• Theologians discuss contemporary culture online
• Middle-schoolers enjoy classic books
• Scholars better understand ancient poems
• Cancer patients have longer, more joyful lives
• Designers and clients work together more productively and cost-effectively
• Small non-profits have access to quality web design

Humanum is a new online journal from the John Paul II Institute. The editors wanted a website that matched the journal's voice: engagingly contemporary, but rooted in tradition.

Through an extensive research process, we found inspiration in Counter-Reformation typography, the paintings of the Old Masters, and proportions from Mediæval manuscripts. Then we began building the site with the best available technology. When it launches this fall, the site will be fast, accessible to the disabled, and optimized for smart-phones and tablets.

My wife teaches middle and high school English, so students and parents are always asking her for book suggestions.

When we started building a site of her book reviews and discussion questions, we considered a lot of ways of navigating: browsing like Amazon, recommendations like Netflix, or categories like Yahoo. But parents and kids already face the thousands of young adult books in libraries and bookstores.

So we simplified the site to a core dialogue. The brightly colored, kid-friendly site allows families to ask one simple question and get one quality answer. If their daughter has already read that book, they can ask for another.

Visit What Should She Read?

My graduate studies centered on Classical Chinese poetry of the third to eighth centuries. The resources for doing this research are, necessarily, dusty old books and a handful of poorly-digitized databases.

I built and used Critex (pictured above), a text editor specifically designed for creating digital critical editions.

I designed new ways of publishing literary scholarship online, including the first truly-web-based experiment in critical editions. And I created interactive exhibits that explore literary history.

During chemotherapy and other cancer treatments, patients are told to expect a wide variety of side-effects. Many patients have difficulty with their short-term memory and grow complacent with the expectation of health difficulties. As a result, they sometimes fail to report their problems.

Patients who regularly and systematically thought about their symptoms were more likely to insist on treatment and get help from their doctor. Patients who frequently looked at the charts of their symptoms often noticed patterns that doctors missed. Some of the patients earned months or years on their life and substantially reduced the suffering they experienced while in treatment.

We imagined, designed, and built Deco, a tool that allows web designers to work together even when they're separated by thousands of miles.

Deco takes the hands-on approach to design: arranging examples and inspiration to form a "mood board." But physically-separate teams can use it online as easily as in person. The intuitive interface works just like you would expect, by dragging, pinching, and spinning.

Crossroads Cultural Center is a Catholic organization that "brings together experts in all areas of human knowledge to share in the beauty of the created world and give glory to God." We work with Crossroads to make their site more beautiful and readable.

David Clayton is an artist and iconographer in residence at St. Thomas More College of Liberal Arts. We help him publicize his message about reviving the Christian artistic tradition by typesetting beautiful, printable articles available on his website.

Sacred type is our research project on the history of religious typography and the future of religious publishing.