Respect for the Author

Give their thoughts the dignity of professional typography.

The Problem

Most platforms treat content as raw material to be exploited. They optimize for “engagement” and “retention,” not beauty. They add distractions, sidebars, recommended posts, and algorithmic feeds.

The author’s work becomes just another node in the attention economy.

Standard Garden rejects this.

Our Promise

We believe that every piece of writing—no matter how casual—deserves the dignity of professional typography.

Your mom’s recipe should look like it belongs in a cookbook.
Your brother’s snowmobile repair notes should look like a manual.
Your girlfriend’s poem should look like it came from a letterpress.

Automatically.

No design skills required. No configuration needed. Just paste and publish.

What This Means in Practice

1. Classical Typography Applied Automatically

We apply 500 years of typographic refinement to every note:

Swiss Grid System – Mathematical precision in layout
Golden Ratio (φ = 1.618) – Harmonious proportions
Baseline Grid Alignment – Rhythmic vertical spacing
Optimal Line Length – 60-80 characters for readability
Professional Font Pairing – Thoughtfully selected typefaces

You don’t choose these. We choose them for you. Because beauty should be default, not optional.

2. The Six Temperaments

Every note automatically renders in one of six classical design systems based on its content:

International (Swiss minimalism – Helvetica/Inter)
Technical (Manual/safety – IBM Plex Mono, graph paper)
Humanist (Letters/poems – Garamond, cream paper)
Editorial (Journalism – Miller, newspaper authority)
Academic (Scholarly – sidenotes, journal-style)
Gallery (Visual – invisible UI, museum-style)

Users can override via frontmatter (theme: technical), but the default is always beautiful.

This is our moat. Every other paste tool looks like garbage. We make casual content look professional instantly.

3. No Distractions

The author’s words are the only thing that matters. We don’t add:

❌ Recommended posts
❌ Social sharing widgets
❌ Comment sections (unless explicitly enabled)
❌ Ads or tracking
❌ “Related content” algorithms

Just the text. Just the typography. Just the beauty.

The Technical Implementation

This isn’t magic—it’s craft.

The Press (Typography Engine)

Our StandardPress engine transforms markdown into semantically perfect HTML:

# Your Title

Your content here…

Becomes:

Proper heading hierarchy (<h1> through <h6>)
Smart quotes (” " and ' ‘)
Em dashes (—) and ellipses (…)
Widow and orphan control
Optimal line breaks
Mathematical precision in spacing

The @stnd/astro Framework

Our CSS framework (@stnd/astro) provides:

OKLCH Color Space – Perceptually uniform, future-proof
CSS Custom Properties – Standard Framework tokens (—color-foreground, —color-background, —color-border)
Baseline Rhythm – 1rlh (root line height) vertical rhythm
Responsive Typography – Scales beautifully from phone to desktop

Zero Configuration

Authors paste text. We handle the rest:

Automatic Temperament detection
Proper font loading (system fonts + web fonts)
Dark mode support (OKLCH lightness inversion)
Print styles (because some things should be physical)

Examples

Before Standard Garden

Your mom's recipe on Facebook: – Cluttered with ads – Lost in the feed – Buried under comments – Formatted in Arial 12pt – Looks like every other post

After Standard Garden

Your mom's recipe on Standard Garden: – Rendered in Humanist temperament – Cream paper, Garamond typeface – Perfect margins and spacing – Looks like a vintage cookbook – URL: standard.garden/@mom/grandmas-lasagna

The same content. Completely different dignity.

Why This Matters

Typography isn’t decoration—it’s respect.

When you make text beautiful, you’re saying:

“This is worth reading”
“The author’s time matters”
“This deserves attention”

Every note on Standard Garden gets this treatment. Every author gets this respect.

No exceptions. No subscriptions. No premium tiers.

Beauty is a human right, not a luxury feature.

For Developers

When building features for Standard Garden, always ask:

“Does this make the author’s work more beautiful?”

If the answer is no—or worse, if it distracts from the content—don’t build it.

Our job is to be invisible infrastructure. Like the printing press, like the page, like the binding.

The author’s words are the star. We’re just the stage.