Public vault · every note in the open
Steal this vault
4 references, 9 human-written steal-notes. Every entry answers: where is it from, what family is it, and what would you steal?
Magazine DNA: serif display at outrageous sizes, multi-column measure, pull quotes, drop caps, rules. Reading as the hero interaction.
Palette: #e8dca8, #d94f5c, #f2c33c, #8f8f8f, #151210 Editorial · poster · via Art Institute of Chicago
Steal · color
Five flat values and no shading anywhere: black silhouette crowd behind, the lit cream subject in the middle, a large desaturated grey cut-out figure in front. Depth is built purely by value separation and overlap — the nearest figure is the *dullest*, the subject the brightest. Invert the usual instinct to make foreground elements the most saturated.
Steal · typography
'MOULIN ROUGE' is repeated three times on stacked lines with one oversized red 'M' spanning all three as a shared initial. Repetition used as texture rather than emphasis — the name becomes a pattern block. Works for a hero wordmark: set the word three times, let one letter run the full stack height.
Steal · grid/layout
There is no grid. Type sits in four clusters at four different scales, placed wherever the illustration leaves room, and the foreground figure crops through the bottom headline so image and lettering interlock instead of occupying separate bands. Steal for editorial hero art: let one element break the type's bounding box.
Fonts: hand-lettered condensed sans · curated by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1891
Palette: #f9f6ef, #1f1d1a, #8f1f1f Editorial · editorial · via SiteInspire
Steal · typography
Tiempos at 20px/1.7 with a 65ch measure — reading comfort as the entire design thesis.
Steal · component pattern
Interview headers set as playbill credits (INTERVIEWED BY…, ISSUE NO…) — structure borrowed from print tradition.
Fonts: Tiempos Text, Founders Grotesk
Palette: #ffffff, #141414, #d0021b Editorial · full website · via It's Nice That
Steal · grid/layout
12-col grid broken by a full-bleed image every third section — rhythm of restraint, release, restraint.
Steal · copywriting
Case studies open with the problem in one sentence before any image. Editorial discipline applied to portfolio.
Fonts: Neue Haas Grotesk, Tiempos Headline
Palette: #efe9df, #171412, #3a4f9c Editorial · full website · via Obys
Steal · motion/interaction
Text blocks assemble letter-by-letter on scroll like typesetting in progress — motion that references the medium's history.
Steal · typography
Serif italic display crashed into grotesque body at 4:1 scale ratio. The clash IS the hierarchy.
Fonts: Object Sans, Fragment Serif
Provenance & takedown
Every reference here links out to its original, and all referenced work belongs to its creators. What this vault adds — and what it is for — is the human-written commentary: the steal-notes are the content, not the pixels. Study use only.
Made something shown here and want it removed? Email util.wills@gmail.com with the entry title or a link to this page — it comes down promptly, no questions asked.
Fork this vault
Take the whole thing — references, steal-notes, provenance — and make it your starting point. Every steal-note here was written by a human. That is the point.
npx trova init --family editorial