In Part 1, we were southwest of the proper city of Duluth at the Southeastern Railway Museum. This time, we’re in the town center.
Eastern Continental Divide Obelisk, (Across from) 3550 W. Lawrenceville St.
I have to admit: I had forgotten about the regional continental divides. In a nutshell, it’s the line that marks where waters flow — east and south go to the Atlantic, while west and north go to the Gulf of Mexico. (We all think of the one in the Rockies, sure, but they’re more of ’em!)
Buildings Overlooking Main Street Park (with Chairs) Duluth Town GreenDuluth City Hall #1 (with Town Green Fountain), 3167 Main St.
All of these photographs were taken on or near the lovely Town Green. Duluth may have a car-centric culture — it is a suburb of the perpetually-traffic-jammed Atlanta — but its downtown has ample opportunities to park the car and just walk around.
LA Burger #1 (Sign), 3151 Main St.LA Burger #4 (Screen Detail), 3151 Main St.Truck & Tap (Sign #2), 3137 Main St.
Aside from the various city structures (including the Festival Hall at the top of the post), there’s a huge library and a bunch of restaurants — several of which have been bookmarked for a later visit. There’s also this brand-new tribute to the city’s railroad past, named after former a former mayor:
Nancy Harris Pavilion #2 (Crossing Lights), 3178 Main St.Nancy Harris Pavilion #3 (Roof and Light Detail), 3178 Main St.
An enjoyable visit. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to enjoy a couple of days in the area, camera in-hand.
On a side note, the Duluth gallery — and the one from Johns Creek — have featured a new lens: a manual-focus, solidly-cheep=and-cheerful item from Chinese brand 7Artisans. The heavy vignetting is a result of its slightly ridiculous but enormously fun aperture of f0.95 (!), which enables extreme subject isolation, but at a cost of weight and size. The lens definitely features a “look,” but one that I’m glad to have available.
The City of Johns Creek, a suburb of Atlanta, recently opened The Boardwalk at Town Center, a 20-acre park and walking area centered around City Hall. The upgrade turned a scenic view for those that worked nearby into a vibrant park and performance venue for all. The transformation also included re-wilding a section of Johns Creek — the waterway, that is — from a man-made lake to something much more pleasant, much more natural, and something that locals and visitors alike can use and enjoy year-round.
Johns Creek City Hall #2, 11360 Lakefield Dr.
I was there at dawn and, as Georgia late-summer mornings go, I couldn’t have asked for a nicer time to wander.
Lakeside Relaxation (at Dawn), 11360 Lakefield Dr.
As part of the park’s construction, they’ve added a performance venue in front of City Hall, along with extensive landscaping and opportunities to sit lakeside.
Boardwalk Stairs, 6455 E. Johns Crossing(Walk to) 11330 Lakefield Dr. #1
The surrounding office park and shopping areas have added access to the park, as well, aiding the public’s ability to access the improved areas.
Former Lake Basin #3, 11362 Lakefield Dr.Former Lake Basin #5, 11362 Lakefield Dr.
The best area, however, is the former artificial lake basin at the southwestern end; between the raised walks and return of the waterway to nature, it’s become an valuable addition to this suburb populated mostly with busy roads, retail and planned living.
It’s finally dried out here in Georgia, after a summer best described as “WTF” — where the “F” stands for flood, because you know it does. (As opposed to England, for instance, which is WTF in the other direction.)
So: some design, typography, and imagery to inform and cheer. And ten special bonuses. You deserve no less.
This Month’s Spine
Vanderbilt University Press. Cover design and art direction by Alissa Faden.
It was my pleasure to feature some titles from Vanderbilt University, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Louisiana — because Stanford and NYU don’t have a lock on my attention. (’Sides, it’s fall catalog season, so there’s lots to choose from.)
Reading reports that its death is greatly exaggerated
As you’ll recall — or not, depending on whether you were able to read the article — The Atlantic worried out loud that reading is in such decline that we may have to think in terms of living in a “post-literate” world. (Because “post-truth” isn’t enough.)
Turns out that there’s a back story to that take; it originated on a Substack titled, “The dawn of the post-literate society, and the end of civilisation,” by someone whose profile I can’t see because I refuse to create an account.1Soap box: getting a website, whose contents you own, is so painfully simple that I tend to discount those that rely on other platforms to publish what might otherwise be interesting material/thoughts/content. And in this case, the author is a Times journalist, who should definitely know better.
So, I owe you an apology: this “moral panic,” as it’s been termed, originates in . . . what amounts to social media.2It’s been pointed out that blogs are social media, too (the original social media, in fact) — something I don’t necessarily disagree with. From my perspective, writing that is owned, put out there due to belief, and read by folks who trust your opinion, is completely distinct from having your potentially-anonymous “take” promoted to strangers by an algorithmic mechanism that profits from conflict — or, at least, provocation. In my opinion, it’s the latter that defines “social media.” I’m disappointed in The Atlantic for taking that bait, and in myself for trusting them and then making something of it here.
Time for a reality check.
Which comes courtesy of an article that’s part of It’s Nice That‘s POV series:
It’s Nice That discusses Stack Reading Habits Report.
. . . whose author puts forth just the right perspective, one that folks here can relate to:
“The death of reading sounds uncannily similar to the death of print, which is another issue that’s prone to over-simplification.”
— Steven Watson, It’s Nice That
I still work in print. Many of us do. While it’s become a more specialized area of expertise, it’s still very much viable; whether it’s reached the stage of the horse post-motorcar or the manual transmission post-electric is something else entirely. (More on that latter item below, by the way.)
The author quotes another response to the piece, which I almost completely agree with:
All these pieces — from The Atlantic and elsewhere — about “the end” make this seem like a problem because of how they’re framing it, and who they’re framing it for. Maybe kids aren’t reading the classics, but look at the romantasy moral panic stewing in the background of social media. It’s a whole bunch of mostly men — who, demographically, do not read or buy books at all — declaring it the death of literature even though women and queer people are reading a ton of it. [. . .] It seems as though Americans have decided that the amount and kind of reading they personally do is normal and someone else doing it any more or less or differently than them is a social emergency. We may be seeing the end of certain kinds of reading [. . .] or certain kinds of culture, but that also means that something is replacing it. And good God do we need to replace a lot of it. If only to break up the corporations that dictate how it all currently works.
— Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day
To summarize, I fell for the “intellectual tragedy” represented by “the end of reading as we know it” and said something without thinking it through. I’ll try to do better.
Rare books > AI. Unless…
If you can truly appreciate an old book — and maybe even marvel at how its fragile, yellowing pages contain some of the earliest ways that people tried to make sense of the world around them — then headlines about tech companies that are destroyingbooksto train AI likely torture a tender part of your soul.
— Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica
This article, dated August 12th, reminds us that, “Google patented a non-destructive book-scanning technology in 2009 that AI firms could use to efficiently scan books — if they were willing to slow down and invest in the process.”
It continues, “The biggest fear for people who want to see books preserved through the training process is that AI firms will callously pulp rare books that can never be replaced.” Rare book dealers, it turns out, have started to flag suspicious bulk orders to safeguard the irreplaceable.
Not Google’s patented process . . . but you can probably guess where this is going.
On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an [Apple] Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.
“Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings,” the article continues, “only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically: ‘Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use.‘“
The Internet, in its wisdom, has suggested that it’s all for profit — to “hide history behind a paywall.” How likely is that? After all, we know that Amazon, Anthropic, and Meta are altruistic.
And now, courtesy of the ’Net’s most-trusted source, we have insider details: “when I see a one-of-a-kind, three-hundred-year-old tome taking up six whole inches of shelf space, I immediately start thinking about scale and efficiency.”
Profit, efficiency, whatever — chewing up rare books for AI training is the very definition of “facepalm.”
Special bonus #1: McSweeney’s new book, Obey in Advance, How to Survive and Thrive under Authoritarianism, is available this fall. An early review:
“Democracy is priceless, but fascism sure seems to pay well. If you’re morally bankrupt and looking to sell your soul, Obey in Advance has everything you need for a profitable life of lickspittlery.”
— Kevin Kruse, Professor of History, Princeton University
Naturally, the book arrives at your door pre-scanned by AI.
Special bonus #2:Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment. ”It was an era when the term ‘discovery’ carried actual weight, when you could authentically be one of the first people viewing a piece of content, regardless of its quality or how long it may have existed — an era of equal parts wonder and frustration.”
Four scores and twenty-seven years ago . . . .
The story behind Present & Correct
Dick Bruna book covers, 1970s, from the Zwarte Beertjes publishing house. Image by Present & Correct.
“The perfectly curated stationery shop that’s every graphic designer’s dream” has a new gig: publishing. But first, the origin story, thanks to a Q&A with It’s Nice That.
Tins and boxes for crayons and pencils, mixed eras. Germany, USA & Japan. Image by Present & Correct.
To talk more about this publishing journey and the designers’ joint practice, we spoke to [the owners] about the story of Present & Correct to date, tracing habits of collecting and archiving all the way back to a childhood spent carefully putting away scrapbooks of sugar sachets, napkins, postcards and coasters, a final major project at art school (a paper concept store called . . . Present & Correct), to their joint travels across the world today, foraging for original vintage stationery to curate the shop’s stocks from over 18 different countries.
— Ellis Tree, It’s Nice That
”This habit of archiving and collecting vintage ephemera,” the article continues, ”has informed your first self-published book at P&C Paper Trails: Pre-war tourist maps from Japan featuring fifty incredibly illustrated maps for various attractions around Japan.”
Paper Trails, the first title published by P&C Additions.
“We named it P&C Additions because we hope to make editions of varying sizes (might be a single sheet, might be a book) and they are additional to what we generally do (a stationery shop!). And yes, we want to make more as and when we can. No pressure, just a natural offshoot which will manifest as a published item when we feel the content is strong enough,” the owners report.
Special bonus #3: The Last Museum’s curators: ““We currently have around five million artworks indexed, and strive to eventually index all museum art in the world.” Not sure about the name, but definitely bookmarked under useful resources. (Via This is Colossal.)
“A Dutch Courtyard” by Pieter de Hooch, via The Last Museum. Chosen because the original absolutely does not hang in my living room, a joke one or two of you will actually get.
August’s new typefaves
Yes, I’ve coined a new word just there — and will continue to deny that it was, in any way, a typo involving the word “typefaces.”
Franglais, by Emigre
Franglais, by Emigre.
”Franglais was designed by John Downer in sporadic bursts of inspiration dating back to 2000,” Emigre writes on their blog. “It was originally conceived as a standalone italic, and expanded to include two upright companions, Roman and Informal, developed in collaboration with Zuzana Licko.
Pretty much everything Emigre puts out is beautiful, but Franglais is just gorgeous.
“Reflecting on the origins of Franglais, Downer describes it as lettering devised for imaginary signage inspired by a hybrid of postwar metal type and vernacular chalk-written menu boards. Elements of ‘ruler writing’ — in which a ruler is used to keep the baseline straight across repeated lines — are evident throughout.”
Special bonus #4: “ShieldFont, as designers Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio write in a recent white paper, was made to offer web publishers ‘a practical opt-out from unauthorized AI training and [to] disrupt what is collected when that choice is ignored.’” Read about it at Ars Technica.
Not sure I’m on board with this approach.
SE Micro, by Gallery Type
SE Micro, by Gallery Type.
“Se Micro is the small-size companion to Se Macro, released by Gallery Type earlier this year,” CreativeBoom writes in this month’s recommendations. “They share the same basic skeleton, but Se Micro works well in small or difficult settings, like tiny text or low-quality printing, perhaps even on screens.
“There’s a nice twist, too. When you blow this typeface up to larger sizes, those practical features become a visual style in their own right. It looks distinctive and quirky rather than just doing its thing of being legible, especially in bolder weights.”
Ink traps may be on-trend, but I still like their treatment in this typeface.
“This is an option for branding work across fashion, culture and design-led products. It comes with 10 weights and three widths. And it’s part of a growing family: Se Macro is also out, as I’ve mentioned, but hold onto your hats for Se Mono and Se Rounded, due out later this year or early 2027.”
Resan, by The Designer’s Foundry
Resan, by The Designer’s Foundry.
“Daniel McQueen from The Designers Foundry has been in touch,” CreativeBoom writes. ”He’s just released Resan, a super family inspired by the transitional types of the 17th and 18th centuries. It’s got warmth. It’s got timeless elegance. But it’s also precise.
“It has a sharp rhythm with generous proportions, giving it decent impact at display sizes. It also lets you change the terminal shapes, shifting the type’s entire feel and mood.”
I especially like Resan’s alternative terminals.
”It’s currently offered in 10 distinct display styles, and if you like what you’ve seen so far, a series of optical weights is in the works.”
Special bonus #5: “Typographic tourism, or the art of hunting for beautiful signs all over the world,” from Wallpaper*. Never mind searching for the hashtag, read the article then just do it for fun!
Architecture and typography in one photograph. Hmmm….
RTFM: Resurgence of The Effing Manual
Okay, sure, that’s not actually what the acronym stands for. But I don’t care. The United States and its cadre of point-one-percenters have chosen to lead the world in an important new area: preserving the true manual transmission.
To be clear, they’re also demanding bans on internal combustion go away, so it’s not all good news. They’re apparently unconvinced by Ferrari’s approach, outlined last month and which still uses combustion engines but with increased efficiency, or Hyundai’s approach, which uses electric motors and simulated shifts (the latter of which is being adopted by BMW, among others).
Two small manufacturers, McLaren and Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA), have both chosen this year’s Monterey/Quail festival of the uber-rich to introduce new cars. Both feature manuals. Porsche was on hand trying to play catch-up.
McLaren’s first manual since the F1
The McLaren McL 6GT.
The original and perhaps most iconic modern hypercar — arguably, the car that launched the term — was the McLaren F1. This month, McLaren introduced something that’s . . . not at all like an F1. It’s a fresh take on 1969’s M6 GT.
It is both retro and modern, hypercar and hyper-cool — an insta-buy if I could afford it. (Doesn’t matter: already sold out.)
References to the [original] M6 GT abound, from the vertical headlights and Kamm tail to the position and shape of every duct, rendered with a simplicity that we used to see in supercars of the ’90s and 2000s but see less today. And inside, McLaren has transformed the shifter into an art piece itself, its metallic linkages attracting natural light from every angle in a sea of black and carbon fiber. They’re clearly proud of it, and they suitably want it to be the focal point in here.
— Adam Ismail, The Drive
Just look at that — nothing less than a celebration.
“McLaren bills this as a ‘new type’ of supercar ‘beyond the core portfolio,’” the article continues. “Based on that, it sounds like manual transmissions aren’t about to become a standard feature of the brand; that, beyond the delineation of ‘Sports, Super, and Ultimate’ models of the past, McLaren is diversifying into more exclusive offerings that, at least in this particular case, pursue a more analog experience counter to the regular lineup.”
Yeah. Do want. But there’s a wrinkle.
GMA’s new . . . McLaren F1
The McLaren F1 was designed by an automotive racing legend named Gordon Murray. He subsequently started GMA, and brought out the amazing T.50, among others. Last year, his Special Vehicles department issued a track-only reimagining of the F1 — and has followed up with a road version, called the S1:
Since it’s less of a concept than the McLaren, some details are available. It features a 4.2-liter, naturally-aspirated Cosworth V12 making 680 horsepower with a rev limit of 12,100 RPM. It exclusively sports a six-speed manual transmission. It is multi-millions of dollars. And it, too, is sold out. The Autopian has more.
Special bonus #6: From the combining-cars-and-print-department (“not a stretch,” he insisted), Road & Trackhas a new ampersand:
If you’ve not heard, one of the brands not doing too well at the moment is Porsche. They went hard into electrification, suffered hard from being part of parent company Volkswagen’s arrogantly inept approach,3Just one example: see Scout. It’s actually sad. and subsequently run afoul of social media’s society’s hard turn against EVs. It has cost them dearly.
Despite insisting that they were going to do it all along, they’re scrambling to get back to what customers actually want. This month, they introduced a third variant of the venerable 911 available with a stick shift.
It’s not purple, it’s aubergine. (Love the pinstripes.)
Like the others, it features a wooden shift knob, a throwback to the Carrera GT V10 masterpiece from the heady days of the early naughties. Like the others, it puts the cupholder immediately behind the shifter, guaranteeing spills. (Or thirst.) Like the others, it costs twice what it did six years ago — although it’s still “only” a tenth of either of the above.
Like the others, I’d be happy to receive one as a gift.
Unlike the others, it’s US-only, and it’s available this fall. Details, if you’re interested, are available at The Drive or The Autopian.
Special bonus #7: Jaguar has released the first image — a rendering, actually, but still — of the new Type 01’s interior:
As it turns out, they’re not backing down from their vision for a completely-new Jaguar, and I respect them for it. The electric four-door also made its US debut at Monterey, albeit in disguise, and should be out sometime next year. More details and pics at Wallpaper*.
Special bonus #8: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of BMW’s Art Cars, they’ve gathered them all together in Germany.
A sampling of cars under the iconic four-cylinder BMW HQ.
Lotsofpress has ensued, but in case you’re not familiar, they’re exactly what it sounds like they should be — but so very much more. Decorated by artists from Roy Lichtenstein to Andy Warhol, all twenty are unique, daring, and different. Some were even raced before becoming priceless.
#12, by Esther Mahlangu, on display at BMW Welt Munich.
Special bonus #9: From the not-a-joke department comes this beautiful — and beautifully green — 1979 Mercedes wagon with 6,088 miles. Long buried by an earthquake (!), has been unearthed and restored:
Alessi, a “beacon of well-designed homeware,” is celebrated by photographer Sam Nicklin in a new series called Chrome & Colour:
Photograph by Sam Nicklin.
“My main goal was to define the silhouette of each object through colour in the reflections, using negative space and keeping highlights to a minimum to really make them pop,” he tells It’s Nice That. To give the images the feel of the 1970s and 80s, “Sam went truly analogue, using the time-consuming process of holding sheets of coloured paper cut to different shapes and moving them around the objects until the reflection was exactly as he envisaged.”
In the introduction of a new book titled Great Women Photographers, Fiona Rogers writes, “If ‘greatness’ has long been defined by visibility and remembrance, then the continued documentation and celebration of women’s photographic practice is not only relevant but essential.”
From crumbling row houses in the inner city to abandoned houses on the Eastern Shore to temporary homeless camps, “greater” Baltimore demonstrates decay . . . and courage:
Carroll County, Maryland. Photograph by Ben Marcin.
Right place, right time — stunning results, part one.
Eclipse #3: the sunset
Photograph by Andrew McCarthy.
Right place, right time — stunning results, part two.
Photograph by Andrew McCarthy.
Special bonus #10: Jason Kottke is moving house, and when he has a moment, posting en-masse. It’s an “old-school, stream-of-consciousness” sort of thing — which, to emphasize, is still awesome. Among the three dozen or so nuggets of greatness:
“Half Dome, Apple Orchard, Yosemite,” trees with snow on branches, April 1933. Photograph by Ansel Adams.
Anything but empty, I’d argue. Enjoy the rest of your summer, folks!
1
Soap box: getting a website, whose contents you own, is so painfully simple that I tend to discount those that rely on other platforms to publish what might otherwise be interesting material/thoughts/content. And in this case, the author is a Times journalist, who should definitely know better. ↩︎
2
It’s been pointed out that blogs are social media, too (the original social media, in fact) — something I don’t necessarily disagree with. From my perspective, writing that is owned, put out there due to belief, and read by folks who trust your opinion, is completely distinct from having your potentially-anonymous “take” promoted to strangers by an algorithmic mechanism that profits from conflict — or, at least, provocation. In my opinion, it’s the latter that defines “social media.” ↩︎
3
Just one example: see Scout. It’s actually sad. ↩︎
It’s July, and it’s hot. Bring a beverage. Umbrella optional.
Spine!
Stanford University Press. Cover design by Lindy Kasler; art director, Michele Wetherbee. Cover art: Map of Kunitachi, Japan, National Archives and Records Administration; photograph of refugee dwellings in Busan, Korea, United Nations Archives; US military payment certificates note, US Army Finance Corps.
“The cover asks questions,” I wrote in this month’s column for Spine. “Illustrations and scripts combine in myriad ways; maps plot; and blood drops. Rather than telling you what the title is about, it suggests that it’s not easily summarized — in all the right ways.”
Read!
The End of Reading is Here
Cool header graphic from The Atlantic article.
“Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history,” The Atlantic writes. “The decline of reading will bring about changes of the same magnitude. It will affect our innermost thoughts, our society’s politics and culture, and how we tell the history of our civilization.”
Reading requires imagination; consumption, whether social media, television, or gaming, really doesn’t. It’s no surprise that the lowering of the common denominator is the result.
But what if the premise is, in fact, true? I can’t imagine a life without reading — and you’re reading this, so you probably can’t either. Will humanity reach to a point where ingestion of knowledge doesn’t involve the written word? Should it?
Update, 31 July (after publishing): The gift link has expired, darn it — apologies. (One of the downsides of gathering items throughout the month, I guess; this is from the 8th of July.)
“Read More. Read Often. Read Every Day.”
We keep searching for lifehacks, productivity tips, and bullshit, but the answer is right there. If you want to be better, grow more, understand your life, understand your purpose, learn something, or just find somewhere to stay a while when life gets overwhelming — pick up a damn book.
— Joan Westenberg
She calls it the 80/20 rule: “I believe that spending 20% of your time buried in a book, buried in something that will inspire you, excite you, and make you want to jump out of your seat is going to give you the fuel, the ideas, and the power to create 80% of your output.”
Special bonus #1:Uncovered is a site for judging books by their first pages. “No cover. No bestseller sticker, no celebrity book club, no BookTok trend. You read the opening of a real book, blind, and answer the only question that matters: would you keep reading?”
Great address, by the way — I didn’t know .ink was a thing. (Also via Kottke.)
250 for 250
Photograph of the Brooklyn Library’s main branch by the Municipal Art Society of New York.
Brooklyn Public Library is celebrating our country’s 250th anniversary the best way we know how: with a thoughtful, surprising, irresistible booklist. Organized by genre and category of interest, this all-ages list is a deep dive on the stories, voices and moments that shaped America. Selected by our expert librarians — with help from a few notable New Yorkers! — here are the 250 most influential books in United States history.
— Brooklyn Library’s 250 for 250 Booklist Intro
Whether it’s actually the most influential 250 titles in the country’s history is probably intentionally debatable, but it’s still a great list. From The Hunger Games to The Snowy Day, The Warmth of Other Suns to Where the Sidewalk Ends, the choices are sometimes surprising, sometimes great memories, and sometimes inspirational.
If you’re looking for the next title to read — or the next gift to give — start here. (Also available in a handy PDF if you’d like to send to someone.)
Special bonus #2:Bookmobile, my favorite short-run printer, has been sold — but remains privately-owned, non-corporate, and dedicated to craft. Founder Don Leeper is retiring after 44 years; Michael Shoemaker is the new owner.
“Mike is the perfect buyer for Bookmobile, with the passion, skills and resources to continue and improve our services to publishers. From the beginning of our discussions he displayed an aptitude for grasping the complexities of book publishing in the 21st century and bringing to bear his deep experience in technology, ecommerce, and business in general. Last but not least, he has an understanding and appreciation for the importance of book culture. I am damned lucky we connected.”
— Don Leeper, Bookmobile
“No major changes are planned,” the press release says. “Under its new ownership, Bookmobile will continue to invest in the growth of the business and the success of its publisher customers.”
This month has seen a wealth of new typefaces introduced. A few that caught my eye are below, but it’s start with a question.
“What is Queer Typography?”
“Looking for queer anything often feels lonely,” Paul Soulellis writes. “The word queer resists definition, sometimes aligned with ideas about rejection, refusal, deviating from the expected, away from the normative. It’s certainly a political word, one that’s taken on expansive qualities throughout its history, qualities that aren’t necessarily confined to gender and sexuality.”
Image via soulellis.com.
An interesting text, certainly, with many possible answers to the question and accompanying designs and images. “[W]e need to stay with queer as an action, actively engaging with the past and the future as a verb.”
Read more. (This is from 2024, but was recently linked at Kottke — and was new to me, so forgive the late notice/attention.)
Emigre’s Modulator now at Adobe Type
Adobe prices are a regular gripe amongst many, but one of their strongest offerings is the type catalog — and it just got better:
“Modulator was conceived as a dialogue between two designs separated by nearly three decades: Modula Round Black (1995) and Lo-Res Monospaced Solid (2023),” Emigre writes. The results are Modulator and its companion Modulator Text Variable, “optimized for smaller sizes by expanding the stem and counter dimensions to improve legibility.”
“Datatype is an OpenType variable font that turns simple text expressions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images, no rendering library — just type the syntax and Datatype’s ligature substitution does the rest.”
Very cool — and very open source, thus very free. Available on GitHub or Google Fonts.
Special bonus #3: I don’t actually know how much AI is driving new typeface design; honestly, it seems like an art form requiring human decision-making. Dutch foundry Mass-Driver is one that will always design fonts by hand:
AI tools perceive reality as a finite set of data, up-to-date as of about 2021: the shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave. Right now they are very good at making shadow puppets, but they cannot see the world outside.
If we allow these tools to dictate our visual culture, we must accept that it will be vitrified by machines which consider a few billion webpages equivalent to the sum total of human existence. I don’t accept that. How dare we abandon so many countless traditions and people and ideas and nuances, simply because they are underrepresented in the training data?
— Rutherford Craze & Co., known as Mass-Driver
CreativeBoom’s July Fonts
Fourteen in all this time — last month’s suggestion of a summer lull was wrong, apparently — with some strong selections. I wanted to show several, but narrowed it down to three that deserve highlighting:
Solaflare Sans, by John Reshell of Swell Type.Solaflare Flare.
“Solaflare’s mood is both unmistakable and timely, evoking warm evenings, hand-painted shop signs, and the particular quality of light in a California coastal town. John Roshell of Swell Type was inspired by the hand-painted signage of Santa Barbara, but rather than simply reviving that aesthetic, he built a variable font around it; one that lets designers slide between three distinct typographic personalities within a single file.”
Solaflare Serif.
That’s right: a variable flare — meaning sans on one end, flare in the middle, serif on the other. Check it out.
Oratorio, by Alex Chavot of Apex Type Foundry.
“Alex Chavot’s latest release for Apex Type Foundry — launched alongside a comprehensively rebuilt foundry website — takes Halbfette Cantate, a display face released around 1910 by H. Berthold AG and designed by Johann Graf, as its starting point, then runs it through the filter of Ed Benguiat’s flamboyant 1970s classics. The result is sweeping swashes, lyrical terminals, high contrast, and an unapologetically theatrical personality that Chavot describes, accurately, as ornamental excess meeting typographic swagger, with just enough restraint to keep it printable.”
Oratorio.
Single-weight fonts are rare these days — but oh, what a weight it is. Expressive, serious, almost lavish. Check it out.
Milgram, by Max Phillips of Signal Type Foundry.
“Max Phillips of Signal Type Foundry has a gift for describing typefaces, and his account of Milgram is direct. They’d always wanted to add a humanist sans to the library, and always wanted to add a rounded sans. So they decided to save time by making them the same typeface and seeing what happened. What happened was a wave of nostalgia for Frankfurter, VAG Rundschrift, and an all-caps dry-transfer face called Formula One that nobody else seems to remember.”
Milgram.
’Course, anybody who mocks up book covers with their new font … instaclick! Check it out.
Vote!
Archinect’s Spring ’26 lecture posters
Twice a year, Archinect holds a contest for their readers to decide which of the season’s lecture posters from architecture schools around the country are their favorites.
East Los Angeles College.
Alas, the contest usually ends just before this column gets posted, so sometimes y’all are able to vote, sometimes not. This time, we only get to compare my favorites with the results.
University of California at Berkley.
Along with these three, I’d also give honorable mentions to Yale, Sci-Arc, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
University of Minnesota.
ELEC won the contest, too. As for the rest, we’ll just have to agree that they’re all winners in one way or another. See the readers’ and editors’ choices.
“Choose Euro’n Adventure”
Brand New‘s penchant for punny-yet-perfect post titles scores another with this one — another one that voting might be just out of reach for, depending on where you’re reading this from.
Design submission by Rudy Guedj and François Girard-Meunier.
“A panel of jurors selected the designs, which follow one of two themes: European places and ideas or birds and rivers, the latter of which is meant to symbolize freedom and unity,” This is Colossal writes.
Design submission by Isabelle Daëron.
Interestingly, the notes get bigger with denomination — the 5 is the smallest, then 10, then 20; the 50, 100, and 200 are all the same size. (Not the boring uniformity we get here in the States.)
Same colors, same denominations, vastly differing details. (Overview via Brand New.)
“While basic elements are the same — all collections devoted to culture feature the same six figures, for example — individual approaches appear in the layout, aesthetic, and composition,” Colossal continues.
Design submission by Atelier Goppel-Toperngpong.
I’m unsurprisingly partial to the birds & places, but no matter which theme or which specific design, these are all excellent. See all the available options at the European Central Bank website — and, if you’re in the EU, take the survey!
Special bonus #4: It’s not the Europeans, it’s the English we have to thank: Getty has abandoned its takeover/merger with/of Shutterstock. Hooray!
Amuse!
Lil’ Finder Guy
It may be a social media campaign, but darn it’s cute.
Basic Apple Guy, who introduced me to Apple’s social media campaign1As you probably know, I don’t participate in social media. I have to rely on others to bring Apple’s media efforts to my attention — folks covering the coverage, as it were. for the MacBook Neo, has an update with all things regarding this unofficial mascot.
Details, stickers, and more.
It’s the Internet, of course, so even items that have been posted briefly then deleted are fodder for careful investigation — and some of the details he’s dug up are neat. (He’s also done a bunch of generated varieties of the character, which make occasional — and often delightful — appearances in his articles.)
Save the manuals
No, not of the RTFM variety. It’s actually a non sequitur.
Image via The Autopian.
Ferrari went and did something interesting, again: having introduced the world of high-performance motoring to the automated manual (the F1, in 1997),2Ferrari’s F1 wasn’t actually the first automated or even semi-automated manual gearbox/transmission, by a long shot. It is, however, the one that brought it to sports cars, followed almost immediately by BMW’s SMG. Wiki has a history, if you’re interested. it’s now introducing … the manualized automatic.3Technically, Koenigsegg got there first with its CC850. However, a) you have to be a car geek to know Koenigsegg, and b) that shift-by-wire unit doesn’t use traditional selector forks, or synchronizers. Instead, it uses seven wet clutches, six to select forward ratios and one for reverse, all with their own pressure sensors and mechatronic actuators. “Changing up is as simple as engaging the right clutches,” The Autopian says. Ferrari’s is a gated dual-clutch automatic, although to call that an oversimplification is an undersell.
Photograph via Ferrari’s press department.
First of all, let’s all please agree that the 12 Cilindri, their 819-horsepower, half-million-Euro, two-seater Grand Touring masterpiece, is a beautiful thing — retro, but in a modern way. Especially in this merlot-and-gold combo.
Photograph via Ferrari’s press department.
In the new Manuale model, the transmission is the story: a gated dual-clutch automatic, or DCT, with a twist. It’s got buttons for drive, reverse, etc., as usual — but a clutch and a shift lever instead of paddles.
By doing so, offers a road map for other automakers (cough *BMW*) whose customers are demanding the engagement of a manual but whose governments are demanding reduced emissions and increased mileage — plus all those safety mandates like automatic braking and conveniences like adaptive cruise control.
Photograph via Ferrari’s press department.
I’m convinced this is the future of the manual transmission. It’s unconventional, unexpected, and is going to take a minute to trickle down. But … fingers crossed.
“Now in its 18th year, the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest is among the premier photo competitions that celebrate the art of astrophotography and astronomy,” PetaPixel writes.
Moody Partial Solar Eclipse. “Our Sun” category. Photograph by James McBeath, UK.
“The competition features nine categories, a pair of special prizes, and the expert panel of judges selects a single overall winner, all of which will be showcased in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in England starting on September 18.”
Te Hoho Rock Moonrise. “Skyscapes” category. Photograph by Evan McKay, New Zealand.
Astrophotography is fascinating — a reminder that we’re merely a blip — and requires patience, skill, and specialized gear. But the results … wow.
Jupiter. Photograph credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hueso (UPV), I. de Pater (UC Berkeley), T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI).
Cloud details, aurora, the eye — and all on a planet we’re “familiar” with.
Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. Photograph credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI).
The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is the closest star-forming region to Earth, and demonstrates both the beauty and power of the Universe.
“The $10 billion NASA/ESA/CSA JWST has produced a great deal of exceptional scientific work in its first four years of operation, much of which is utterly groundbreaking,” PetaPixel writes. “However, that alone is not enough to warrant a photo’s inclusion. While scientific value is important, a Webb image featured here must also be beautiful.”
It’s that time of year again: the iPhone Photography Awards, now in its 20th season, has announced its annual competition winners.
Winner, Abstract category. Photograph by Barry Mayes, UK.
Entrants from more than 140 countries “showed just how powerful an iPhone can be in the right hands and how great photos don’t always require high-end, dedicated camera equipment,” PetaPixel writes.
Winner, Architecture category. Photograph by Ziwen Chen, China.3rd Place, Architecture category. Photograph by Preethy Ganesan, US.Honorable Mention, Architecture category. Photograph by Adrian Beasley, UK.
Of course, these four barely scratch the surface of the fantastic selection from a variety of categories; see all the winners, runners-up, and more at the official website.
The Architecture of Connection
A left turn, so to speak:
The Last Landmark. Image by Jen Orpin.
“The Modernist Society takes a detour from its usual publishing habits with a new monograph, The Architecture of Connection,” Wallpaper* writes, “featuring the work of painter Jen Orpin.”
Let Love Grow. Image by Jen Orpin.
That’s right: paintings. We’re “in the realm of unseen and overlooked infrastructure, with Orpin’s eye – and careful framing – capturing over 200 images of the bridges that span Britain’s motorways. […] The Architecture of Connection brings the entire series together in a monograph for the first time, together with some of the artist’s writings about the work.”
Without traffic, but with something bordering tranquility, it’s of course right up my street. I sometimes wish I could stop and photograph every interesting bridge — or even roadside attraction — while out in the world, but don’t, of course; few of us do. Orpin did. With an easel, no less.
2026 International Pet Photography finalists
Finally, something to send you into August with a smile on your face: humanity’s best friends.
Untitled, Action category. Photograph by Shandess Griffin.‘Cat Goalkeeper,’ Phone category. Photograph by He Huapei.“Weightless,” Action category. Photograph by Linda Glomb.
As you probably know, I don’t participate in social media. I have to rely on others to bring Apple’s media efforts to my attention — folks covering the coverage, as it were. ↩︎
2
Ferrari’s F1 wasn’t actually the first automated or even semi-automated manual gearbox/transmission, by a long shot. It is, however, the one that brought it to sports cars, followed almost immediately by BMW’s SMG. Wiki has a history, if you’re interested.↩︎
3
Technically, Koenigsegg got there first with its CC850. However, a) you have to be a car geek to know Koenigsegg, and b) that shift-by-wire unit doesn’t use traditional selector forks, or synchronizers. Instead, it uses seven wet clutches, six to select forward ratios and one for reverse, all with their own pressure sensors and mechatronic actuators. “Changing up is as simple as engaging the right clutches,” The Autopian says. Ferrari’s is a gated dual-clutch automatic, although to call that an oversimplification is an undersell. ↩︎
July photography in Georgia — even on a day that was “only” hot, as opposed to “scorching” or “overwhelmingly humid” — is a challenge. But yesterday’s photostroll was completely worth the effort.
Monroe Light Sign, S. Broad St.
Named after James Monroe, this north-central town is about an hour east of Atlanta; close enough to the city to be called an exurb, it has an excellent selection of amenities to choose from.
Sign to Rinse, 106 S. Broad St.Street frontages, N. Broad St.
Typical of towns of the era, it has an old-fashioned town square and 19th-century architecture everywhere you turn.
Old Monroe City Hall (Roofline Detail), 101 S. Broad St.Classic and Cast (Building Details), 124 N. Broad St.
The downtown area was well-tended — somebody did an excellent job with the flowers — and not only has chairs to savor the ice cream, but a center to appreciate the arts, as well.
Crepes A’wash, W. Washington St.Scoop a Spell, 140 N. Broad St.Monroe – Walton Center for the Arts (Building Detail), 205 S. Broad St.Monroe – Walton Center for the Arts (Garden #3), 205 S. Broad St.
I took the long way on a trip to “The A-T-L,” and enjoyed the visit very much. I hope you’ll enjoy the results.
“Welcome to the new,” he said, pointing to the old, now dressed in a new suit. You’re reading this because the words and ideas resonated — and it’s why only the style is newly tailored.
Sometimes, though, a new look can be enormously satisfying. Enjoy.
This month’s Spine
Beacon Press.
“Paperwork. Nice,” I said, while potentially allowing a smidgen of political speak through the door. (Not sorry.) Read the column here.
Design and type
Matt Dorfman’s many hats
Matt Dorfman’s book covers are a regular item here on Foreword, including several of my Favorite Book Covers of the Year posts. So it was a delight to see a new interview with It’s Nice That.
[B]usy days and late nights begin with, as Matt puts it, “churning out a generous amount of trash”. Much to his frustration he will be “working through what often feels like a landfill-sized hill of boring ideas”. Despite taking up quite a bit of time, it’s a necessity, as among this trash will be a shred of an idea worth expanding upon. “Usually it’s a minor detail from an earlier comp made in haste and far afield from anything that book is actually about,” he says, “but it typically has a quality of brokenness or something unfinished that just looks interesting.”
— Harry Bennett, It’s Nice That
“Do anything except what’s right in front of you,” he tells them, while mentioning that he often favors collage. “Collage has become one of my shorthands for pairing themes and ideas together that aren’t so readily represented in nature or culture.” As in:
VQR. Book design by Matt Dorfman. Image via It’s Nice That.
Did I mention that he’s also the art director The New York Times Book Review? Yeah:
One of Matt Dorfman’s covers for the NYT Book Review. Image via It’s Nice That.
And a quick preview of next year’s Favorites list, with this gem:
Cover design by Matt Dorfman.
If it looks familiar, that’s because…:
Cover design by Matt Dorfman.Cover design by Matt Dorfman.
Both previous Favorites here on Foreword. Awesome.
Glenn Fleishman, writing at Six Colors, points us at a YouTube documentary on the history of Lorem Ipsum:
A screenshot of the YouTube video.
“I found it riveting and hilarious, and exactly the kind of Rabbit Hole (her channel name) that I fall down with printing and type history myself,” he writes. “[H]er dogged research has largely filled in the missing pieces of the story of where the run of seemingly Latin text used by designers to act as placeholder (or ‘Greeked’) text in mock-ups since the late 1960s came from.”
I agree: it’s well put-together and, more importantly, answers a question you might not have actually had — but now can’t resist. Enjoy.
Side note: Privacy where possible: I’ve switched to screenshots of YouTube videos rather than embedding them. That way folks who choose not follow the link aren’t stuck with the trackers embedding foists upon all.
Special bonus #1: Glenn is one of those people who wears many hats — 2019’s awesomeTiny Type Museum project is his, for instance — but it’s the comics connection that might be most appreciated. He’s got a book out about it, now in its second edition, which has just been nominated for Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards — the Eisners. Read more.
2026 logo trends
The Logo Lounge has posted its 2026 Report.
The quality of the Logo Trend Report has slipped over the past couple of years — there are suggestions that parts of it are generated rather of written — but I think the zoom-out is still useful for those of us in design.
If, for no other reason, to make sure our work is ahead of the curve.
Via Brand New, one of the only subscription sites I’ll link to. (Because it gives me an excuse to encourage you to subscribe, too: at $20/year, it’s sensibly priced and very much earns its keep.)
Best new fonts: a one-off
This month’s CreativeBoom post on new fonts was shorter than some — it’s summer! — with only one I’d like to highlight:
Sahlia, by Arcane Type Foundry.
But what a one it is. How often are we given an excuse get excited about stencil-style?
Marcin Wichary, whose brilliant Unsung continues to impress, has a neat item that we’ve all seen at this point: font menus that preview the font name in the style of the typeface, sometimes poorly.
Turns out, that’s not at all easy.
Oopsie. Screenshot courtesy of Unsung.
“Font previews are fascinating because they are the perfect showcase of how tricky fonts can be at scale,” he writes. The question is: why?
It’s actually impossible to left align or center text. Ever. Not just because each font does whatever it wants – font size is a number that doesn’t really give you anything to hang a hat on, and the font can place itself in its box however it desires, too – and not just because fonts often lie (via bad metrics) about what they store inside, but also because aligning and centering are really in the eye of the license holder, and have more than one definition.
So, every time you align text to anything, in whatever way, it’s only an approximation. Most of the time that’s good enough. Here it is not.
— Marcin Wichary, Unsung
It takes a surprising amount of work to get this right. Screenshot courtesy of Unsung.
“There are icon fonts, color fonts, and non-Western fonts so rich in variety and tradition that this category itself is basically a fractal,” he says. “There’s a craft to getting it right.”
Special bonus #2: Wichary also built something called Fontificator. “I thought it’d be fun to share this internal tool I made over a decade ago to aid with exploring options for Medium’s typographical redesign,” he says.
Fontificator. Screenshot courtesy of Unsung.
“The motivation for building Fontificator came from two observations:
font previews on type foundry sites were generally too limited to get a real sense of how a certain typeface feels, and it was best to see a font in situ,
often an extremely tiny nuance — like adding some letter spacing, or messing with line height — was what separated something that was promising from something that seemed very far from working.”
I know, I know, more Abode stuff. I’ll keep it quick(ish).
PetaPixel reminds us that, “the vast majority of working photographers are using AI to help save them time, handling tedious tasks that aren’t necessarily all that creative.” Adobe’s latest updates address that:
AI removal tools now have flavors, including on-device if needed.
Lightroom’s AI Sharpen tool can now use Topaz Labs’ Noise-Aware Sharpen model directly in the app. This promises to recover fine details more effectively, per Adobe. (More on Topaz below.) 👍
Lightroom’s Assisted Culling automatically stacks similar images into groups and automatically suggests the “strongest one.” 👎
Lightroom has a new Photo to Video feature that uses Firefly and Google Veo to turn a still photo into “polished b-roll or reels with AI-generated motion.” 👎
Photoshop’s reflection removals are now isolated on a separate layer, “giving users control over opacity for more natural-looking results,” according to PetaPixel. 👍
Photoshop’s Remove Tool, which uses generative AI to erase a selected object and replace it with realistic-looking pixels, can now be used offline using an on-device AI model. 👍
The agentic AI “assistant” might — or might not — be good. (Subscribers pay $$ for it, so….)
Meanwhile, Adobe’s promised “creative agent” — ’cause agentic AI — has “fully arrived” in Creative Cloud, PetaPixel writes. “Inside Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io, users can tell Adobe’s Firefly-powered AI Assistant how to edit photos, videos, and other graphics.” It runs in a panel, like having Chat GPT or Claude right in the app.
“As a creative, you remain in control, choosing what to hand off, what to refine and how to apply your taste, expertise and judgment to shape every editable outcome. These tools are built for how you’ve told us you actually work,” Adobe explains.
I’m going to have to try this one. Maybe. Someday.
Several days after the above items were debuted, Adobe purchased Topaz outright. It’ll “fully integrate Topaz’s [AI scaling] models across apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, and its AI image generator Firefly” — which should be a good thing.
Special bonus #3: In case AI-all-the-things is getting to you, there’s this:
“A ‘centaur’ describes a human augmented with a technology, like machine learning, or even just driving a car or using autocomplete,” ArsTechnica writes as part of an interview with Doctorow. “A reverse centaur ‘is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine.’”
“Being a centaur is generally viewed as a positive thing; few people relish being a reverse centaur. And yet the AI industry….” Read the rest.
People
Jason Snell
Amongst the tech names I’ve know for what seems forever, Jason Snell’s is up there. He was first at MacUser, then Macworld, then hung out his own banner at Six Colors.
From Macworld: Jason Snell (highlighted) at the introduction of the iPod, 2001.
My first day on the job at Macworld, Apple was perilously close to going out of business. It was the fall of 1997, and Steve Jobs had returned to Apple and engineered the ejection of Gil Amelio as CEO, but there was no iMac yet, no visible turnaround in terms of products at all. Beyond the release of the iconic “Think Different” ad campaign, there was nothing.
Apple’s survival hung by a thread. Steve Jobs asked everyone to trust him. At Macworld Expo, he had enlisted Bill Gates — Bill Gates, of all people! — to help him instill belief in the world that Apple would find a way to survive.
The world was skeptical, to say the least. My family asked what job I thought I’d get once Apple went out of business.
—Jason Snell
Ah, the good old days. (I jest.) Hard to believe, but that was almost 30 years ago. Sheesh.
So long, in fact, that another milestone has passed: Jason’s left Macworld. Read the column. I’m glad he’ll be continuing with Six Colors, and am looking forward to his new podcast on Apple’s history, Designed in California.
David Hockney
I was familiar more than a fan, but it’s undeniable that the world has lost a character — something very ably underscored by the tribute illustrations posted at CreativeBoom:
Illustration by Nia Gould.
“From Bradford to Beverly Hills, Hockney’s bold colours and irrepressible joy for living inspired a generation. Here’s what they created in response to his passing,” they write. See the rest.
Om Malik
Early this month, Om released an essay for the times — and the ages:
Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying. The nose grows. You get caught. Lesson learned. But that reading misses almost everything Collodi was actually doing. The book is a close study of a society where deception has gone ambient, woven into every institution, every transaction. Courts punish victims. Authority figures perform competence without exercising it. Experts are decorative. Society holds together through spectacle and habit rather than accountability. Into this environment, a naive creature is released, constitutionally unable to resist a good story about easy reward.
The nose is the least interesting lie in the book. The interesting lies are the ones that work.
Okay, sure, it was social commentary cleverly disguised as an essay about a pen. This Mont Blanc, in fact:
The point is, it was as insightful as ever. (See also the previously-cited “Velocity is the New Authority.”) It was immediately deposited in the to-be-posted folder. Before I could could get to that, however, heart disease snatched him away. He was 59.
I first heard via Pixel Envy, which linked to Om’s excellent photographs posted to Glass (social media),1Forgive the repetition, but just in case: I don’t participate in social media. While I’d heard of Glass, I didn’t know of Om’s posts there — and wouldn’t have followed in any case. Perusing those photos, and posting that link, are a one-off celebrating Om’s talent. and, later, appreciated John Gruber’s thoughtful piece at Daring Fireball.
Both reminded me of Om’s love of Leica and preference for black-and-white:
“Sleepy in Seattle.” Photograph by Om Malik.“Does This Qualify as Flora?” Photograph by Om Malik.
Special bonus #4: The day after Om’s Pinocchio essay, above, Daring Fireball posted on Jason Zweig’ on’s three ways to get paid. I won’t spoil it — just go read.
Photography
2026 Beaker Street Science Photography finalists
“This is the 10th anniversary of the Australian Beaker Street Festival. Each year, the competition celebrates fantastic photos of rare and unusual scientific phenomena, endangered species, conservation missions, and much more,” PetaPixel writes.
Some of these are awesome:
“Southern Ocean Energy.” Photograph by Nick Green.“Just Another Bioluminescent Tantrum.” Photograph by Deni Cupit.
26 finalists in all. See the rest (and, if you’d like, vote at the link).
2026 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year shortlist
This contest takes entries from the majestic Australasian Realm, including the ANZANG bioregion consisting of Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and New Guinea, and to quote PetaPixel, “there are some real bangers on there.”
“Bin Turkey.” Photograph by Emma Perry.“Penguin Poe.” Photograph by Matt Bell.
Nature in all its marvelously diverse glory. See the rest.
Burton’s America
I’m surprised I haven’t linked to Brendon Burton’s work before, ’cause it’s right up my alley:
Traces #10. Photograph by Brendon Burton.Traces #6. Photograph by Brendon Burton.
His second book, Epitaph, “is a series that attempts to unravel the knot of mystery that exists within the dark corners of North America, shedding light on unseen histories and buried past lives.”
• Travel and nature photographer Jake Guzman has spent the past two years creating Otherworldly America, his new 256-page photography book:
“Picture Lake Washington.” Photograph by Jake Guzman.“Richardson Highway, Alaska.” Photograph by Jake Guzman.
• Arpan Das has fallen in love with the Kishtwar Himalaya in the Jammu and Kashmir region, part of the Indian Himalayas:
“Barnaj Rainbow.” Photograph by Arpan Das.
• Michael Shainblum photographs the volatile, weather-driven landscapes of New Zealand with “a body of work shaped less by fixed composition and more by responsiveness to constant change”:
“New Zealand #19.” Photograph by Michael Shainblum.“New Zealand #40.” Photograph by Michael Shainblum.
“Venice Beach: Dreamy #3.” Photograph by Craig Hubbard.
Hubbard’s photos are ethereal and cinematic, with surfers and wave crests illuminated by the early morning sun or backdropped by the marine layer. Sometimes the intense spray, curl, shoulder, or lip become the sole subjects of the portraits. “The water is the muse and artist,” Hubbard recently told an interviewer. “I’m just a biased translator and documentarian. Lastly, my ego relaxes in the ocean; the need to peacock recedes. This is where my best work comes from — or favorite, I should say.”
— Kate Mothes, This is Colossal
“Venice Beach: Dreamy #9.” Photograph by Craig Hubbard.
That’s it for this month. As always, thanks for visiting.
For folks in the US, have a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend as America turns 250. Let’s hope that we can make it a better place.
Also: Please don’t forget to let me know of any problems or concerns with the new site. I’ve got a list of items — going to work on them now — but always welcome feedback. Thanks.
1
Forgive the repetition, but just in case: I don’t participate in social media. While I’d heard of Glass, I didn’t know of Om’s posts there — and wouldn’t have followed in any case. Perusing those photos, and posting that link, are a one-off celebrating Om’s talent. ↩︎
This month, Apple turned 50. Plus, the usual dose of great design, fonts, and photographs. Let’s spring into it!
This month’s Spine
The University of Iowa Press.
Genius placement of record label, great typography, and more — although the folks at the University of Iowa generally don’t respond to requests for information (hence the lack of designer credits), their production department deserves all the kudos. Great stuff.
I’m just enough older than Apple that it’s been pretty much a constant presence in my life. Early on, it was only in schools that I interacted with them; we couldn’t afford a Mac in 1984, and I was stuck, nose pressed up against the glass, until 1990.
The original Mac 128k. Photo courtesy of Apple.
My first Mac was the same iconic beige, except it was a Mac Plus — which, together with a 20MB (!) Jasmine external hard drive and an ImageWriter — really allowed me to start down the path of making documents and publications lookgreat.
Over the years, I’ve been through many Macs (more than I should probably try to count, honestly). I still use and love the platform today.
Of course, I’ve added iPhones, iPads, and miscellaneous others, too. (Oddly, I was never an iPod person — I’ll take speakers over headphones if at all possible.)
iPad wallpaper courtesy of Basic Apple Guy.
There are too many great opinions on this anniversary, frankly, for mine to really matter — so I’m going to point to a few excellent items from others, in case you’ve not read them or would appreciate some additional perspectives:
Meanwhile, I have to point at another article that will probably surprise … well, none of my regular readers: a great Architectural Record piece on the many Apple Stores and their fantastic, now-iconic look.
Apple Aventura (Miami). Photograph courtesy of Architectural Record / Nigel Young, Foster + Partners.
The possibility exists that I might have mocked Apple in 2001 for announcing that they’d be opening brick-and-mortar locations. (They had resellers, after all.) But, man, did I get that one wrong. Five hundred plus stores later, all over the world, Apple’s story is being told every day through great products — and great architecture.
Apple Zorlu Center (Istanbul). Photograph courtesy of Architectural Record / Nigel Young, Foster + Partners.Apple Marina Bay Sands (Singapore). Photograph courtesy of Architectural Record / Finbarr Fallon.
Many thanks to Apple for making my daily life better. It sounds strange to thank a company with a nearly four trillion dollar market cap, but as someone who’s been there since the dark days of the ’90s — indeed, basically all of those 50 years — they’re more than just a company to me. May there be many more anniversaries to come.
Late-breaking supplement: new Apple CEO
As it turns out, Apple’s 50th also marks a turning point:
Today we announced that I’m taking the next step in my journey at Apple. Over the coming months I will be transitioning into a new role, leaving the CEO job behind in September and becoming Apple’s executive chairman. A new person will be stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world. That leader is John Ternus, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple products our users love so much, obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we can make something better, bolder, more beautiful, and more meaningful. He is the perfect person for the job.
John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity. I am so proud to call him Apple’s next CEO.
John Ternus and Tim Cook. Photograph courtesy of Apple.
Ternus’ long-time role at Apple has been as its head of hardware. Among the things Apple does extraordinarily well, hardware arguably tops that list. Every piece of hardware has an level of quality the rest of the industry just can’t match; from the early days of the iMac to today’s MacBook Neo, from the first iPhone to the orange powerhouse that is today’s iPhone 17 Pro, there’s a feel that Apple does like no one else.
That also means, for all intents and purposes, that Apple recognizes that the next CEO isn’t going to — can’t — increase its net worth another thousand percent the way it did under Cook’s tenure. They’re going to concentrate on what they do best: products.
Special bonus #1:What happens when you put greed first. I’ve spent a minute slogging on Adobe — hopefully fairly — but Nick Heer of PixelEnvy summarizes better than I have.
Design
Penguin’s 2026 cover design award
This CreativeBoom article is framed as “Gen Z judges books by their covers” — breaking news, surely — but is really about what happens when you give some design novices1Entrants had to have no more than one year of paid creative experience, and 60% of those on this year’s shortlist were students. an assignment redesigning covers of two iconic titles. Here are a couple of winners:
Night Watch design study for Penguin UK by Peter Goddard.Night Watch design study for Penguin UK by Sunny Tsang.
Of course, there are a couple of age-related stats in the article worth mentioning: “40% of 18 to 24-year-olds like to display books at home, with nearly a third using them as interior design objects or art pieces. Among the over-55s, that figure drops to 8%.” (Raises hand on the latter.)
The other title is the always-awesome A Wrinkle in Time. Take a look.
Post of goodness
While we’re on the subject of awesome: “Print and design studio Risotto is marking 100 months of artist postcards, all printed by hand and posted worldwide, with an exhibition that puts the beauty and breadth of Risograph on show,” It’s Nice That writes.
A sample of Risotto postcards, oddly with envelopes.
“For the Glasgow-based print and design studio Risotto, a connection to slower publishing in a fast world has been part of its fabric since its beginnings. Risotto’s Riso Club has been a constant print project running in the background at the press for the past decade: A monthly not-for-profit postcard subscription that directly supports independent artists by sending their colourful work to a community of print enthusiasts around the world,” the article continues.
More of the fantastic artists’ postcards.
“It’s a bit of an antidote to the speed of the doom scroll or just the amount of content that’s out there,” studio owner Gabriella Marcella says. I couldn’t agree more — in fact, if I had even a smidgen of display space available, I’d subscribe (and may anyway).
Kottke, while bringing us a quick snippet with a brand designer’s “compendium of transit tickets” from around the world, also reached back into his archives to bring us these absolute gems:
Special bonus #2: Extra large Pan Am ticket recreations as art, framed, for your wall:
Flight of fancy by Ella Freire.
These are perfect for an Air BNB or other travel/hospitality locale — as mentioned above, my walls are full — but no matter what, looking through the destinations is fun. Check it out. (Via Daring Fireball, citing another not-cited-enough item, SimpleBits by Dan Cederholm.)
Special bonus #3: Speaking of travel and hospitality, “Letterform Archive has turned a century of vintage hotel luggage labels into 330 gorgeous stickers: a new sticker book from the San Francisco-based design archive revives the golden age of travel through the vibrant graphic art of hotel luggage labels.” Awesomeness at CreativeBoom.
April’s typography greats
Mark Simonson’s start in type
…actually has a great story attached:
Hand lettering for Mark Simonson’s 1975 yearbook.
“Fifty years ago this month, March 1976, at 20 years old, is when my interest in type design began,” he writes. I’m not going to spoil it — just go read instead.
CreativeBoom‘s April selections
Nineteen in all, but as usual, I’m only going to mention a few faves:
Boundt (not cake), by Ahmadi Hasan.
“Boundt arrives from Drizy Font with a clear visual proposition: bold, architectural geometry at display scale, informed by mechanical bolt-and-nut structures and the graphic language of vintage broadcast design. The mechanical metaphor gives the letterforms a coherence that purely decorative display faces often lack: a sense that the same underlying system generated them all.” See more.
MWT Sheller Stencil by Jesse R. Ewing. (Who was not shot for their efforts.)
“Sheller Stencil originates in the stencilled lettering found on agricultural machinery from Tiffin, Ohio, in the late 19th century: anonymous commercial graphics that, on close examination, turn out to be genuinely inventive. Some characters split at right angles; others follow curvilinear breaks that track the Art Nouveau-inflected letterforms rather than cutting across them mechanically. The result reads as antique but carries enough formal authority for contemporary packaging, editorial work and heritage-positioned branding.” See more.
Herald News by Kevin Foley.
“The story behind Herald News is a personal one. Kevin Foley grew up with the Fall River Herald News (delivered it as a paperboy, absorbed its typography over years of handling), and later found himself scanning its pages to find his daughter’s name in the results after track meets. That very human relationship with a newspaper’s visual character is precisely the kind of deep familiarity from which good type design grows.”
This is a serif family was built for editorial work — and I like so much, it’s been bookmarked for when the right project comes along. See more.
Boxal by The Northern Block.
“Boxal is The Northern Block’s newest typeface – a meticulously crafted, retro-inspired pixel font that captures the nostalgic charm of classic arcade gaming while delivering modern precision and versatility. With the personal design history of founder and type designer Jonathan Hill very much in mind, Boxal draws on the pixel artistry of iconic titles like Zelda, Shinobi, and Cops and Robbers, and represents a cultural homecoming for the studio.”
Fantastically retro yet proportionally spaced, best at large sizes, preferably slowly scrolling up a screen. Awesome. See more.
Zed, for when Z just isn’t enough
Zed’s icon family by Typotheque.
“Zed is extremely practical, both in terms of its extraordinarily broad language support and the stylistic variations available via its adjustable width, weight, roundness, and slant. It even offers Braille characters and an icon font. But Zed is also simply beautiful. It’s a font family and type system that exemplifies the belief that rich accessibility and pure aesthetic appeal are not at odds,” Daring Fireballwrites. (In, admittedly, a sponsored spot — but his sponsors are so highly curated that I actually read the posts … and, occasionally, pass them along.)
No, your eyes are not deceiving you: those are potatoes, carefully carved in the service of Bodoni. Mostly. But it’s got tasty ink content — and is free. Check it out. (Via Kottke.)
Special bonus #4: ChatGPT can now think … about type, traditionally one of AI’s weak points:
Generated. (“Create everything at once,” Open AI claims.) We’re all going to be out of a job!
April’s Photography Round-up
Artemis II (#1)
Only a few items this time — but that partially because, at least in my mind, one event more or less dominated photography during April: the Artemis mission.
“Room with a View.” A view from the window of the Orion spacecraft approximately 9 minutes before Earthset during the Artemis II lunar flyby on April 6, 2026. Photograph courtesy of NASA. (No specific astronaut credited.)
“I like perspective. As much as I enjoy the wide, sweeping shots of our Moon and Earth set against each other (and I do very, very much enjoy those), my favorite photos remind me that there were people there,” Jason Schneider writes at PetaPixel. I couldn’t agree more: the shot above, for instance, is both spare and overwhelmingly expansive. Awesome.
How did that image get created — I mean, it’s practically right on the pad? “Photographer Steven Madow has been photographing rocket launches for over a decade, but arguably no rocket launch he has photographed has been as big of a deal. […] Madow set up 14 different Panasonic Lumix cameras to cover the monumental event, including seven remote cameras at the launch site. His outstanding photos are the result of years of practice and planning,” PetaPixelwrites.
For Artemis II, Madow partnered with Space Explored, a website dedicated to sharing all the inspiring stories surrounding spaceflight and exploration. Read the whole story.
Patterns: the book
“Big Diatom Stack, Edit 2.” Photograph by Jon McCormack.
“In the words of Georgia O’Keefe, to see takes time,” says photographer Jon McCormack. His new monograph, “Patterns: Art of the Natural World,” is a “beautiful visual love letter to nature and all its intricate patterns, from microscopic and rarely-seen to vast and majestic,” writes PetaPixel.
Patterns cover.
McCormack’s photographic journey, which started with a hand-me-down film camera in the rugged, rural Australian Outback and has taken him all over the world to — get this — the iPhone camera software lead at Apple. (The man has a clue, ladies and gentlemen.)
1988 Volkswagen advertisement. Photograph by Hans Hansen.
…aren’t quite what you might expect — but might be something you remember, like the above VW spot from the ’80s (which triggered a memory of the awe experience upon first seeing that collection of, well, parts).
“Hans Hansen is not necessarily well known to anyone but the most studious of photographic historians. Throughout a long career, the self-taught German photographer has quietly carved a niche as a master of still life and commercial image-making. His work explores colour and composition, as well as drawing lessons from modern artistic movements, resulting in some of the most striking and memorable product images of the 1970s, 1980s and beyond,” Wallpaper*writes.
X-Ray Microbus. (Don’t ask how.) Photograph by Nick Veasey.
Over at The Autopian, Jason Torchinsky writes: “Seriously! Full-scale X-rays! Of cars! Using five X-ray machines and/or a massive German-sourced X-ray machine, in a studio that features 30-inch-thick walls, British artist Nick Veasey took X-ray images of so many cars, and they’re stunning.”
Have a great rest of your Spring, everyone!
1
Entrants had to have no more than one year of paid creative experience, and 60% of those on this year’s shortlist were students. ↩︎
This month, some optimism, some interesting books, some creative fonts, and some fantastic photos, and somepositivity — plus a smidgen of pessimism — in the form of Adobe.
On the whole, it’s mostly optimism, promise. And there’s butter. And a sleeping fox. And duck.
This month’s Spine
Rutgers University Press. Cover design by Ashley Muehlbauer; production editor, Vincent Nordhaus.
“Our initial direction for [the designer] was to create a clean, simple text design that conveyed crisis, dread, or the element of threat,” this title’s production editor said in response to my request for information.
“To say that someone lit a fire under those directions is an understatement,” I wrote in this title’s commentary. “In today’s American academic reality, where every day could indeed be … shall we say, fraught, this cover takes the brief and runs straight onto the dean’s list.”
Joan Westenberg (previously) has another great essay up about the AI doom loop — why it’s easy to believe that the downward spiral is tightening, to roughly paraphrase — and why she believes it just isn’t true:
In 1810, 81% of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. Two hundred years later, it’s about 1%. If you had shown someone in 1810 a chart of agricultural employment decline and asked them to model the economic consequences, the only rational projection would have been apocalypse. Where would 80% of the population find work? What would they do? How would anyone eat if the farmers were all displaced by machines?
The answer, of course, is that entirely new categories of work were created that no one in 1810 could have conceived of, and these new jobs paid dramatically more than subsistence farming. Factory work, office work, services, knowledge work, the entire apparatus of modernity: none of it was visible from the vantage point of the pre-industrial economy.
— Joan Westenberg, “Everything is Awesome”
“The transition was brutal and uneven. [People] suffered,” she writes. “But the trajectory was real, and the people projecting permanent immiseration […] were, in the fullest sense, catastrophically wrong.”
The essay isn’t perfect; it’s too long, and the editor failed to catch a few typos (he said, hypocritically). But … it scales. Zoomed out, it applies to more than AI.
“The doomers may have the best stories. I believe the optimists have the best evidence,” she concludes. I agree. Or, at least, I’d like to.
Scripting News has been around since ’94 and if you’re even a little interested in a free web, his site is a fine place to start learning how you can contribute to keeping it free.
Note:scripting.com is, famously, still non-https — which means that if you click on either of the above links you’re likely to get a warning that the site isn’t secure. It’s very much a safe link.
Book notes, x3
Oliver Munday, Head of Household
Somehow, I expected someone older. (Courtesy of Debutful.)
Nearly every one of his book cover designs could be called an instant favorite. He has a wry, brief expression that often delights.
So, when he wrote a book, did he do the cover? Well … no, as it turns out — and he preferred it that way.
Cover design by Chris Brand.
Munday’s collection of stories has an interesting cover by industry veteran Chris Brand, and I like it — although some of the alternatives seem to me like better fits for Munday’s take on life.
But, of course, that’s the point: it’s not about him, it’s about his book.
No, it doesn’t soften when left out — or spread any larger meaning. It’s just a great book cover (and jacket).
Chronicle gets a kick out of “things that look like other things.” We made a notepad called Pad of Butter that has been selling steadily since 2015. So, imaginations did not need to stretch when a butter-focused cookbook with a vellum jacket was proposed. It’s our “bread and butter,” so to speak.
— Q&A with author Anna Stockwell and designer Lizzie Vaughan, PRINT
“It’s important to find joy wherever you can these days and it’s hard to hate on butter,” the article says. Read the rest at PRINT.
“Naïve” design
Image courtesy of the LA Times.
The LA Times examines the latest book design trend: naïve design. (Yes, I pretentiously style that like the New Yorker does. The LA Times does not.) It’s where serious subjects wear … nostalgic cover designs, to use a phrase. Find out why.
Parenthetically, of the covers mentioned in that article, only one — by design legend Na Kim — has found its way into my 2026 Favorite Covers folder. It’ll be a minute, but stay tuned to find out which.
Special bonus #1: “You’ll need a magnifying glass to read these,” says This is Colossal:
Courtesy of the V&A Museum.
Special bonus #2: A favorite collectible (and slight tangent), these books “keep a lost design legacy alight,” says It’s Nice That:
CreativeBoom‘s regular feature contains sixteen choices this month — awesome! — but I’d like to just highlight my three favorites:
Archibrazo by Rubén Fontana.
“Rubén Fontana is one of the most respected figures in Latin American type design, and Archibrazo, released through TypeTogether earlier this year, represents a characteristically considered piece of work. The typeface brings together two traditions that might seem at odds: the fluidity of calligraphic practice and the hardness of sculptural form. The result is a serif family that wears its sources with confidence, without collapsing into historicism or affectation.”
“Djaggety began in a classroom. Alessia Mazzarella of Typeland, who teaches type design to BA Graphic Design students, uses an 8×8 grid exercise as a standard introduction to letterform construction. The constraint, she explains, strips away the paralysis of infinite choice and forces students to focus on what makes a character recognisable within a tightly defined system. During one iteration of the exercise, she found herself drawn into the process rather than simply demonstrating it. […] Overall, it’s a good lesson in how constraint can generate, rather than foreclose, creative possibilities.”
“After three years in development on Future Fonts, Fred Wiltshire’s Musikal has reached v1.0: a significant milestone for a typeface that began with a conscious act of divergence. Herman Ihlenburg’s Obelisk (1880s) served as the starting point: a high-contrast, ornamental display face of considerable geometric rigour and decorative confidence. Rather than reviving Obelisk directly, Wiltshire took its ‘playful nature’ as a conceptual springboard and built something clearly of the present.”
Letterform Archives’ new celebration of hand-painted type
One example — I mean, who can argue with “Lettres Riches Fantaisie“?
“A new book published by Letterform Archive, Lettres Décoratives: A Century of French Sign Painters’ Alphabets, celebrates the vivacity and timelessness of French sign painting from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Compiled from lithograph portfolios, which range from 1875 to around 1932, the volume includes more than 150 full-color reproductions of these bold lettering samples. These portfolios once served as catalogue-like albums, providing inspiration for styles and motifs that could be translated onto large billboards and small signage alike.”
“John Baskerville was an influential 18th-century printer and type designer; you’ve probably used (or at least heard of) the Baskerville typeface. Cambridge University has the original punches used to create his signature typeface and has made high-res digital photos of them available online,” Kottke writes. “[S]eeing close-ups of the actual cut & shaped metal from 1757 is something else.”
In case you’re not familiar:
The typographic punch is the initial design for the letterform and one of the first of three stages in the manufacturing of metal type: short lengths of steel onto which his letters were cut in reverse and in relief. The punch was ‘tempered’ to increase its toughness and enable its use as a tool. Secondly, the punch was struck into the surface of a softer piece of metal (copper), leaving an impression of the ‘right-reading’ character to be cast. This was called the matrix. Finally, type was manufactured when the matrix was passed to the type-caster and inserted into a mould, into which molten lead-alloy was poured. This produced a cast of the type in relief and in reverse which were then arranged to create a text block and once inked, paper could be pressed against it.
Not just hi-res photos of punches for various sizes of type, either: some have 3D versions. Very cool.
Special bonus #3: The menu that never was:
World Class Female Singers.
Okay, okay, that’s not actually an unused menu from before Apple’s Macintosh was released in 1984, but how it came about isn’t something I’m going to quote. Instead, I’m just going to ask you to read it in full — it’s fantastic.
“The Tenth Muse is an art discovery engine. Over 120,000 artworks from museums and institutions — searchable by feeling, mood, atmosphere, era, and medium.”
Just one example of the many posters now available for your persual.
“A 50-year goldmine of design: AIGA New York unveils its poster archive to the public,” It’s Nice That reports. “A newly opened window into its design archive, this unique visual library provides the public with an inside view of the design, art and activism that’s emerged from the city’s recent history. AIGA NY has ambitions for the collection to become physically accessible with an accompanying book that will showcase the posters in more depth.”
Adobe, yet again
DNG now standard
Let’s start with the positive:
“In March 2004, Australian photographer Robert Edwards asked a simple but meaningful question on Rob Galbraith’s now-defunct photography forums: ‘Could Adobe make a RAW format?’ The answer was very much ‘yes,’ and Adobe announced the DNG format, or Digital Negative, later that same year. Now, more than two decades later, DNG is now the official standard under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO),” PetaPixelwrites.
From back in the day.
I remember lurking on Rob Galbraith site. Such were the importance of his forums — and, for that matter, the overall size and condition of the ’net in the early Aughties — that Thomas Knoll himself, one of the creators of Photoshop, would post there.
In case you’re not familiar, a camera’s RAW file is what the sensor sees at the moment of exposure, stored in a format for later editing. It’s completely different from a JPG file, which has all the camera’s choices baked in to the final image. Sports or journalism photographers usually shoot JPG, due to the need to post immediately; social media photography is, of course, its own animal.
Most fine photographers — that is, folks who shoot for art or pleasure, including your author — only shoot RAW, because it gives you maximum flexibility in “look.”
I’m honestly not sure how much of a difference this will make, but it’s nice to see DNG accepted as a standard — and it’s an example of Adobe meaningfully contributing to the bigger picture.
Train Adobe’s AI on your style
From the “mixed” department:
It’s not tin foil.
Adobe has launched Firefly Custom Models, “allowing artists to generate image variations that ‘more consistently reflect’ their own style, subject, or characters.
Adobe’s Deepa Subramaniam says, “Today, we’re expanding access to Firefly custom models, which let you turn your creative style into a reusable model trained on your own images. In this public beta release, custom models are optimized for ideation in character, illustration and photographic style.”
The goal of Custom Models, according to PetaPixel, is to “allow artists to train Adobe’s Firefly AI specifically to unique workflows so that when it generates content, it is more aligned with their specific style.”
Hmmm. How ’bout practical effects? Seriously, this might turn out to be useful. Time will tell. Helmet of tin flowers and all.
CEO retires. Stock … down?
Here’s where the attitude sneaks in: most of us, present company included, are sick of Adobe’s attitude towards its customers.
“Adobe’s longtime CEO, Shantanu Narayen, announced this week that he is stepping down after 18 years as CEO and nearly 30 years at the company. If you ask shareholders, Narayen was, for a long time, among the very best in the biz. If you ask Adobe’s core customers, the artists who were once indispensable to the company’s success, it’s a different story,” writes Jeremy Gray in an opinion piece for PetaPixel.
Adobe made more than $7 billion in net profit last year, a clear win for shareholders. This is due to their choice to treat creatives as a profit center. But their stock is down because their AI efforts have fallen flat — Firefly is way behind Midjourney or Gemini — and the planned additional profit center has failed to materialize.
And by “down,” I mean significantly. During Narayen’s tenure, Adobe’s share price increased from around $40 in late 2007 when he took over to an all-time high of $688.37 in 2021. But as of this writing, it’s $243. “Although Adobe and Narayen are painting his departure as entirely the outgoing CEO’s decision,” Gray continues, “it’s easy to wonder whether tumbling share prices had something to do with the transition, or at least sped up existing plans.
“I respect the sheer scale of what he achieved. I admire that he grew Adobe so that it could hire more great workers to build better software. But for me, Narayen’s legacy is ultimately one of treating [creatives] like an afterthought […] using our passion and love for art to boost his brand.”
I understand that Adobe has become one the Internet’s favorite punching bags of late, and I try to distance myself from that sport (no matter the subject). But I can’t help but agree with many of the things expressed in that piece.
Let’s hope that the future bring change, one way or another. For many professionals, Adobe essentially holds a monopoly.
But then, so did Microsoft.
Special bonus #4:Unsung asks, “Why wouldn’t everyone deserve the gift of focus?” He’s talking about the tragically-short-lived focus mode in Photoshop, wherein the user isn’t automatically shown pop-ups or blaring (bleating?) buttons regarding new features.
I mention this because I just uninstalled Acrobat, Adobe’s PDF management program, because I couldn’t turn off the pop-ups, sharing invitations, or requests to add comments. All I wanted was to proof documents, but what I was gifted with was frustration — even anger, on days where a deadline was involved.
Special bonus #5: “A slap on the wrist” is understatement writ large:
“Canceling a software subscription is supposed to be easy — that’s what US law dictates. Adobe, however, has played fast and loose with its Creative Cloud subscriptions in the past. The company was sued by the Department of Justice in 2024 due to its practice of hiding hefty termination fees when customers signed up. The case has now been settled, with Adobe agreeing to a $75 million fine and matching free services to users of its products,” Ars Technica writes.
The company doesn’t admit to violating the law. “While we disagree with the government’s claims and deny any wrongdoing, we are pleased to resolve this matter,” Adobe said in a statement.
March photo round-up
Okay, let’s switch gear and end with inspiration — even happiness.
International Garden Photographer of the Year 2026
Yes, you read that right: there’s an international contest for the best garden photograph. (If you want hard-hitting stuff, see Sony’s awards. There’s enough “news” in the world, so….)
Grange Fell Last Light. Overall Winner. Photograph by Mark Hetherington.
Soothing. The image also earned first place in the Breathing Spaces — more soothing —category, and was captured in Borrowdale in England’s Lake District; the “photograph shows heather, silver birch trees, and the warm light of sunset viewed from Grange Fell,” PetaPixel writes.
Asleep at the Wheel. Winner, Urban Wildlife. Photograph by Simon Withyman.
It’s a shame these are still photographs. Hearing a red fox bark in a British accent would be a hoot.
Standing Tall. Winner, Animal Portrait. Photograph by Alastair Marsh.
Proof that excellence in photography extends to all parts of the realm. See all twenty-one winners at This is Colossal or PetaPixel.
London Camera Exchange Photographer of the Year 2026
Last of the items originating in the UK this month, although the excellent photographs within aren’t limited to just those countries. Some examples:
Crossing the Curves. Winner, Street. Photograph by Helen Trust.
“A lone cyclist moves through sweeping arcs of light and shadow at the City of Arts and Sciences. Reflections echo the architecture’s rhythm, momentarily aligning human motion with structure, symmetry, and space.”
Saving Lives at Sea. Winner, Action. Photograph by David Lyon.
“Captured from the shore, during a regular Newhaven training exercise.”
Magical Uphill Lincoln. Winner, People’s Choice. Photograph by Andrew Scott.
“This image was taken during golden hour in Lincoln. The image captures the historic streets and architecture of Lincoln as a golden sunset sets in. […] The golden glow of the sky, cobbles and light from the window add that extra dimension in terms of how the overall image works as a result.” (The description somehow missed “soothing.”)
“Known for his atmospheric photographs of landscapes, interiors, and urban centers that feel mysteriously locked in a not-so-distant past, Andrew Moore’s enigmatic images invite us into a slippage of time,” This is Colossal writes.
Grand Luncheonette, New York, 1996. Photograph by Andrew Moore.
Not only great, but currently on display: Moore has a solo show running at Atlanta’s Jackson Fine Art. (Update: The show ended March 21st, darned it. I’d have gone if I’d read that properly.)
Cinematic plastic
No, not current events — something better:
Jurassic Pit. Photograph by Chuck Eiler.
“Chicago-based photographer Chuck Eiler transforms action figures into cinematic, story-driven miniature worlds that blur the line between toy photography and film. Through meticulously crafted sets, practical effects, and careful lighting, he creates immersive scenes that bring nostalgia and storytelling to life,” PetaPixel writes.
Apex Predators. Photograph by Chuck Eiler.
Awesome. (And available as prints, in case you want for your sandbox walls.)
Finally: duck this
Last month saw the incredible fresh pasta camera. Well, in case you think I only recommend a vegetarian lifestyle, there’s…:
Presumably, he throws a fresh camera into the oven every time he needs one: “I will continue making Duckcam while I travel, so next time when you see a person with a roasted duck on a tripod, please say hello to me.”
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