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The Mirror — Building a Digital Reader That Preserves Page Composition

Most digital readers flatten the page. The Mirror is built to preserve it.

The Mirror is a digital reader application and design framework for displaying watercolour artwork and handwritten lettering without destroying the original page composition.

The problem

Typical readers reflow content: text is re-wrapped, images are detached from their layout, and anything that depends on where it sits on the page loses its meaning. For hand-made work — watercolour, lettering, mixed media — that flattening throws away the thing that mattered.

The design principles

  1. Composition is the unit. The page, not the paragraph, is what gets rendered and preserved.
  2. Respect the medium. Watercolour and handwriting are displayed as they are, not transcribed into type.
  3. Reading is an experience. The reader should meet the work directly, at full fidelity.

Why it matters for builders

When you build a viewer for any composed artefact — a zine, a score, an illustrated manuscript — the format is part of the payload. Preserving layout fidelity is not polish; it is the core requirement. The Mirror treats it that way from the first design decision.

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