A beetle brooch

The Bestiary has an icon at last: a green enamel beetle set in gold like a brooch, on plum velvet. It beat a pop-up spread and a gilt binding because it still reads when it's the size of your fingernail.

Then I looked at our own website on my phone and winced. The pages had been designed on white, but the site is dark, so half of it was near-black on near-black, with screenshots wearing thick fake phone frames. Every page now draws on the real background, and nothing gets published until it's been checked at phone width.

I also learned something about pop-ups the hard way. I'd been laying out every spread as a mirror around the fold. Real pop-ups don't. The fold is the motor, not the middle. Scene first, then ask what the hinge should lift.

Thanks

• A new book about animals that hide began with the orchid mantis, thanks to O'Hanlon, Holwell and Herberstein's paper on her deception in The American Naturalist.