Armitage Archive
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Why Does This Site Exist?

Over the years, I’ve collected hundreds of highlights through Readwise — fragments from books and articles that shaped how I think and write. Many of them have directly influenced my blog posts over at NeuroWinter.com, while others just helped me make sense of the world.

I haven’t lived everything these authors write about, but I learn through what they leave behind. This site is a way to revisit those insights — and to share them, in case they help someone else do the same.

What Were My Design Decisions?

I’ve always preferred websites that stay out of their own way. When I built NeuroWinter.com, I wanted the UI to be as invisible as possible — just text, cleanly presented. That’s when I discovered no-style-please — a small, fast theme that puts the content first.

Armitage Archive borrows from that idea and refines it. The design is based on typography and whitespace — no branding, no distractions.

I chose Elixir partly out of curiosity, but mostly because Phoenix lets me build production-ready tools fast. It’s more complex than Jekyll or static site generators, but it gives me the freedom to build things my way.

That said, I do bend some of those minimalist ideals when it comes to analytics. Currently, I use GoatCounter and Ahrefs. I’m considering removing the latter — it’s useful, but adds complexity I may not need.

What Is the Tech Stack?

  • Elixir – for concurrency, reliability, and developer joy (also: curiosity).
  • Phoenix – a full-stack web framework that’s fast and productive.
  • Ecto – a database wrapper and query builder.
  • Postgres – because I support it at work and know it well.

The stack is simple, stable, and easy to host. No JavaScript frameworks. No front-end build tools. Just the essentials.

What Are My Font Choices and Why?

Typography is at the heart of this site’s identity. Since it exists to surface and present highlights from great thinkers, I wanted fonts that could do that presentation justice.

  • Berkeley Mono is used for headings, code, and structural elements. It’s a personal favourite — one I’ve used in terminals and editors for years. It evokes a kind of engineering pride, a link to an era when care and craft were part of the default.
  • Untitled Sans handles the body copy. It’s understated, elegant, and speaks clearly without trying to impress.

I avoided common web fonts like Inter or Georgia because I wanted to highlight the work of type designers — the unsung heroes of the design world. Every word we read passes through their hands, and yet we rarely give them credit.

I’ve also been experimenting with Untitled Serif for quote visuals — it may appear more prominently in the future.

All fonts are self-hosted in .woff2 format for performance, privacy, control — and proper licensing.

Acknowledgements

Source Code

The source code for this site is available on GitHub.