A note on the making
Colophon.
Every publication has a little craft behind it. This is a record of the tools, typefaces and choices that give Forbes Briefings its shape.
Built for the words
The pages are made with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Published briefings are served as ready-made HTML, so the words arrive quickly and can be read without JavaScript. Search, subscriptions and discussions add a little more life when you choose to use them.
The site runs on Amazon Web Services. Amazon S3 stores the public pages and CloudFront delivers them. Python runs the publishing service on AWS Lambda, with API Gateway and DynamoDB supporting subscriptions and conversations. Amazon SES sends the emails.
A custom publishing desk is our content management system. It keeps a backlog of drafts, supports immediate or scheduled publication, and prepares the Monday morning email when there is something new to share.
The type on the page
Our headings and wordmark use Georgia, designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft. Its familiar letterforms bring something of the printed page to the screen. Where Georgia is unavailable, the site uses a serif fallback, including Times New Roman, the work of Stanley Morison, Victor Lardent and Monotype’s Type Drawing Office.
Body text and controls use a system sans-serif stack. Depending on your device, this may be San Francisco, designed by Apple, or Segoe UI, Microsoft’s screen typeface from the Segoe family designed by Steve Matteson. Other devices use their available sans-serif font.
All of these are drawn from fonts already available on your device. We do not download webfonts or contact an external font service.
Design and tools
Forbes Briefings is created by Steve, with design and development assistance from OpenAI’s Codex. The layout, colours and small SVG illustrations are shaped directly in code and refined through browser previews. Git and GitHub keep the history of the work.
Deep green ink, a warm paper background and a little lime give the site its palette. Generous margins and a comfortable reading width leave room for an idea to breathe. The design aims to work on small screens, with clear labels, keyboard access and respect for reduced-motion preferences.
A quieter corner of the web
There are no cookies, third-party analytics, advertising trackers or newsletter tracking pixels here. Simple, aggregate view counts help readers find popular briefings without building visitor profiles. Social sharing is a choice you make; there are no embedded social tracking widgets.
Browser storage remembers your chosen sign-in, reactions and votes. The site keeps the information needed to deliver emails, run discussions and protect the service from abuse. The activity counts show views, reactions, comments and share actions on this site; they do not follow you around the web. Our privacy note explains what is kept and why.
The intention is simple: a welcoming place to read, wander and pass an idea on.
Follow your curiosity through the briefings, or join the Monday message.
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