A trailing pole-tip for an electromagnetic transducer is formed as a layer oriented substantially perpendicular to other layers of the transducer, allowing the pole-tip to be made much thinner than conventional pole-tips. The novel pole-tip is formed on an edge or sidewall of a base layer instead of being formed on top of an existing layer. Potential errors in pole-tip thickness are much less than standard error tolerances for conventional pole-tip thickness. Having a greatly reduced pole-tip width significantly reduces the track width so that many more tracks can fit on a media surface, providing a large increase in areal density.