Giles Hoover

Photography and design for print production

Category: Business

The business of design, whether books, book design, architecture, photography, technology, or any of the other subjects Foreword covers.

  • Beautifully Briefed 26.6: New is Good. Old is Good.

    Beautifully Briefed 26.6: New is Good. Old is Good.

    “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.

    Read the whole interview at It’s Nice That.

    “It’s All Greeked to Me”

    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 awesome Tiny 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?

    Close-up details (and more butterflies).

    Sahlia is available from Arcane Type Foundry.

    Font previews: not simple

    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.”

    Read the rest.

    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.”

    It’s both brilliant and fun. Check it out.

    Adobe does AI

    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. 👍

    Get the full story at PetaPixel.

    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.

    — Om Malik, om.co (Via Daring FIreball.)

    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.

    Or almost-black-and-white:

    Untitled. Photograph by Om Malik.

    See a few more, called “Selects,” at Om’s personal photography site.

    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.”

    See more. (Via This is Colossal.)

    Landscapes three-fer

    • 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.

    All three are via PetaPixel: Jake Guzman, Apran Das, and a longer feature on Michael Shainblum.

    Finally: soothing surf
    “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.

    See more at This is Colossal.

    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.
  • Beautifully Briefed 26.4: Showered with… [Insert Here]

    Beautifully Briefed 26.4: Showered with… [Insert Here]

    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.

    See the whole list of University Press Coverage at Spine.

    Apple turns 50

    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:

    If you’d rather listen, this episode of the podcast Upgrade (Jason Snell and Myke Hurley) also covers the early — that is, really early — years:

    Whew. Enjoy.

    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. 

    — Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

    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.

    I hope.

    For more on the CEO announcement, see also: 

    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).

    Read more at It’s Nice That or CreativeBoom.

    That’s the ticket

    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:

    Golden Tickets, Milwaukee, week 7, 1949.

    A collection of weekly bus passes from Milwaukee, WI. Years covered are 1930-1979.

    Golden Tickets, Milwaukee, week “53,” 1952-3.

    Originally posted at the not-cited-enough Present & Correct.

    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 Fireball writes. (In, admittedly, a sponsored spot — but his sponsors are so highly curated that I actually read the posts … and, occasionally, pass them along.)

    Zed used in a display at the V&A, London.

    See more.

    HVD Bodedo
    Hand cut, not fried.

    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.

    See also: NASA’s official photo page, the Planetary Society’s favorites, Scientific American‘s twelve favorites, and Space.com’s sweet sixteen.

    Artemis II (#2)
    Artemis II launch. Photograph by Steven Madow.

    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.)

    The book is something after my own heart. Read the entire piece. (You can also see the book at This is Colossal.)

    Hans Hansen’s explosions
    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. 

    See more great examples.

    Finally: X-ray *this*
    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.
  • Beautifully Briefed 26.3: The Ides of Equal Madness

    Beautifully Briefed 26.3: The Ides of Equal Madness

    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.”

    See the rest of this month’s University Press Coverage at Spine.

    Why she’s an optimist 

    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. 

    Go read it and see whether you do.

    Great web moments, x2
    Kottke.org 

    Kottke Turns 28. There are few websites I nod along with as often as this gem from the late ’90s, still going strong.

    Kottke.org: 47,300 posts and counting.
    Scripting.com

    Dave Winer shoots for the stars:

    We’re going to try to reboot the web.
    Doing what the social networks do, but only using the web.
    Every part replaceable. 

    — Dave Winer, scripting.com, “Mission Statement”

    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.

    See the other book cover design drafts Brand designed for Head of Household at LitHub. (And a short Q&A.) Enjoy also this interview with the author/designer at Debutful.

    The Butter Book
    Book design by Lizzie Vaughan.

    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:

    A sample from The Matchbook Book by CentreCentre. 

    Update, 1 April: CreativeBoom has a nice feature on this title as well, with additional images. Check the slipcover:

    Awesomeness courtesy of CreativeBoom.
    Fonts March Foreword
    CreativeBoom’s March faves

    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.”

    See more at TypeTogether.

    Djaggety by Alessia Mazzaarella.

    “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.”

    See more at Typeland.

    Musikal by Fred’s Fonts.

    “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.”

    See more at Future Fonts.

    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.”

    Read more about this great new book at This is Colossal or PRINT.

    Cambridge’s old Baskerville ounches

    Heavy metal for the type crowd:

    Image courtesy of Cambridge University.

    “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.

    Courtesy of Unsung, Marcin Wichary’s awesome blog. (Yes, he of Shift Happens fame.)

    Great graphic items, x2
    The Tenth Muse
    Screenshot of the Tenth Muse home page.

    “The Tenth Muse is an art discovery engine. Over 120,000 artworks from museums and institutions — searchable by feeling, mood, atmosphere, era, and medium.”

    (Via Kottke.)

    AIGA NY: 50 years of posters
    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),” PetaPixel writes.

    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.

    See all the winning photographs at the contest website.

    British wildlife
    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.”)

    See all the winners at the London Camera Exchange website. Via Macfilos.

    Andrew Moore: Theater

    “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…:

    Four Minutes in London.

    Martin Cheung’s Chinese roast duckcam. 

    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.”

    Enjoy your spring, everyone!

  • Beautifully Briefed 25.10: [Blank] of the Century

    Beautifully Briefed 25.10: [Blank] of the Century

    In this episode, design whims and wins, fontastic links, a Toyota Century, and the monthly round-up of great photography bracket some thoughts on — what else? — AI, especially as it relates to art. Grab a beverage, brush, or a comfy chair, and let’s dig in.

    This Month’s Spine
    New York University Press. Cover design by Devon Manney, art director, Rachel Perkins.

    One could argue that this cover — and title — could work well even if the word “climate” was removed. See the whole list of University Press goodness.

    And check back for a special, mid-month post in honor of University Press week, Nov. 10–14.

    Good Movies as Old Books, Revisited

    Let’s start with something great: Steven Heller highlights the “talent and imagination” of Matt Stevens (previously) as the paperback version of his book, Good Movies as Old Books, becomes available.

    Cover design by Matt Stevens.
    Cover design by Matt Stevens.

    “My goal with the style was to try new things and create interesting combinations. Oftentimes, I was trying to do something that had not been done for a particular film,” Stevens says. Short and fun, the PRINT interview is worth a few minutes of your time.

    Old-Fashioned Methods, Delightfully Off-Kilter Results

    While we’re on the subject of movies, let’s slip closer to … well, what passes for reality these days: items “steeped in human anxieties and fever dreams.” It’s Nice That highlights poster and title design for films by Greek artist Vasilis Marmatakis.

    Design by Vasilis Marmatakis.

    With design, much like life itself, Vasilis says that his posters are his honest reactions to the films. The same approach runs like a red thread throughout his work, each poster leaning a little too heavily into one of the film’s themes. […] In Bugonia, Vasilis consciously restricts superfluous elements and allows the frames to breathe.

    — Arman Kahn, It’s Nice That
    Design by Vasilis Marmatakis.

    Even the font — and how it’s used — is interesting: the freely-available Churchward Roundsquare, customized with brush and ink. That and much more is discussed in this great article.

    New Vintage Classics Series

    It’s unusual not to relish a new set of reissues from Vintage, and the new editions of Julio Cortázar are no exception:

    Book design by Stephen Smith; art director, Suzanne Dean.

    The always great — and not mentioned often enough — Casual Optimist has more.

    Special Bonus #1: Via Kottke, Na Kim’s self-portrait:

    Fascist Posters, Italian Style

    Also via Kottke are these posters, which evoke a certain … something:

    In a fascist movement inspired by art, how does the fascist government influence the artists living in its grasp? This exhibition explores how Benito Mussolini’s government created a broad-reaching culture that grew with and into the Futurist movement to claw into advertising, propaganda, and the very heart of the nation he commanded.

    — Poster House exhibition The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy.

    The exhibit features “some of the best posters produced during the worst period in modern Italian history.” See more.

    Special Bonus #2: While we’re perusing the poster department, Archinect‘s ongoing lecture series (previously) has another winner:

    Fontastic Fall
    New for October

    CreativeBoom‘s monthly roundup is out, and while Grundtvig is retrotastic and the three-axis variable Pranzo is accompanied by some great illustrations, it’s Jovie that I’d love to use in print project:

    “Jovie’s character emerges through its soft-serif approach, which tempers traditional serif authority with contemporary approachability. Playful italics, expressive alternates, swashes, and ligatures provide designers with a rich typographic palette, whilst maintaining coherent family relationships across all variations,” they note. (Another variable-width item, too.) Great stuff.

    Custom Type is Everywhere, It Seems

    Meanwhile, custom type for branding is becoming the norm. In another article, CreativeBoom explains why: “Bespoke letterforms are no longer a “nice-to-have” and they are increasingly seen as a strategic necessity[.] Type has become the glue that holds their voice together,” they write.

    Those letters are your brand’s voice. They do the heavy lifting, they carry personality, and they create instant recognition – sometimes without the need for any other distinctive assets. […] Typography is everywhere in a brand system – packaging, products, campaigns, interfaces. When you build your own, you’re not at the mercy of someone else’s design choices, and you get a voice that’s tuned to your values, your audiences, and your long-term ambitions.

    — Frankie Guzi, business director, Studio DRAMA.

    Elizabeth Goodspeed (previously) agrees, mostly. “For most of the 20th century, branding treated typography as background, not backbone,” she writes. But now, brands are recognizing that, “[a]s a primary container for meaning, typography inevitably carries an enormous share of that emotional load.”

    An exception to the rule: a type gem — with legs! — from 1971.

    But, she cautions, “[s]peed also feeds a kind of conceptual shallowness. With so many studios drawing type, the market has been flooded with fonts that solve narrow visual problems but can’t stand up to long-term use. Too often, new brand fonts cling to a single gimmick while leaving the structure of the letters untouched.”

    Read the rest at It’s Nice That.

    AI All the things
    The Oatmeal, penned by Matthew Inman, has some thoughts on AI.

    The new-to-me FlowingData — via Kottke’s rolodex feature — first pointed me to this piece, and it’s gotten a ton of press. In summary, Inman suggests that AI art causes a certain discomfort; that, perhaps, AI art even deserves air quotes around the word art because it’s somehow less than “actual” art.

    Indeed, much of that press has been approving: a pile-on of people (not that such things happen on the internet) saying, “yes, AI art deserves those air quotes. It is less.”

    One of my favorite reactions was from Nick Heer:

    A good question to ask when looking at an artwork is “who made this?”, and learning more about what motivated them and what influences they had. This is a vast opportunity for learning about art of all mediums, and it even applies to commercial projects. Sometimes I look up the portfolios of photographers I find on stock image sites; their non-stock work is often interesting and different. There is potential for asking both questions of A.I.-assisted works in the hands of interesting artists. But it is too often a tool used to circumvent the process entirely, producing work that has nothing to offer beyond its technical accomplishment.

    — Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

    “Who made this?” is the right question — to start. But let’s take that a step further.

    John Gruber, at Daring Fireball, quotes the piece: “[When] I find out that it’s AI art[,] I feel deflated, grossed out, and maybe a little bit bored. This feeling isn’t a choice.” Then says that he fundamentally disagrees with that premise:

    I think it very much is a choice. If your opinion about a work of art changes after you find out which tools were used to make it, or who the artist is or what they’ve done, you’re no longer judging the art. You’re making a choice not to form your opinion based on the work itself, but rather on something else. […] Stanley Kubrick said, “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.” If an image, a song, a poem, or video evokes affection in your heart, and then that affection dissipates when you learn what tools were used to create it, that’s not a test of the work of art itself. To me it’s no different than losing affection for a movie only upon learning that special effects were created digitally, not practically. Or whether a movie — or a photograph — was shot using a digital camera or on film. Or whether a novel was written using a computer or with pen and paper.

    — John Gruber, Daring Fireball

    “Good art is being made with AI tools, though, and more — much more — is coming,” he says. Over the next few days, he cited some examples, including David Hockney’s art made with a Xerox machine, and then this:

    Jonathan Hoefler’s ongoing series, called Apocryphal Inventions.

    The objects in the Apocryphal Inventions series are technical chimeras, intentional misdirections coaxed from the generative AI platform Midjourney. Instead of iterating on the system’s early drafts to create ever more accurate renderings of real-world objects, creator Jonathan Hoefler subverted the system to refine and intensify its most intriguing misunderstandings, pushing the software to create beguiling, aestheticized nonsense. Some images have been retouched to make them more plausible; others have been left intact, appearing exactly as generated by the software. The accompanying descriptions, written by the author, offer fictitious backstories rooted in historical fact, which suggest how each of these inventions might have come to be.

    These images represent some of AI’s most intriguing answers to confounding questions — an inversion of the more urgent debate, in which it is humanity that must confront the difficult and existential questions posed by artificial intelligence.

    — Jonathan Hoefler

    “This is art,” Gruber says, with no other text. I don’t think any other is needed.

    On a Related Note
    This is AI.

    “The top 200 photographers requested by Midjourney users have been exclusively revealed to PetaPixel — and it’s a world-famous, still active photographer that tops the list.” I bet you can guess who that is.

    This is, in fact, the majority of what Inman was thinking — or at least, feeling — when he drew out an argument on why AI art can be such a let-down, both intellectually and emotionally. The above “photograph” is both awesome and hugely disappointing at the same time.

    Further Reading

    I’m not qualified to speak with any authority on the state or potential future of AI, AGI (artificial general intelligence), or the continuing convergence of AI with … well, all the things. I will say that, to me, there’s a palpable sense of bubble going on; whether financial, material, or resource requirements, it feels like something is going to need to give fairly soon.

    Below are several articles on the intersection of AI with life, culture, or art that I found valuable. If you can set aside a few minutes, the information provided could be helpful in the quest to stay informed:

    Side Note: I’ve dropped the punctuation in “AI.” Not unlike capitalizing “Internet,” I think we’ve crossed that bridge.

    Special Bonus #3: AI apparently overuses em dashes, something that has, frankly, caused me to use them less. Which is a good thing — I overuse them. But then, I am a professional. [That’s only funny if you’ve read the link. —Ed.]

    The Century Coupé Concept

    Toyota (the company) has reorganized: there are now three levels. There’s Toyota (the car line), for the mass market; Lexus, Japan’s first answer to BMW et al from the late ’80s and also very much mass market (if targeted differently); and now, to compete in the ultra-high-end market, Century:

    Long hood, imposing “grille” — trend, recycling, or cliché, depending on outlook.
    The no-rear-window thing continues to grow in popularity. (For “cocooning.”) Hmph.

    Powertrain is yet to be determined; the rumors suggest it’ll be available both with a combustion engine (possibly a V12) and electric drive. In the case of the latter, owners will, of course, be able to send their driver off to get the thing charged while they lunch or plot takeovers — no range anxiety here.

    Century’s logo is a phoenix.

    Car geeks will know that Toyota’s Century sedan model has been around forever. It’s always been badged as a Toyota, and is aimed at Japanese executives and members of state (and will, in fact, still be produced). It was joined a few years ago by a SUV that bears more than a passing resemblance to a Rolls-Royce Cullinan. Both existing Century models available only in Japan and China.

    The 2025 Century SUV. That D-pillar absolutely “borrows” from the Cullinan.

    Toyota has decided to make those three models into a new brand that’s just called, “Century.” It’s going to be set up with exclusive dealers, eventually be available worldwide, and compete with Bentley’s new EXP 15 (previously) and Rolls-Royce’s … everything.

    And, of course, Jaguar. The elephant in the room get a mention here because it’s looking more and more like JLR made the right call in targeting one-percenters with out-there, vaguely coupe-like designs. Because if the Century SUV resembles a Cullinan, the new coupé concept looks like a cross between the Jaguar Type 00 concept and said Bentley:

    The Bentley EXP15, top, with the Jaguar Type 00, bottom.

    Very much unlike the Jag, which is low and could possibly be described as “sleek,” the Toyota has a higher stance; a coupé/sedan and SUV mix seems to be a new answer to the so-called “death of the sedan.” Volvo’s ES 90 might also apply here.

    Bear in mind that I’m not talking about the coupé-style SUVs (BMW’s X6, for instance), which are a different animal — at least for now. It’s possible the whole class of “coupe-like things” might converge in the not-too-distant future.

    That being said, a member of that new class of vehicle being aimed at the chauffeur-driven market is new.

    The glass divider is to allow the chauffeured their privacy.

    One more item: The old-school isn’t going quietly.

    Did someone mention grille? (Lit, naturally.)
    Leaving the hood long behind.

    Mercedes is, arguably, the best (non-American manufacturer) at displaying “gangster” qualities. Oh, and check out the awesomely-retro interior:

    Note the lack of screens amongst that vintage style. And yes, velour is “in.”

    Read more about the Toyota (teaser or intro, both at The Drive) or Mercedes (The Drive, Wallpaper*).

    Special Bonus #4: Audi poached the Type 00’s designer. His first showing is the Concept C, Audi’s return to form, called “radical simplicity.” It’s a cross between their sports-driven R8 and designer-driver TT:

    Love the wheels. The grille less so (there have been dictator comparisons), and the lack of rear window not at all.
    October’s Photography Round-Up
    2x Film
    Grays Fisheries, Bradford (UK), left standing during inner city slum clearance. Photograph by Ian Beesley, 1977.

    From an interesting and moving feature at MacFilos, “Capturing the decline of industries and communities with a Leica M6”:

    At my recent career retrospective exhibition “Life” at Salt’s Mill, Saltaire (a world heritage centre near Bradford, West Yorkshire, England), a man came to talk to me. He said, “You won’t remember me, but I remember you. I worked in a camera shop in Bradford, and you were always coming in to buy rolls of black and white film. It makes me so proud to think that the film I sold you created some of these wonderful photographs.”

    I take this as a great compliment and a very moving one. It is one of the reasons why I decided to donate my entire archive of negatives, prints, notebooks (over 200,000 items) to Bradford City Art Galleries and Museums. I am hanging on to my Leica M6 for a bit longer, but at some point, it will be re-united with all the negatives it created.

    — Ian Beesley, MacFilos
    “Rocky Mountains On Wetplate Collodion,” Canada. Photograph by Bill Hao.

    “The Analog Sparks 2025 International Film Photography Awards celebrate analog photography as a medium and elevate the best film photographers worldwide,” PetaPixel writes. Some excellent reminders that sometimes, the old ways are still the best ways.

    Color and Pano
    “Beholders No. 1.” Photograph by Li Sun.

    “All About Photo Magazine unveiled the winners of its latest competition: Colors. The 25 prize-winning photographers demonstrate how powerful color can be in images, whether it’s vibrant, subtle, or minimal,” PetaPixel writes.

    To be honest: at first, I thought this was a coin-operated binocular thing you see at attractions or overlooks, and laughed out loud. Alas, the laughter died away when I realized it was, in fact, CCTV — an overlook of an entirely different kind. I guess there’s a certain irony in the “face.”

    The Mirror, Valencia, Spain. Photograph by Anto Camacho Villaneuva.

    It is possible to recognize a Santiago Calatrava building immediately, with its soaring, often winged structures. (The World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York springs to mind, for instance.) This panoramic photograph captures two of them — nice.

    A press release from Epson, the contest’s sponsor, notes that this year there was a “prevalence of ultra-wide panoramas and increasingly innovative perspectives, including very low angles, very close-up subjects, and aerial photography,” including the above. PetaPixel has more.

    Birds and Wildlife
    “Snowstorm,” Germany. Bronze Award, Best Portrait. Photograph by Luca Lorenz.

    “The 2025 Bird Photographer of the Year gives a lesson in planning and patience,” This is Colossal writes about this year’s contest winners (specifically, regarding the photo seen at the right in the header image) — but getting the cold shot, above, wasn’t an easy thing either. (See also: PetaPixel‘s plumage article.)

    “Ghost Town Visitor,” Kolmanskop, Namibia. Winner, Urban Wildlife and Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025. Photograph by Wim van den Heever.

    From PetaPixel‘s coverage of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 contest: “Capturing the unusual intersection between nature and abandoned urban spaces, Wim’s photograph is a haunting yet captivating image of a brown hyena wandering through the skeletal remains of Kolmanskop, Namibia’s long-deserted diamond mining town. The shot was taken with a camera trap and is the result of a decade-long effort that began when Van den Heever first discovered the animal’s tracks at the site.” [Emphasis mine.] See This is Colossal‘s post, too.

    Comedy and Dogs

    To round out this month’s super-long post — thanks for bearing with me — something from the light-hearted department:

    “It is tough being a duck.” Photograph by John Speirs.
    “Bad Hair Day!” Photograph by Christy Grinton.

    The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards, 2025 edition, brings us 40 … um, moments. Awesome. PetaPixel has all the winners.

    “Suppertime,” winner of the Open category. Photograph by Katie Brockman.

    “Good Boys and Girls,” PetaPixel barks, regarding the 2025 Dog Photographer of the Year. (In the name of equal-opportunity pet celebration, I chose one that includes cats.)

    Have a great Halloween. If you’re in the US, be sure to vote, Tuesday, Nov. 4th. And, don’t forget to check back for the special Spine post, Nov. 10th. Thank you!

  • Beautifully Briefed 25.6: Spine

    Beautifully Briefed 25.6: Spine

    It’s hard to believe that 2025 is half over — but at the same time, the amount of water under the bridge in the first half of this year is quite astonishing. For those of us in the United States (indeed, worldwide), this year seems to rival the pandemic for necessary use of the word, “unprecedented.”

    Therefore, your monthly dose of sanity great design and photography awaits. Enjoy.

    University Presses Coverage on Spine

    Spine is a regular stop for book designers everywhere. The site’s interviews with designers, authors and illustrators and especially their monthly book design faves are all items not to be missed; they do, in fact, live up to the tagline, “how books are put together.”

    Unfortunately, their “Uni-Press Round Up” — Uni, of course, being English for University — has been MIA since the columnist left in 2021. So it was a great honor when Spine editor Vyki Hendy accepted my offer to republish my best of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) Show 2025. (Indeed, Spine republished this year’s Foreword post in its entirety.) But that’s just the beginning: she asked me to take over the column, too.

    I said “yes” without a second thought.

    It’s important to me that I share a word or two about why: simply put, I believe that university presses worldwide deserve celebration. Part of it is the political atmosphere in the US recently, sure, but conservatives have been targeting higher education for a minute now. (See New College of Florida, “where education goes to die.”)

    It’s more that I feel that university presses are the unsung hero of the publishing world. Titles are often complicated and difficult to visualize, and limited budgets often make it difficult to attract talent for great book design. An opportunity to highlight the best is not to be ignored.

    Please head on over to Spine to enjoy the books I gathered for the first post, covering titles published in May and June of this year. But I’d like to call out a couple of favorites here:

    University of Texas Press. Cover design by Lauren Michelle Smith, art director Derek George. Cover image, “Hybrid Paper Gods & Queens,” by Julius Poncelet Manapul.

    Extraordinary artwork, handled extremely well. Also:

    Yale University Press. Cover design and illustration by Sarah Schulte, art director, Dustin Kilgore.

    A difficulty subject — and book design brief, surely — treated with classic style and an illustration showing an uncommon depth of meaning.

    It’ll be an incredible pleasure to keep a closer eye on the university press publications with monthly round-ups of the best new work. I hope you’ll read the column regularly.

    Special mention: Macon’s Mercer University Press:

    It’s fulfilling to become more familiar with a great resource right here in town.

    University Center stairs (2021), Mercer University campus, Macon, Georgia.

    I’ve wandered around Mercer with a camera twice, and have just found an excuse to do it again. Stay tuned.

    The Creative Independent: “On Developing a Solid Foundation,” with Creative Director Arsh Raziuddin

    Book designer extraordinaire Arsh Raziuddin has been featured here before — this year’s Favorite Book Covers post, for instance — but it turns out she wears many hats indeed, as this interview at The Creative Independent proves.

    An insightful highlight:

    Book covers taught me how to pay attention to detail both in terms of the story and the design. What’s different between magazine work and book design is that with a book, you’re often condensing a 300-page story into a single cover; whereas editorial work might involve an 800- or 1,000-word essay that you need to visualize. It’s so difficult to capture the essence of an entire novel in one image — something really has to stand out. […] It feels a bit daunting to fit an entire novel in a 6×9-inch rectangle.

    — Arsh Raziuddin, wearing her book design hat

    Her cover design for Salman Rushdie’s Knife is discussed, an extraordinarily good example of, as she puts it, “not overcomplicating”:

    Book design by Arsh Raziuddin.

    It’s a treat to see some rough drafts:

    Book design by Arsh Raziuddin.

    “We’re [that is, book designers] all trying to make something sexy or loud without a solid foundation,” she says. “We all need to collectively focus on craft.” Perhaps like this fantastic book cover, this time for a Pulitzer prize-winning poet:

    Book design by Arsh Raziuddin.

    The entire interview is a gold mine. Read and enjoy.

    More Great Design Items, Briefly

    “The 2025 PRINT Awards Honorees in Advertising & Editorial Cut Through the Noise,” the headline reads. Yes.

    It’s Nice That asks, “Are social media pile-ons stifling the creative industry?” Yes, I’d argue, and for more than just rebranding exercises. Read the article to see if you agree.

    “Jon McNaught has created more than forty covers for the LRB as well as artwork for books, diaries, posters and campaigns.” Follow his process.

    “Chris Ware, known for his New Yorker magazine covers, is hailed as a master of the comic art form.” Follow his process.

    “Designers needed a book about their history that didn’t exist… so I wrote it myself,” Tom May says at CreativeBoom.

    Archinect covers the best of the spring lecture series posters. (Previously.) Building an intersection of design and architecture: when getting a lecture is a good thing.

    AI: Desctructive to Books — Literally
    Photograph: Alexander Spatari via Google Images.

    Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models, Ars Technica reports.

    On Monday, court documents revealed that AI company Anthropic spent millions of dollars physically scanning print books to build Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT. In the process, the company cut millions of print books from their bindings, scanned them into digital files, and threw away the originals solely for the purpose of training AI[.]

    — Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

    “Buying used physical books sidestepped licensing entirely while providing the high-quality, professionally edited text that AI models need, and destructive scanning was simply the fastest way to digitize millions of volumes,” they continue.

    Sigh.

    Special Bonus #1: While the original reference has — annoyingly — disappeared, this Pixel Envy piece on AI Calvin and Hobbes still stands. Another example of link gold, including:

    “The glove,” he said.

    Special Bonus #2: Quentin Blake illustrates Animal Farm.

    Not sure what made me think to include this.
    Tech Corner: The Mac’s Finder Icon

    Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels: “Something jumped out at me in the macOS Tahoe segment of the WWDC keynote today: the Finder icon is reversed.”

    Existing MacOS 15 (left), future MacOS 16/26 (right). Note also the change in title location.

    “I know I am going to sound old and fussy, but Apple needs to roll this back,” he writes — but then, being who he is, gives us an illustrated history of the Finder icon. Natch.

    Thankfully, Apple listened. Sort of.

    The icon as of MacOS 16/26 Beta 2 (right). And the title, uh….

    Calling it only “slightly better” — something I agree with — John Gruber’s Daring Fireball makes a strong case for something that sticks closer to tradition, with this specific example:

    “Glasses it up but keeps it true to itself.” — Gruber. (Icon by Michael Flarup.)

    I have a feeling that Apple is going to keep the outline; generally, when it does these redesigns, the rules tend to overrule, if that makes sense.

    In other words: Liquid Glass > tradition.

    Special Bonus #3: In a word, “glasslighting.” (Also via DF.)

    Photographic Goodness
    Theibault Trebles

    This is Colossal: “Architectural Symmetry in Europe’s Subways,” Say no more.

    Richard Wagner station, Berlin. Photograph by Theibault Drutel.

    Brilliant on many levels, but it’s the dual trains-in-motion that takes it over the top. Another:

    Solna Centrum station, Stockholm. Photograph by Theibault Drutel.

    “Each city approaches underground architecture differently, mixing brutalism, futurism, minimalism, or sometimes unexpected touches of ornamentation,” the photographer says. Read the article or visit Theibault’s website.

    Nat Geo Traveler Photo Contest 2025

    PetaPixel covers the National Geographic Traveler (UK) contest, honoring the best travel images by photographers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. My favorite:

    “Tree Tunnel,” Singapore. Photograph by Scott Antcliffe.

    “I found this spot and was struck by the sheer density of the foliage — vines had completely enveloped the supporting walls, but the view of the Yellow Rain Tree at the top was simply stunning and utterly mesmerizing,” the photographer says.

    See more. (NatGeo’s website has an article, but it requires you to enter your email to read. Boo.)

    National Park Foundation Celebrates America the Beautiful

    The National Park Foundation has announced the winners of its 2024 Share the Experience photo contest — the official competition of America’s national parks, for amateurs only. Still:

    History & Heritage category winner, Cape Cod National Seashore. Photograph by Matt Ley.

    See more at PetaPixel.

    Toy Miniatures, Cinematic Worlds
    Batman on a snowboard. Photograph by Alex Gusev.

    Doesn’t really require too much explanation: brilliant stuff. It may be little more than a fluff piece, but the photography makes it worth visiting this PetaPixel post. (Reminds me, on some level, of the tongue-in-cheek mentality of the ’60s TV series.)

    Full Circle: 2.1 Trillion

    Humanity is overflowing with imagery, according to research from Photutorial:

    162 billion photos are taken every month.
    That’s 5.3 billion photos per day.
    Or 221 million photos per hour.
    3.7 million photos per minute.
    61,400 photos per second.

    94 percent of those are taken on smartphones — itself a shocking number — but there’s an important statistic in the data:

    Source: Photutorial

    It doesn’t take much to wonder why the US takes, on average, four times the number of photographs Europeans do.

    Special Bonus #4: An Adobe two-fer: AI-powered culling tools for Lightroom — see last month’s Beautifully Briefed regarding AI and Adobe’s recent price increases — and, because I refuse to leave y’all on a down note, info regarding Project Indigo, Adobe’s promising new computational camera app.

  • Beautifully Briefed 25.5: Cool

    Beautifully Briefed 25.5: Cool

    It’s been a lovely, cool spring here in Middle Georgia; it seems that in the 2020s, springtime has had more rain and less of the dive from winter into hot that’s featured in years past. (Not to fear: we’ll be into summer soon enough.) Open window weather, we call it, to be enjoyed while we can.

    That said, there’s been plenty of goodness gathering for this month’s posting: more movie/books, more album art, more typefaces, and more great photography. There’s also an excellent observation regarding design trends and a bit on Adobe.

    Also posted this month: The annual University Presses Show roundup, now also available on SPINE, and an updated photography gallery from Forsyth, Georgia.

    But First: A Bit o’ Nostalgia
    Foreword, May 31st, 2019.

    This is the 200th post on the new Foreword, which I restarted six years ago today. It’s taken a bit to get back into regular blogging, but I’ve once again found my sea legs, really enjoy it and hope to continue for a long while yet.

    Thanks very much for stopping by — genuinely appreciated.

    “Good Movies as Old Books,” Again

    I’ve featured the work of designer Matt Stevens before, but there’s an update to his fantastic personal project to make vintage paperback covers from movies.

    Perfect — and still available as prints. They’re also now available in new book, which combines the best of the first two books (published via Kickstarter) and adds a few more … or as a set of 100 postcards, perfect for framing and scattering about on walls near you.

    Better still, Stevens’ work has led to actual book cover design jobs, and his work for North Carolina tourism is awesome. Read this Fast Company post for the full story.

    Special Bonus #1: Heading to Europe? It’s Nice That has “Where to book hunt in Amsterdam, a playground for contemporary book design,” listing “why the city is so known for its publishing prowess, and shares a comprehensive list of places for designers, printers, publishers, and enthusiasts alike, to check out.”

    The History of Album Art

    Album art didn’t always exist, Matt Ström-Awn reminds us. Utilitarian at first, it evolved.

    Alex Steinweiss’ cover art for Columbia’s recording of Bartók’s Concerto No. 3.

    The invention of album art can get lost in the story of technological mastery. But among all the factors that contributed to the rise of recorded music, it stands as one of the few that was wholly driven by creators themselves. Album art — first as marketing material, then as pure creative expression — turned an audio-only medium into a multi-sensory experience.

    This is the story of the people who made music visible.

    — Matt Ström-Awn
    Reid Miles’ cover for Art Blakey’s The Freedom Rider

    Well-written and informative. If, like me, you’re old enough to remember music on vinyl — or you’re one of the new generation of devotees — take a minute this weekend to appreciate the particular goodness that is album art.

    There May be Typefaces Here

    CreativeBoom continues its monthly roundup of new fonts, and I wanted to highlight a couple:

    The Sita Collection, from Order

    I’m a sucker for fonts that have both serif and sans together in the same family — they’re incredibly flexible and perfectly complimentary in design projects. “Order Type Foundry’s first superfamily is a thoughtful homage to 19th-century Scottish typographic traditions, reimagined for contemporary design needs,” CreativeBoom writes. See more at Order.

    Nadrey means “My Heart” in Bété, the designer’s mother tongue. Artworks by Ivorian artist Obou Gbais.

    Described by its creator as a “typographical rendition of love,” the beautiful letterforms “draw inspiration from 90s poster fonts, combining narrow-ish, rounded letterforms with a contemporary sensibility. Its gentle curves and subtle serifs create a sophisticated softness while maintaining refined elegance.” Côte d’Ivoire-based type designer O’Plérou does the world a favor, as far as I’m concerned. See more at ALT.

    Sofia Pro by Mostardesign.

    Up there with Futura, from which it’s descended (see what I did there?), Sofia is one of those faces you see everywhere: “a familiar presence in contemporary visual communication, even for those who can’t identify it by name,” CreativeBoom writes. Sofia’s been updated and expanded, now available in a variable format. Spread the Mostard.

    Special Bonus #2: It’s not over the top: “[r]ather than uber-pragmatic, sterile fonts, Ornamental & Title Type (OTT) is dedicated to expressive display typefaces,” It’s Nice That writes in a profile of Eliott Grunewald’s foundry. Check it out.

    “Fun Fatigue”
    Branding agency Collins’ approach for RobinHood, an online investing and stock trading company.

    DesignWeek asks, “Is formality returning in branding?” An article by Mother Design’s Alec Mezzetti covers how we got to casual in the first place — and why we might be turning a corner away from it.

    Casual vs. not-so-much — and, of course, once corporate trends become a “new direction…..”

    “In a landscape of homogenous casualised branding, widespread disillusion with the idealism that birthed it, and a growing sense of insecurity, these old codes hold power,” Mezzetti writes. The RobinHood investing/trading example, shown above, now looks like this:

    RobinHood, as rebranded by Porto Rocha.

    The money quote, if you’ll forgive the expression: “The extreme end of this trend towards symbols of old luxury, hierarchy and tradition has been labelled […] as ‘Boom Boom’ aesthetics, which overtly embrace past eras of excess such as the roaring 1920s or, the boom years of the 1980s.”

    See if you agree. (Via BrandNew.)

    Let’s Talk about Adobe, again

    A two-parter, here. First, let’s start with more from Mother Design:1Oddly, Mother Design’s page on Adobe, mentioned in Google Search results, now nets a 404 error. I wonder what that’s about.

    That’s right, Adobe has a new logo and branding. ’Course, some of us have been using Adobe’s software for a minute — and clearly remember this:

    In any case, Adobe is ignoring the trend mentioned above and heavily embracing the current-thinking, very corporate-casual approach:

    And hyping the value:

    This leads directly to the second part: Adobe is, once again, both flouting its record profits and raising its prices. Why? AI, of course. (We’ll save the potential monopoly position for another discussion.)

    Adobe has rewritten pretty much all of their apps to include AI, making it so that many functions are better; retouching power lines in Lightroom, for example, is now a one-click affair. Others seem to be there because Adobe believes the general public somehow demands it. (The AI “summaries” of the PDFs in Acrobat, for example, are being pushed so hard it’s actually annoying, although to be fair, that’s not unique to Adobe.)

    In retrospect, it’s obvious that the new AI functions have been written in such a way that we’d get used to having them … and then be forced to pay extra to keep them. In other words, you’d think that, as customers of the Adobe ecosystem for decades now, we’d somehow get to the other side of the fishbowl and not be surprised at the wall.

    Adobe has introduced a new “Standard” tier that’s actually slightly less pricy, but with the AI stuff — along with iPad functionality, online access, and other features — turned off. No one who already has a subscription and gotten used to what’s available is going to want that.

    Firefly, shown above, is new, and AI from the ground up, and the generative fill options in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Illustrator, plus the always-useful access to the Adobe Font collection, mean that I’m going to continue to argue that the yearly subscription actually represents a value.

    That said, it’s an increasing cost that has to get passed along. I don’t like it, and I’m going to continue to say — in public, on the record — that Adobe is putting profits before people. But this is 2025, and these days, sport contains blood.

    Read more at Ars Technica, see the handy chart at PetaPixel, or read Adobe’s marketing for the new Creative Suite Pro.

    Special Bonus #3: Apple, the most beloved of all motherships, is also taking fire these days. Longtime fans will know the name John Siracusa — and, thus, know instinctively what this essay represents.

    Update, 9 June, 2025: Nick Heer, Pixel Envy: “It is hard to see how one could be a fan of a multi-trillion-dollar company. I am just a customer, like a billion-plus others.”

    Special Bonus #4: The Onion, May 16. “[Today, we] announced today the launch of its in-house advertising venture, America’s Finest Creative Agency.” Chef’s kiss.

    May Photography Round-up

    As has become the norm, let’s end with some awesome photography posted around the ’net in May.

    Just a little bit “off,” in the best way
    Putting the “fun” in funeral services. Photograph by Frank Kunert.

    No, it’s not AI: it’s a fabulous series of miniatures, meticulously constructed and photographed for our viewing pleasure. This is Colossal has more. (The behind-the-scenes photo shows all: lots of work.)

    The German Society of Nature Photographers

    This annual competition is a members-only affair, but in no way, shape, or form is that a compromise:

    1st Place, Mammals: “Chamois.” Photograph by Radomir Jakubowski.
    1st Place, Landscape: “Deforestation.” Photograph by Hanneke Van Camp.

    See many more — including a bird bursting through a waterfall (!) — at PetaPixel or head straight to the competition’s website.

    From Norway to Hong Kong

    “Like a love letter to nature, Arild Heitman weaves images together as letters into words to create a visual narrative,” PetaPixel writes of the Norwegian photographer.

    Photograph by Arild Heitman.

    A style that’s “more fine art than sweeping vistas,” they argue; I agree. Of course, there are some vistas, too, but with an interesting quality:

    Photograph by Arild Heitman.

    Architecture is another where details and point of view matter. French photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze moved to Hong Kong in 2009, partially because of what he describes as “verticality,” something the Chinese city certainly has in abundance.

    “44.” Photograph by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze.

    “I am especially proud of my latest body of work, Echoing Above. I started it by shooting trees growing wildly on residential buildings in the middle of the city. While looking up to find the trees, I spotted the men building scaffolding. And by looking for the men, I discovered the variety of birds that live in the heights of the city,” PetaPixel quotes.

    “Flock Over Mong Kok.” Photograph by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze.

    “I find it beautiful to see how the presence of trees, men, and birds are taking turns above our heads, like an echo in a concrete canyon,” he tells This is Colossal. His latest collection has been gathered into a book, available on his website.

    Paris in Color

    Jason Kottke brings us an incredible before-and-after, which I hope he won’t mind my reposting:

    Photograph by Albert Kahn, 1914. (Color in original.)

    “That photo is of the entrance to the Passage du Caire at the corner of Rue d’Alexandrie and Rue Sainte-Foy in the 2nd arrondissement.” he writes. Here’s what it looks like today:

    Google Street View, undated.

    Is it just me, or is the photograph from 1914 infinitely more compelling? Click through for more.

    Looking Up

    In its sixth year, Nature‘s Scientist at Work competition invites readers to submit their best photos that show the “diverse, interesting, challenging, striking, and colorful work that scientists do around the world.”

    Photograph by Aman Chokshi.

    For scale, look closely: there are two people at the bottom of that dish. Awesome.

    “Winter Fairy Tale,” Austria. Photograph by Uros Fink.

    We finish up this month with one of the most beautiful sights in the night sky: the Milky Way. Travel photography blog Capture the Atlas has announced the winners of its annual Milky Way Photographer of the Year competition. (And getting these isn’t easy: the photographer shown above, Uros Fink, hiked through the snow for hours with a 22-kilogram backpack and sled.)

    “It bridges the gap between science and art, giving us an awe-inspiring look at the galaxy that surrounds us — from both Earth and orbit,” Capture the Atlas explains, via PetaPixel. The competition site includes the winning photographs, a bit about each, and camera data. Using the word “awesome” somehow falls a little short here….

    My favorite gets both the sky and, implausibly, my favorite flower — in an amazing location:

    “A Sea of Lupines,” New Zealand. Photograph by Max Inwood.

    Have a great weekend!

  • Beautifully Briefed 25.4: Showered

    Beautifully Briefed 25.4: Showered

    Please note: I sometimes add updates to previous posts; this happened with both the March and February posts, below. Thanks.

    In this edition of the Beautifully Briefed series: a little book and book design news, a couple of complaints, and, in celebration of April, a (gentle) shower of great photography.

    Books and Book Design
    LitHub 10th

    Happy Birthday to LitHub, the most popular editorial book site in the world — after Amazon’s Goodreads — and a continued source of great book cover content. 36,108 posts later, they’re better and stronger than ever. Congrats.

    Penguin’s 90th
    Art direction by Jim Stoddart.

    Penguin’s story started in 1935 with the simple idea that quality literature shouldn’t cost more than a packet of cigarettes. Despite scepticism from publishers and booksellers, when founder Allen Lane launched his publishing company he sparked a paperback revolution in the UK. Within a year, three million Penguins had made it to readers’ shelves.

     — Aimee Mclaughlin, Creative Review (UK)

    To mark its milestone anniversary in 2025, the publisher’s new Penguin Archive series draws from its expansive archive with 90 short books — and interesting new covers for the same.

    May they enjoy another 90 years. Or many more.

    Some Colossal Notebooks

    From postage stamps to jetliner specifications to items he packed for the journey, José Naranja’s sketchbooks capture minute details of numerous international trips. “I’m lost in the intricate details, as always,” he tells Colossal. Everything from currency to noodle varieties to film references make their way into small books brimming with travel ephemera and observations.

    — Kate Mothes, This is Colossal

    “Sketchbook” does not do these things justice:

    Wow. Read — and see — more.

    Special Bonus #1: The Guardian has a wonderful story of a bookstore in downtown Chelsea, Michigan, moving about a block to a new location. Patrons helped … by forming a human chain and passing the books, one by one, to the correct location on the new shelves.

    Photograph by Burrill Strong for The Guardian/AP.

    Fantastic. Read the details.

    Facepalms and Footguns
    Anti-Piracy, Indeed
    Ars Technica illustration by Aurich Lawson.

    “Naturally, it would be hilarious if the anti-piracy campaign actually turned out to have used this pirated font…” is, in fact, not the opening line of a joke. Nick Heer caught wind of it and posted; Ars Technica followed up with the full story. Definitely worth the few moments of your time.

    Special Bonus #2: Use generative AI to create steal fonts, too: BrandNew, which is paywalled (alas), highlights an Instagram post — which I’m not going to link to — about a dude feeding pictures of fonts into ChatGPT and claiming the generated results, a “new” typeface, as free to use.

    My favorite of the comments summarizes perfectly: “That’s how humans work as well – we copy each other’s work like crazy; art history is rife with this in plain view. What AI misses, however, are the little innovations that happen over time that lead to new and incredible ideas.”

    Special Bonus #3: On the subject of piracy, Adobe’s previously-mentioned Content Authenticity Initiative have born fruit — both in their major applications like Photoshop and a new, standalone app now in public beta. This PetaPixel piece has more.

    The (New) Synology Tax

    Starting with the 2025 series of plus-level (and above) devices, Synology will now restrict drives — spinning or solid-state — to their own, branded items, which offer the “highest levels of security and performance, while also offering more efficient support.” The pitch:

    Without a Synology-branded or approved drive in a device that requires it, NAS devices could fail to create storage pools and lose volume-wide deduplication and lifespan analysis, Synology’s German press release stated.

    — Kevin Purdy, Ars Technica

    I’d seen this story go by on Ars, remembered that it had been predicted a while back when they restricted their enterprise-level items, and tried not to get upset about it. But it ground at me; at lunch with a friend this weekend, I went off on them a bit.

    I decided to vent publicly upon hearing part of this week’s ATP — that’s Accidental Tech Podcast — wherein Casey Liss introduced me to the term “footgun.” “Synology have turned off so many of their most ardent evangelists. Just so they can sell some overpriced hard drives,” he says, highlighting some other examples of companies (Eero, Sonos) doing precisely that … and mentioning Apple doing to opposite.

    But then I had a chance to hear the rest of that program. The other two guys on ATP, Marco Arment (Overcast, among others) and John Siracusa (long-time Mac guy, former Ars reviewer), had some excellent counter-arguments: 1) that we all pay the Apple Tax, sometimes begrudgingly but almost always willingly … because it’s worth it; 2) it’s a small price to pay to have the research of what to buy — what actually works best — done for you (plus the ease of support); and 3) that just because a company you’ve worked with for a long time changes their policies in a way that upsets or even angers, it’s not necessarily a betrayal: in other words, if you hadn’t been used to a specific approach with that company, the new setup would just be the way it works. We have to keep that in mind.

    I want to be upset with Synology. I should probably get over it.

    Photography, Showered
    2025 Sony Awards, Again

    Following up from last month, the 2025 Sony World Photography Awards winners have been announced. I erred last month in suggesting that the winners had been announced when it was, in fact, only the finalists; apologies.

    Photograph by Zed Nelson.

    British photographer Zed Nelson is “Photographer of the Year 2025” for his incredible series, The Anthropocene Illusion, an example of which is seen above. (See more.)

    Photograph by Ulana Switucha.

    Gotta give a shout out to some Canadian photographer Ulana Switucha, their overall winner in the Architecture & Design category, for The Public Toilet Project. “The distinctive buildings are as much works of art as they are a public convenience. These images are part of a larger body of work documenting the architectural aesthetics of these structures in their urban environment,” Switucha writes in a statement to Wallpaper*. (See more.)

    Some of these contests get to be a bit much. Sony’s is consistently interesting, challenging, and has earned its status as one to pay attention to.

    NASA Needs Our Support

    Like seemingly everything in the past few months, NASA has taken some major hits — and been forced to do something it should never have to: launch a campaign to remind folks what it is that they actually do. The ISS is one, yes, but arguably the tip of a very large iceberg.

    Talk about taking the long view.

    Oh, and one other NASA thing: it’s the Hubble Space Telescope’s 35th (!) birthday.

    “This skewed spiral galaxy, called Arp 184, is about 190 million light-years away from Earth; it earned its spot in the Peculiar Galaxies catalog thanks to its single broad, star-speckled spiral arm that appears to stretch toward us,” The Atlantic writes in this timely — and appreciated — edition of In Focus, their photo series.

    While NASA can provide us with wonderful images of many worlds, for now at least, we have only one pale blue dot to share. Let’s all do our part to make sure that NASA’s role in actually keeping America great — that is, at the forefront of science and research — is recognized and supported.

    See more at PetaPixel.

    Update, 7 May 2025: PetaPixel follows up on the Hubble image of Arp 184, seen above. Read more.

    Space for More

    In other NASA news, Don Petit recently returned to Earth, having spent a minute doing science giving us gifts. Like this one:

    Photograph by Don Petit.

    His photographs, taken from the International Space Station, showcase both his artistic talent and his desire to share with the wider world the beauty and fragility of this pale blue dot. (As if that isn’t enough, he touched down on his 70th birthday — fantastic.)

    Hungry?

    While not one of the world’s leading photography contests, the shortlist for the World Food Photography Awards did its job: it celebrates some incredibly artistic work:

    “Nature’s Hand.” Photograph by Wim Demessemaekers.

    Okay, yes, it’s veggies in a bowl. But restaurant-quality or even Michelin-quality food presentation is its own thing — and it’s a thriving photographic specialty:

    “‘At Alchémille in Kaysersberg, Chef Jérôme Jaegle transforms ingredients into artistry. Bathed in natural sunlight, this moment captures the essence of his plant-forward philosophy — fresh flavors, wild botanicals, and pure craftsmanship. The light reveals every detail, turning this dish into a celebration of seasonality, taste and dedication,” the full caption for the above photograph reads.

    It’s enough to make you want a drink:

    “Mr. Manhattan.” Photograph by Ben Cole.

    See more at PetaPixel … then enjoy a long lunch.

    Instrumental Macros

    Charles Brooks (previously) is back into it — literally:

    “Larilee Elkhart Oboe.” Photograph by Charles Brooks.

    “This formidable concept of capturing the unseen lies at the core of Charles Brooks’ work, as he photographs the small but vast interiors of musical — and most recently scientific — instruments,” This is Colossal writes.

    “St. Marks Pipe Organ, Part 2.” Photograph by Charles Brooks.

    The behind-the-scenes photograph posted at the link tells much, but it’s the talent that the photographer brings to the table — screen, wall, wherever — that works so very well. Once again, sir, kudos.

    Special Bonus #4: We’ve covered Sigma’s new branding. What wasn’t mentioned is their gorgeous and sophisticated new packaging:

    “Sigma’s cameras, lenses, and accessories are sure to arrive in style and come in simple, understated boxes with embossed type. Accessories, like straps, chargers, cables, and batteries, arrive in a lovely goldenrod yellow, while lenses will ship in black, beige, blue, or olive green containers. As for the Sigma BF camera, it is nestled in a classic medium gray,” PetaPixel‘s Jeremy Gray writes.