In January 2020, I started Hyper­Essays, a pro­ject to create a modern and ac­ces­si­ble on­line version of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne.

The project’s web­site is designed to have a very small foot­print to encourage un­in­ter­rupt­ed read­ing. It loads quickly and is very read­able on smart­phones. It switches to dark mode at night to adapt to low light en­vi­ron­ments.

The project’s identity avoids his­tor­i­cal and ac­a­dem­ic ref­er­ences, and em­pha­sizes Hyper­Essays’s role as a con­tem­po­rary and open resource for all.

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hyperessays.net

Easy on the eyes day and night

HyperEssays’s logo

Social media card using the brand’s main visual elements: three bands of yellow, red diagonal bar, blue dots

HyperEssays generates hundreds of chapter-level PDFs downloadable for free on the site

HyperEssays is built from TEI files with Hugo. Its on­line search engine and its PDF ren­der­ing pro­gram are both written in Swift.