Avoid when there's a single decisive action to take — Long Document hides CTAs, which is wrong for transactional pages.
Reference: Frank Chimero's site, destroytoday.com, long-form Substack essays in product disguise.
Sample opening lines (imitate the specificity, not the wording):
"Saturday, 6:14 a.m. The dough went in at midnight." — opens with a time-stamp; the brand introduces itself as a moment in the day "A monthly art publication featuring contributions by some of the most engaged thinkers working today." — e-flux.com/journal "We design everything for everyone." — pentagram.com — refusal of the verb, treats design as universal practice
<article class="prose">
<p class="lede">…</p>
<p>…</p>
<h2 class="inline">A small heading.</h2>
<p>…</p>
<blockquote>…</blockquote>
<p>… <a href="">read more →</a> …</p>
</article>