Anema House AH monogram ANEMA HOUSE The Open Press
Design notes · Delilah · Head of Creative

Clean slate.
Same mark.
Everything else new.

The AH brush monogram is kept exactly as it is. The palette, the typography and the entire architecture are replaced. This page explains what changed and why.

01The thesis

The mark is a human gesture.
The site around it is a system.

Look at the AH monogram: ink, pressure, a hand moving fast. It is the least mechanical thing on the page. So the design does not try to match it — it sets it against precision. Hairline rules, mono spec labels, registration marks, numbered stages. The tension between the two is the whole idea: a publishing house is human stories made with industrial discipline.

Why this matters commercially

Every other literary publisher's site resolves that tension in one direction — dusty ivory, gold rules, a serif whisper. It reads as heritage and it looks the same as fifty other houses. Holding the tension instead makes the house look like what it actually is: a modern production house with taste.

02The palette

Out with ivory, bronze and terracotta.

True ink black. Clean bright paper — not yellowed. And one hot accent with a reason behind it.

Ink
#0A0A0B
Vermilion
#E8341C
Paper
#FFFFFF
Paper 2
#F5F5F3
Graphite
#5E5E66
Pass
status only
Why vermilion

It is the red pencil. The editor's mark, the proof correction, the ink a reader makes in a margin. It belongs to publishing more than gold ever did — and no publisher currently claims it. It is the colour of the hand at work, which is exactly what this site is about.

03The typography

Fraunces, Space Grotesk, JetBrains Mono.

A display serif with real character, a grotesk for reading, and a monospace for the spec labels that give the site its proof-sheet feel.

Display

Fraunces

An old-style serif with optical size and wonk axes — warm, opinionated and contemporary. Replaces Lora and Cormorant, which both read as generic literary default.

Interface

Space Grotesk

A modern grotesk with slightly technical letterforms. Carries the body and the UI. Replaces Inter, which the old site shared with a thousand others.

Spec

JetBrains Mono

All labels, indices, statuses and terms. This is the typeface doing the heavy lifting on the design thesis — it is what makes the site read as engineered rather than decorated.

Rules

Hairlines, registration marks, margins

Corner registration marks and numbered margin rules run throughout, so every section reads like a page pulled from a production proof.

04What I need decided

Four answers and I build it for real.

These are the only things I cannot decide for you, because they are commercial commitments rather than design choices.

01 — Pricing

What does each pack cost?

I have built the packs with full deliverable lists but left investment as “quoted at review”, because I will not invent a price for your business. Give me four figures — or a “from” number for each — and they go straight in.

Also decide: is the review fee credited against a pack if the author proceeds?
02 — Imprint status

Are the existing books Anema House titles?

The Second Genesis seven carry live Amazon editions and also sit on the author site. Label them as Anema House publications, or as a separate imprint distributed by the house? This decides what the catalogue is allowed to claim.

My call: launch them as Anema House editions. The house needs its own list far more than it needs a disclaimer.
03 — Terms

Rights, term, territory, royalty.

I have written “copyright retained by the author, always” because that is the only honest default and it is the single strongest thing you can say to a writer. Confirm it, and tell me the rights term you want to offer — I will publish it on the site as a commitment, not a footnote.

04 — Submissions

Invitation-only, or open?

Built as invitation-only with the enquiry funnel open, and a single switch to change it. A pack structure with published pricing generally argues for opening submissions — the funnel is what feeds it.

My call: open a paid-review front door first. It filters for seriousness and it pays for itself.
05Honest notes on this build

What is real here, and what is not.

R

Real

Every cover is a real catalogue asset. The AH mark is the approved brush monogram, unaltered. All titles and hooks are the real ones from the catalogue. Status labels match the true state of each title.

Verified
P

Proposed — not yet a commitment

The pack structure, stage names, review turnaround and “copyright retained” promise are my proposals for the house to adopt. They are written as if live so you can judge them as a finished site, but none of them are binding until you confirm them.

Needs your sign-off
X

Deliberately absent

No prices, no testimonials, no award claims, no author photos, no sales figures, no distribution partners. All of those would have to be invented, and an invented credential on a publishing site is the fastest way to lose the exact writers you want.

By design