Design Regression is a journalette (mini journal) publishing texts that are about design for reading and reading-related research. It aims for the hard-to-get blend of approachability with seriousness and relevance to practice without needing to write at length. We understand reading as a way of decoding the world around us, thus, you might find articles on reading process, typography, typeface design, lettering, multilingualism, information design, social context of a designer, or visual literacy. However, we leave discussing strictly historical perspectives to others. In order to accommodate different approaches, we publish articles at different levels of formality, from research reports and serious essays to “just an idea”. We sincerely hope that each article will provide designers and researchers with new knowledge that will influence their future practice.

The name of the journalette is a reference to regression in philosophy and statistics where it represents the move from particular to universal, from data to explanations.

The publishing frequency is likely to be irregular, thus we humbly suggest subscription to our newsletter.

Design Regression was founded by a group of people connected with the University of Reading, but we hope for contributions from other schools of thought and backgrounds. The project has been funded by Rosetta Type Foundry, but it is largely independent and welcomes site-wide and article-level sponsorship from others (for more information, get in touch via email). The website code and all the texts and related materials are open source and shared on GitHub. The articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

If you would like to contribute, contact us at designregression@pm.me with an abstract of 500 words. You can even send a draft of an article that has been waiting in your drawer. See the guidelines for contributions for more information.