One typeface & one weight & one photograph

Why there is only one typeface here

One typeface in one weight is a constraint, and a constraint makes the differences between thirty-four teas do the work instead of the layout. The ampersand is the whole grammar of the shop: it puts a tasting note, a place and a grade on the same level, with no ranking and no adjectives in between. Tea copy usually inflates — rare, imperial, hand-selected — so the list form is a way of refusing that and letting toasted, amber and nutty stand as facts. The photograph is dropped in without a frame because a frame would make it an illustration; unframed, it is evidence. The pinyin keeps its tone marks and the Chinese characters sit at the same size as the Latin, since both are the tea's name and neither is a decoration of the other. What is left out — colour, texture, a second face — is the design.