A Mises Wire article, rebuilt as a way in

One

Sometimes the front door

A good share of visitors arrive at an article directly rather than through the homepage. For them the piece is where the site begins, which is a useful thing to design for.

Everything shown here is additive. No word of the article changes and nothing is removed, so it can be adopted on one piece as easily as on all of them.

Two

The author is the image

There is no stock photography on the page. The writer appears three times: beside the headline, in the byline, and on the card at the foot.

A portrait presents a named economist making an argument, which invites a reader to follow the person as well as the piece.

Three

What it is, and how long

The byline carries the date, a reading time, the author and his affiliation, and a link to the audio version the Institute already records.

Four minutes is a small promise and an easy one to accept. Knowing the length up front makes it easier to start, and easier to come back to later.

Four

The argument in four steps

Four lines at the top give the shape of the piece before it begins.

It is a map rather than a substitute. A reader who can see where an argument is going is far more likely to follow it than one asked to trust that it arrives somewhere.

Five

The article is left alone

The argument runs at full length in the author's own terms. Nothing is simplified, softened, or broken into bullets.

Writers are not asked to serve two audiences at once. They write as they always have, and the page around them opens the piece to someone new.

The text shown is original, written for the demonstration. It is not the Institute's article.

Six

The three words that lose people

Structure of production. Real savings. An exchange of nothing for something. Each is defined in a line, in plain words, at the foot of the piece.

A term used precisely, and only half recognised, is a common place for a reader to lose the thread. Three short definitions cost the expert nothing and help everyone else stay with the argument.

Seven

One sentence to carry away

What tends to stay with a reader, and what they repeat to somebody else, is a single sentence. Choosing that sentence deliberately is a small thing that travels a long way.

Eight

Four ways to read further

About ten minutes, about two hours, about a week, several months. Every one of them is already free to read in full on the Institute's own site.

This is one place the archive can come forward. A reader who has just followed the argument is receptive to a book on the same subject, and the Institute already has them.

At scale this would generate itself from the tags each piece already carries, with an editor able to override it.

Nine

Related by subject, and the writer

Three related pieces chosen by subject rather than by date, then the author with two more of his.

Together they give a first visit somewhere natural to go next, which is how a reader becomes a returning one.