Fallow Identity & print system

There is no middle size.

Fallow presses one field of rapeseed once a year and sells the oil in a bottle and a report. The whole system has two type sizes: a display serif that never appears below 40 point, and a text sans that never appears above 11. The band between them is empty, and keeping it empty is the entire discipline.

Client
Fallow (invented)
Place
Herefordshire
Style
Editorial serif revival
After
The Canela and Tiempos house look, 2019 onward
Type
Bodoni Moda; Public Sans
Sizes
Two. 40 pt and up, 11 pt and down
I

The mark is the name at display size

There is no drawn mark, because a drawn mark would need a middle size to live at. The name is set in the display face and never below 40 point, which means on small items it is large and on large items it is larger.

Fallow
Cold pressed · Herefordshire
Bottle · 40 pt Fallow
Report · 72 pt Fallow
Never Fallow

The name at its two legal sizes, and the one it never takes

Minimum
40 point. On the 30 mm cap of a bottle the name does not fit, so the cap carries the year instead and the name goes on the body. The rule wins over the placement.
No monogram
An F on its own would be a middle-sized element by another name. Where there is not room for the word there is not room for the brand, and something factual goes there instead.
Case
One capital, always. Full capitals in the display face open the letterfit and break the colour of the setting at these sizes.
Never
Never outlined, never letterspaced, never set over the photograph. The picture is the picture and the name sits on paper.
II

Move it and watch it refuse

Drag the size. Between 12 and 39 point the system has nothing to offer, so it snaps to whichever legal size is nearer. This is the rule doing the only thing a prohibition can do.

One field, pressed once

 

880
Requested54 pt
Set at54 pt
FaceBodoni Moda

 

The band
12 to 39 point. Nothing in the identity is set inside it, on paper or on screen, at any scale of artwork.
Why
A middle size is where hierarchy goes to be avoided. Given a 24 point subhead a designer will use it instead of deciding whether the thing is a heading or is body, and the page will fill with sizes that mean nothing.
Emphasis
Made with space and with italics of the display face. Never with a size that does not exist.
The exception
There is not one. Legal small print sets at 8 point, which is below 11 and therefore legal; a barcode is not type.
III

One measure, and the margin is what is left

Text sets to 62 characters wherever it appears. The margin is not designed: it is whatever the sheet has left once the measure is placed, which is why the report and the label look related without sharing a grid.

62 characters

The measure is fixed and the page is not. A wide sheet gets a wide margin and a narrow one gets a narrow margin, and in both cases the reader is doing the same amount of work per line. Setting the margin first and letting the measure fall where it lands is the more common way round, and it is why so much editorial work reads differently at different trim sizes when it should not.

The measure, shown against the text it governs

IV

Paper, ink, and one petrol

A near-white that is not warm, a near-black that is not black, and a single deep blue. There is no gold anywhere in this system, which for a premium food producer is the decision rather than the omission.

Paper#F6F5F2Uncoated, neutral. Warm stock would tip the whole thing into farm shop.
Ink#14161CAll type. Carries a little blue so it sits with the petrol rather than against it.
Petrol#123A5CThe only colour. A rule, a bar, and the full-bleed field. Never type below 40 point.
Hairline#DCDBD6Divisions inside a page. Never a border around one.
Not gold
Cold-pressed rapeseed oil is yellow, so the obvious palette is cream and brass. Every producer in the category has already taken it, and a shelf of them is indistinguishable at two metres.
The blue
Does the work of the photograph on anything that cannot carry one: it is the field at dusk rather than the crop in daylight.
V

Two faces, two sizes, nothing between

A high-contrast serif for everything at display size and a plain sans for everything a person reads at length. The hatched band is not a gap in the specimen; it is the specification.

Display
Bodoni Moda 400Pressed in October
Display italic
Emphasisone field
12–39 pt
Forbidden Nothing sets here. A subhead that wants this band is a subhead that has not decided whether it is a heading or a paragraph.
Text
Public Sans 400 · 11 ptThe 2026 pressing ran from the ninth of October to the fourteenth. Four hundred and twelve litres, filtered once, bottled on site and dated by hand.
Label
Public Sans 600 · 8 ptCold pressed · 500 ml · Herefordshire
VI

Applications

A report, a bottle, a spread, a card and the site. Two sizes across all of them, and the only thing that changes is how much paper there is to put them on.

The
2026
pressing
Fallow412 litres

Annual report cover, 210 × 280 mm

Fallow Cold pressed · Herefordshire Ruth Aldis · The press house

Card, 85 × 55 mm

Fallow The fieldThe pressBuy

One field, pressed once

Four hundred and twelve litres this year. When it is gone there is no more until October.

Order the 2026

Website

Cold pressed Fallow 500 ml · 2026 · Herefordshire

Bottle label, 90 mm square

October

The crop is cut when the seed rattles in the pod and not before. There is a fortnight in it, and if the fortnight is wet the year is smaller.

Report · page 4
The field, dusk

Report spread, one image per page pair

VII

Voice

The producer is one person and a press. Everything written is a quantity, a date or a method, because a small producer that writes like a marketing department stops sounding like a small producer.

Say

412 litres. Pressed 9 to 14 October.

A number and a date. Both checkable, both finite.
Not

Lovingly crafted in small batches.

Every producer says it, so it distinguishes nothing and commits to nothing.
Say

Filtered once. It will cloud in the cold; that is the wax and it is meant to.

Explains the flaw before the customer decides it is one.
Not

A taste of the English countryside.

Sells a feeling about a place instead of the thing in the bottle.
VIII

What breaks it

This look is the current default for anything premium in print, which means it is mostly imitated by people who have taken the serif and left the discipline. Four ways it goes, and the last is the one that dissolves it.

A pull quote, set
at twenty-four point
The middle size arrives Always as a pull quote or a subhead, always because a page felt undifferentiated. One appears, then a second, and within a season there is a scale of six sizes and no rule at all.
FallowFallow
A second serif for warmth The Bodoni is judged cold and a softer serif is brought in beside it. Two high-contrast serifs on one page read as an accident, and the reader spends attention deciding which is the voice.
A palette for the range A second oil arrives and asks for its own colour, then a third. The single petrol is what makes a shelf of Fallow read as one producer; a colour per product is a supermarket own-brand.
FALLOW
The name letterspaced in capitals This is the one that dissolves it. Spaced capitals in a high-contrast serif is the universal signal for expensive, which is exactly why it says nothing: it is the same gesture as every other bottle on the shelf.

Fallow is invented, built as a portfolio exercise in the editorial serif revival. Herefordshire and its rapeseed growing are real; this producer, its yields, dates and people are not, and no figure here should be read as a real harvest. The work is after the house look built on Canela, Tiempos and Freight from about 2019, and after the older editorial tradition those faces come from. Those designers and foundries are credited as influences only. Part of the One Rule Each series.

Rule

Two sizes: the display serif at 40 point and up, the text sans at 11 and down. The band between them is empty and stays empty.