Driftline, a bookshop quieter than the internet.

Driftline is a bookshop on the rua das Carmelitas in Porto, a street that already has two other bookshops, both older, both wonderful. The question was: what does the third one do that the first two don't? The answer, eventually, was "less." Less shelving. Less signage. Fewer titles, chosen more carefully. A single long table down the middle of the room, no chairs, no coffee, no candles for sale.

The identity follows the room. The wordmark is drawn from old Portuguese ship logs — the kind that marked the "drift line," the point at which a vessel was assumed to be beyond help. It's lower-case, slightly loose, and it feels slightly in motion. The colour is black. The paper is unbleached. There is no secondary mark.

The website is a monthly publication. Each month, the shop publishes 10 titles — what's in the window, what's on the table, what the staff are reading. Each book gets one page. No algorithm decides the order. Nothing is sponsored. You cannot buy from the website; you have to walk in, or write.