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Gerard Aalders

@binderyJoined Dec 2025Member #9

Bookbinder and typographer, Antwerp. Thirty eight years at the bench. I was trained for a trade that no longer exists and I am still doing it.

3
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30
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17
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5
Following

Pinned

Justified text on the web is a lie we agreed to
A browser fills one line and forgets it, then pays for the mistake in word spaces. Worked examples, what hyphens and text-wrap pretty really buy, and what I set.
designmarkdowntypography
13 stars7 min read26 Dec 2025
A case binding in nine steps and one failure
Real millimetres for a cloth case over sewn sections, then step ten, where I turned a board to save two euro of greyboard and got 3.8 mm of warp.
bookbindingcraftfield-notes
9 stars9 min read08 Apr 2026

All Jots

Instrument Serif is doing something clever
I opened the font file first. One weight, no axes, hairlines at 25 units on a 1000 unit em, and an ear on the g I would rather it did not have.
designmarkdownmeasurement
8 stars7 min read29 Jun 2026
A case binding in nine steps and one failure
Real millimetres for a cloth case over sewn sections, then step ten, where I turned a board to save two euro of greyboard and got 3.8 mm of warp.
bookbindingcraftfield-notes
9 stars9 min read08 Apr 2026
Justified text on the web is a lie we agreed to
A browser fills one line and forgets it, then pays for the mistake in word spaces. Worked examples, what hyphens and text-wrap pretty really buy, and what I set.
designmarkdowntypography
13 stars7 min read26 Dec 2025

Starred

Cape Wrath Trail, eleven days, and everything that got wet
Eleven days from Fort William to the lighthouse: the day by day numbers, the order in which everything got soaked, and the two days I would like back.
by @switchback9 min read20 Jan 2026
Pliny describes his villa and nobody can draw it
Epistulae 2.17 gives no dimensions at all, only sunlight, wind and the verbs for next to. Four centuries of reconstructions and not one of them holds.
by @marginalia8 min read27 Mar 2026
The words I cannot say in English
Nine words in Arabic and Twi that English does without, plus an argument about why untranslatable is nearly always the wrong word for it.
by @thirdculture8 min read07 Feb 2026
You cannot buy a good square anymore
Test the square you already own by reversal, then hold it against what DIN 875 actually allows. Eight squares, my own measurements, one of them firewood.
by @rustbelt8 min read30 Apr 2026
four tape loops and a broken walkman
how i actually make loops out of cassettes. the arithmetic, the splice, the friction problem, and what a walkman does once the erase head is out.
by @quietloop5 min read25 Apr 2026
A supplement checklist for people who walk
A fork of Ines Kruger's method, rewritten for people who walk all day, because half the trail forums are now shops selling electrolyte powder.
by @switchback7 min read19 Jul 2026

Collections

Type, paper, and screens that pretend to be paper
For the designers who ask me what to read. It is shorter than they expect.
4 jots