Editorial Website Templates

On saleTwo Editions are on sale today, Les Gourmands and Aperture Office. Complete React source, the original photography included. Single licence 89 USD, one published website. Studio licence 179 USD, up to five.

The grammar of editorial layout

• Scale carries the argument. An editorial headline sits several steps above the body text, not one, so the eye lands in a single place and the rest of the page organises itself underneath.
• The measure is decided before the column is. Body text set between sixty and seventy five characters a line stays readable, and a paragraph stretched across a wide screen is the fastest way to lose a reader.
• Alignment is a decision, not a default. Centring everything is the visual equivalent of a shrug, while a strong left edge running the length of the page gives the reader a spine to follow.
• Whitespace is an argument about value. Space around a photograph tells the visitor that the photograph was worth commissioning. A page that fills every pixel says the opposite.
• Captions and eyebrows do real work. A short letterspaced label above a section, and one line of caption under an image, carry information that would otherwise sit in a paragraph nobody reads.
• Rhythm is set once and then repeated. The distance between a heading and its text, and between one section and the next, stays identical across the site, so the page reads as composed rather than assembled.

What the magazine page already solved

• The spread taught asymmetry. A magazine never treats the two halves of a view as equal, and a web section built the same way, image weighted to one side and text to the other, reads as drawn rather than filled in.
• The standfirst taught the lede. A short paragraph in a larger size, placed between the headline and the body, gives the reader a reason to continue. It is the single most useful element missing from most homepages.
• The caption taught trust. Print never leaves a photograph unlabelled, and naming the suite, the stone or the location under an image answers the question the visitor is already forming.
• The folio taught orientation. The small running label at the edge of a printed page becomes the eyebrow that tells a scrolling visitor which chapter of the site they are currently inside.
• The pull quote taught pacing. One line lifted out at a large size breaks a long passage into two readable halves and gives the page somewhere to breathe before the argument resumes.

Where software layouts fail a luxury brand

• The centred hero with two buttons was designed to push a free trial. A villa has nothing to trial, so the pattern asks a visitor to decide before anything has been shown to them.
• Three equal feature cards flatten everything into a comparison. A hotel's restaurant, its spa and its coastline are not three equivalent product benefits, and a row of identical boxes tells the visitor that they are.
• Gradients, soft shadows and rounded corners are interface conventions borrowed from dashboards. On a brand built from stone, linen and light, they read as plastic laid over the photography.
• Animated counters and logo marquees are proof devices for a market with no other proof. Luxury proof is the photograph, the material and the writing, and motion that performs competes with all three.
• The sticky bar that follows the reader down the page is an interruption dressed as convenience. It covers precisely the part of the image the photographer composed for.
• Dense feature copy answers objections nobody raised. When the price is high and the choice is made on feeling, restraint is the more persuasive position.

The decisions inside an Edition

Prices at release, and where the Editions stand

• Essentials, the simple one purpose tier such as a portfolio, is 49 USD. It is the right size when a single well made page system is the entire brief.
• Edition, a single licence for one site, is 89 USD launch pricing. That covers a complete multi page website with CMS collections, a licence, a written guide and the Framer remix link at release.
• Edition Studio, for up to five sites, is 179 USD. It suits a studio launching several brands, or a group placing a residence, a spa and a restaurant on separate sites.
• The Saint Ego Collection, the three Editions together, is 219 USD. It becomes available once the hospitality Edition, Vellum and Atelier have all been released.
• Nothing is on sale yet. The hospitality Edition is in development for boutique hotels and private villas, Vellum, Atelier and Essentials are in design, and there is no checkout and no remix link today.
• These are the launch prices, quoted once and never struck through. Early access is by email at hello@saint-ego.studio, and a commissioned Saint Ego website, designed from zero, starts around 3,500 EUR.

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