Public Record

Every headline gets one word in the sky. The page is a sky, deep at the top and pale at the horizon, fixed behind everything; the type is white; and in every headline one word is written in Contrail, the monoline script drawn for this look, the line a skywriting plane leaves. Raised is a cloud: a white pillow with a lit top, a grey underside and a shadow on the sky, no hairline, no glass. Recessed is a clearing, a well of deeper blue. Anything chosen sits in a clearing. One ink key per screen is the only dark thing on the page.

Contrail for the word and the mark, Albert Sans for everything else. Twelve icons, one continuous line each, never lifted. Plain words drift in; then the script word writes itself on, left to right, the way smoke arrives behind a plane. Night is the same sky after dark, and the ink key turns white.

It refuses: a second script word in a headline, frosted glass, a hairline, a gradient on text, black, an exclamation mark, a stock cloud, a drop shadow standing in for a cloud, and a paragraph in Contrail.