Category: Technology

Technology covers a tremendous amount of territory, from computers to cameras to cars to audio to … well, so much of life these days.

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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.

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Beautifully Briefed 25.3: March Madness

A huge stack of items for the March wrap-up, from libraries and type to a bunch of photography items, with a brief stop in the land of Jaguar that is … Paris. (Yes, the world’s gone all wonky. But you knew that already.) However, first, a quick discussion of what we’re not going to usually talk about.

On Seriousness

I’m going to keep my coverage of current events to a minimum; this is not the place, and I am not qualified to write about it with any authority (other than as a concerned citizen). But there are some items I think are worth sharing.

Techdirt, for instance — like Kottke and others — have posted extensively on the political and culture shift in the United States, but in this case, specifically how it intersects with technology.

TechDirt, March 2025.

We’ve always covered the intersection of technology, innovation, and policy (27+ years and counting). Sometimes that meant writing about patents or copyright, sometimes about content moderation, sometimes about privacy. […] But there’s more to it than that. […] When you’ve spent years watching how some tech bros break the rules in pursuit of personal and economic power at the expense of safety and user protections, all while wrapping themselves in the flag of “innovation,” you get pretty good at spotting the pattern.

— Mike Masnick, Techdirt

“Connecting these dots is basically what we do here at Techdirt,” they argue, and I find it convincing. As some of us struggle with how to source actual news these days, Techdirt has earned a spot in my list of daily reads.

Of course, it’s not just the United States. Arguably, the United Kingdom led with Brexit:

“Boris Johnson, Liar.” Image by POW.

ArchDaily brings us the story of Led by Donkeys, which started out “as a witty response to Brexit” and morphed into a visual tour de force. (Their name is a historical reference to World War I, where German commanders reportedly described British soldiers as “lions led by donkeys,” a critique of incompetent leadership — and not at all a reference to the U.S. Democratic party as it currently, uh, stands.)

Rupert Murdoch, NYC. Photo by Fionn Guilfoyle.

Light Matters, a column on light and space, is a regular item at ArchDaily.

Then there’s AI and its current leap to the fore. While it’s been discussed here before, what hasn’t been is the effect on “the free.” What about the Wikis and free-as-in-beer intellect that isn’t property?

From Citation Needed:

But the trouble with trying to continually narrow the definitions of “free” is that it is impossible to write a license that will perfectly prohibit each possibility that makes a person go “wait, no, not like that” while retaining the benefits of free and open access. If that is truly what a creator wants, then they are likely better served by a traditional, all rights reserved model in which any prospective reuser must individually negotiate terms with them; but this undermines the purpose of free, and restricts permitted reuse only to those with the time, means, and bargaining power to negotiate on a case by case basis. […] The true threat from AI models training on open access material is not that more people may access knowledge thanks to new modalities. It’s that those models may stifle Wikipedia and other free knowledge repositories, benefiting from the labor, money, and care that goes into supporting them while also bleeding them dry. It’s that trillion dollar companies become the sole arbiters of access to knowledge after subsuming the painstaking work of those who made knowledge free to all, killing those projects in the process.

— Molly White, Citation Needed

The whole essay is excellent and absolutely worth a read. (Via Pixel Envy.)

Update, 2 April 2025: ArsTechnica reports on a 50% rise in Wikimedia bandwidth usage as LLMs “vacuum up” terabytes of data for AI training purposes. “Wikimedia found that bots account for 65 percent of the most expensive requests to its core infrastructure despite making up just 35 percent of total pageviews.”

Update, 10 April 2025: Nick Heer:

Given the sheer volume of stuff scraped by A.I. companies, it is hard to say how much value any single source has in generating material in response to an arbitrary request. Wikimedia might be the exception, however. It is so central and its contents so expansive that it is hard to imagine many of these products would be nearly so successful without it.

I do not see the names of any of the most well-known A.I. companies among the foundation’s largest donors. Perhaps they are the seven anonymous donors in the $50,000-and-up group. I suggest they, at the very least, give more generously and openly.

Let’s assume it’s okay to say, “Heer, Heer!”

Special Bonus #1: David Opdykes vintage postcard paintings, described at This is Colossal as “[o]ccasionally darkly humorous yet steeped in a sense of foreboding.”

David Opdyke, “Main Stage” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches.
On Libraries, Type, and Type Libraries
Museums and Libraries

Kottke isn’t just about politics, though; he’s tried to keep up with some of the things necessary in today’s world — the projects that bring light or even delight. So, while we’re on the subject of Wikipedia, let’s highlight his link to the Museum of All Things:

A “nearly-infinite virtual museum generated from Wikipedia,” this program is made possible by the images associated with an article. Better still, there are exits from the galleries that follow the links in those articles, leading to … well, lots to see.

Meanwhile, Cultured magazine brings us a great article on four great libraries in the U.S. — I mean, a slide!? Awesome:

The North Boulder library. Photograph by Bruce Damonte.

Visit Seattle, Scottsdale (AZ), Eastham (MA), and, as shown above, North Boulder, Colorado, and read a brief item with the architect that designed them.

Print magazine brings us an article the New York Public Library’s celebration of 100 years of the New Yorker magazine — another institution continuing to do great work in the face of today’s realities:

Photograph by Amelia Nash.

The exhibition, which “charts the magazine’s evolution from the roaring twenties to the digital age, drawing from NYPL’s vast archives and supplemented by treasures from The New Yorker itself,” is up through February 21st, 2026. Or, if you’re not able to make it to the Big Apple, check out the film on Vimeo.

Type and Typography

Feckled offers “150+ hand-orinted letterpress fonts for digital download,” This is Colossal highlights, mentioning creative director Jason Pattinson’s new venture. It’s not perfect — those letterpress fonts are JPG files, not installable typefaces — but nonetheless, worth a look if you need something unique for a Photoshop project:

Some of the typefaces offered at Feckled.

CreativeBoom brings us their monthly feature on type, with two I’d like to highlight. Naancy, new from French foundry 205tf, is Art Nouveau in all the right ways:

“Inspired by the French city of Nancy and its school of art and design,” 205tf says.

But it’s Aktinson Hyperlegible Next that gets the prize from me:

“The Atkinson Hyperlegible font uses special design principles to differentiate characters and make each one unique,” helping low-vision readers everywhere.

First introduced in 2019, it’s now been expanded to different weights and styles, with new glyphs (individual characters, that is) for different languages and situations. As before, it’s free from the Braille Institute. Fantastic.

On A Wild Jaguar

Back in December, Jaguar made a huge splash — not necessarily the graceful skipping stone we think of from the glory days, but lots of waves nonetheless — with its Type 00 concept, highlighted here on Foreword (along with literally everywhere else).

The satin blue finish is only one of the striking things in this photograph.

On March 10th, it was, um, spotted in the wild, in what was certainly a choreographed event — given the huge influencer paparazzi presence — but not gained a ton of traction (sorry) in the mainstream press. (Motor1 caught a whiff, and decided it “doesn’t even look real….”)

However, I mentioned in December that it’s too early to call a strike — a position The Autopian‘s Jason Torchinsky almost agrees with: “Holy crap, I think I like it.” Shown in Paris, and described as “gliding around and looking like it somehow doesn’t exactly fully exist as part of our reality,” it might be starting to bring people around.

There’s no rear window, but at least now we know how the trunk is accessed on the car.

The sedan this concept previews will debut this year. Let’s see how it shakes out.

On Wild Photography
Leica Turns 100
The Leica I was unveiled 100 years ago: March 1, 1925. (Photo by Kameraprojekt Graz 2015. CC-BY-SA 4.0.)

“The Leica I, the first mass-produced 35mm Leica camera, is widely celebrated for its influence on photography,” PetaPixel notes with dry understatement. (Thankfully, they use the word “revolutionary” farther down in the article.)

“I hereby decide: we will take the risk,” Ernst Leitz II said in 1925 when he decided to mass-produce the famed Oskar Barnack’s Ur-Leica invention, and modern photography was born. From the front in World War II to the weblog you’re reading and literally everything in between, Leica has led in ways large and small.

Their M system is a direct descendant of that Leica I and still produced today, to great acclaim; the Q all-in-one cameras are huge hits despite the luxury price tags; and even their missteps seem to find their place, as MacFolios highlights in “Two Leica digital cameras with legacies that defied initial criticism.”

Some of Leica’s APS-C camera systems: from left, the T, the CL, and the X-E.

One of those, the CL, is my camera of choice — and despite being six years old and discontinued, is still getting software updates and a growing selection of lenses thanks to the L-Mount lens system. (Another is the T/TL mentioned last month when Sigma introduced the BF.) May it live for a good long while yet, as Leicas tend to do.

Special Bonus #2: PetaPixel bring us another interview with Sigma’s personable CEO, Kazuto Yamaki, on why he is “so passionate and driven for the success of his family business.”

Nature and Wildlife Photography Awards

Highlighting the “endless wonders of our planet,” This is Colossal brings us the fantastic results of the 2025 World Nature Photography Awards, a contest whose photography can “influence people to see the world from a different perspective and change their own habits for the good of the planet.”

Fireworks, Brazil. Photograph by Marcio Esteves Cabral.
Feathers, Sri Lanka. Photograph by Pandula Bandara.
Devghali Beach, India. Photograph by Mantanu Majumder.

Of course, it’s impossible to mention today’s wildlife without mentioning the “vulnerability of the earth’s inhabitants and juxtapositions between nature and the human-built environment,” as Colossal notes.

Ankle Bracelets, United States. Photograph by Charlotte Keast.

Meanwhile, there’s also the (unrelated) 2024 Nature Photography Awards, as highlighted by PetaPixel:

Polar Bear Amid Fireweed Blooms, unlisted Arctic location. Photograph by Christopher Paetkau.

There are also the 2025 British Wildlife Photography Awards, as noted by This is Colossal:

Street Cleaners, London. Photograph by Ben Lucas.

We do, in fact, run into too many of these contests; while I can’t argue with that, I can suggest that nature and wildlife are worthy subjects. Even in fun:

Declaration of Love. Photograph by Roland Kranitz.

Crooning, almost — Squirrel Sinatra. See more of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards at PetaPixel.

2025 Sony Photography Awards

Another contest, yes, but one that’s gained a stature — almost a half a million entries this year — and one that covers a huge variety of subjects:

The Colours of the Andes, Peru. Photograph by Kunal Gupta.

Naturally, I gravitate towards the architecture category:

Monochrome Majesty: Cuatro Torres Business Area, Spain. Photograph by Robert Fülöp.
The Guard, Netherlands. Photograph by Max van Son.
Centre of the Cosmos, China. Photograph by Xuecheng Liu.

Read More at This is Colossal and Archinect or visit the World Photography Organisation.

The Darkest Skies

PetaPixel also brings us photography from Mihail Minkov, who spent nearly six months traveling to “dark sky” locations — those not suffering from the ever-increasing effects of artificial light — and brought home some spectacular results:

A Moai on Râpă Nui, or Easter Island, in the South Pacific. Photograph by Mihail Minkov.

Special Bonus #3: Lego F1 action photography!

Great stuff from Hungarian photographer Benedek Lampert. (See his Star Wars Lego photographs, too.)

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Beautifully Briefed 25.2: Late Winter Stew

A bunch of tasty ingredients in this month’s post — from friendly identities and open-source typefaces to feel-good photography. Once past the minor rant we’re that covers the other meaning of stew, that is. Read on.

It’s Nice That on Copyright and Reuse

Elizabeth Goodspeed, editor-at-large for It’s Nice That, has a great column up regarding copyright and the current — and trending — business climate, especially with regard to copyright: it’s become the norm, she argues, for companies to mine open-source and expired-copyright imagery instead of hiring an artist, a trend exacerbated by the rise of AI. “Instead of safeguarding creators, copyright now favors whoever has the resources to outlast their opponent in a legal battle,” she writes. “Since public domain material already looks polished, using it also eliminates the time, effort, and expense of creating something new from scratch (not to mention the time spent building its associative meaning from the ground up). But why would anyone ever commission an illustrator when they can just pull something free from an archive?”

She’s done it herself:

The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1895 (public domain). Aubrey Beardsley.
New Antiquarians, 2023. Book design by Elizabeth Goodspeed.

She also points to a new UK proposal for a data mining exemption to be given to AI companies. “[I]t would lead to a “wholesale” transfer of wealth from the creative industries to the tech sector,” Sir Paul McCartney argues. (Source.) But isn’t that true of the larger picture these days, no matter the country?

Not all borrowing is the same. Copying is often more about power than propriety. When working with archival material myself, I like to think in terms of the stand-up comedy rule: punching up vs. punching down. Picking up visual motifs from a billion-dollar corporation that’s built its empire on copyright hoarding? That’s punching up. Repackaging the work of a living artist from a marginalised background without credit or compensation? Likewise, using found material for an indie zine is a far cry from pulling from the same source for a corporate client that could easily afford to commission something new.

— Elizabeth Goodspeed, It’s Nice That Editor-at-large

It is most certainly a trend in book design — but the bigger question here is one she states as fact: “[r]ather than referencing the past, designers are stripping it for parts.” It’s worth stepping back, as designers, and consider how we source — and use — imagery.

The entire article, only part of which is discussed above, is worth a read. And more than a moment’s thought.

Okay, on to the fun stuff.

An author on her own book design

Mary Childs, a co-host of the Planet Money podcast on NPR, writes on LitHub what it’s like to tackle the cover design for the book she’d written:

LitHub’s great cover graphic — pun likely intended — for Mary’s attempts.

“This very slight, low-stakes request for ‘inspiration’ became an all-consuming assignment. My brain started spitting out cover ideas. And then more cover ideas. I was sure I would break through and create the Great American Finance-book-that-reads-like-a-Novel Cover,” she writes — and, better still, backs up with illustrations.

Cover design by the Flatiron Books in-house art dept.

In the end, she left it to the professionals — but the trip is absolutely worth the read. (Be sure to follow the Na Kim link, too.) Via Kottke.

Special Bonus #1: Speaking of Na Kim, and also via Kottke, she’s somehow found time to start painting. “Be careful what you’re good at, you’re going to get stuck doing that.”

The Fantastic Mr. Font (and other big Dahls)

“Pluckish and playful” is more than a description of the wonderfully-named Fantastic Mr. Font, it’s the description of the new identity for the Roald Dahl Story Company. (Which is, unfortunately, a division of Netflix — but we’ll leave that for another day.)

Just right. So, too, it the font’s interaction with various illustration elements:

Roald Dahl and Sir Quentin Blake — plus the new font.

The typeface was “developed in collaboration with type foundry Pangram Pangram, the font is a customisation of its existing font PP Acma, turning its already unconventional characteristics into something ‘more mischievous,’” Ellis Tree — another great name — writes at It’s Nice That.

Read the full, well-illustrated story.

Special Bonus #2: While we’re on the subject of branding, check out the new look for Publisher’s Weekly:

BrandNew’s before-and-after of the PW logo.

It’s actually a return to an older form, but updated. Their website has a brief explanation. (Via BrandNew.)

PW examines options for their new/old logo.
Some Fantastic Fonts
Lettra Mono

Speaking of Pangram Pangram, let’s start there: their Lettra Mono was the standout of Creative Boom’s roundup of new fonts for February. Monospaced serif fonts are unusual, but good ones….

The italics, especially.
Inclusive Sans

CB also chose the incredible update to Inclusive Sans, which was also the subject of an article at It’s Nice That — and, better still, free, open-sourced, and now available in five-weight goodness at Google Fonts.

Love the retro style of the supporting images.

“Inclusive Sans is a new typeface from Olivia King that puts accessibility at the forefront,” It’s Nice That writes. “It’s arisen from the type designer’s research into typographic accessibility and readability – from highly regarded traditional guides and papers to more modern approaches to letterform legibility.”

Available in a variable weight, too.
Gorton

Marcin Wichary — he of Shift Happens fame — pens (heh) an comprehensive and incredibly well-illustrated article on Gorton, a typeface you’re undoubtedly seen but don’t know.

Anyone who knows Shift Happens will recognize the illustrative style. Photograph by Marcin Wichary.

“One day,” he writes, “I saw what felt like Gorton on a ferry traversing the waters Bay Area. A few weeks later, I spotted it on a sign in a national park. Then on an intercom. On a street lighting access cover. In an elevator. At my dentist’s office. In an alley.”

See also the f6 in the title image, above. Photograph by Marcin Wichary.

It’s a long post, so save it for when you’ve a minute to enjoy — but 110% worth it.

Special Bonus #3: Creative Bloq has a list of the best typography of the 1920s — “from Futura to Industria Gravur” — as chosen by designers. My fave? Gill Sans, of course.

Used in Saab’s advertising, amongst about a billion other examples.

Special Bonus #4: Nick Heer at Pixel Envy comments on a list posted by Robb Knight: “Something very useful from the Atlas of Type: a huge list of type foundries.” A good Canadian citizen, he reminds us that Pangram Pangram is, in fact, Canadian. More: “I was particularly excited to learn about Tiro Typeworks. They have a vast library of type for scientific and scholarly works [… I]f you are reading this on MacOS, you probably have STIX Two installed.”

Some Great Photography

Comet G3 visits every 600,000 years, they say. Hmph.

Yuri Beletsky of the ESO caught G3 over the telescopes in Chile.

Great stuff. See more at PetaPixel.

Meanwhile, on the subject of space — and PetaPixel — a reminder that one of the most infamous photographs in history turned 35 on Valentine’s Day:

The Pale Blue Dot. (2020 remastered edition.)

Aaaand one more from PetaPixel: a book. Eight photographers documented 24 hours at the Vienna Airport, offering up more than a few behind-the-scenes shots — in celebration of its 70th anniversary:

Photograph by Jérôme Gence.

“The project was overseen by Lois Lammerhuber,” PetaPixel writes, “a publisher and photographer, who has since turned the collection of images into a book titled The Dream of Flying.”

Photograph by Ulla Lohmann.

The project was “about showing the people who use the airport as well as highlighting the staff who ensure all the airplanes depart and land safely.” My favorite shot:

Photograph by Ana María Arévalo Gosen.

I’m an airport and large/commercial plane junkie — and old enough to remember when all-access at the local airport wasn’t a big deal — so it was great to see these.

Lastly, from This is Colossal, another round of the “coincidental” style of Eric Kogan:

Photograph by Eric Kogan.

All NYC this time. Check ’em out.

Special Bonus #5: Art News notes that Paul Rudoph’s Walker Guest House is for sale for the bargain price of $2 million. It’s a kit home that’s been assembled in various places, including the grounds of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. (It’s currently in storage in Rhinebeck, New York. Shipping is not included.)

So why is in the photography section, you ask?

Photograph by Giles Hoover.

That’s why. Check out more of my photography from Ringling and Sarasota. (The Walker images are near the top.)

Photograph by Giles Hoover.
Sigma: a new BFF?

No, that’s just BF — it stands for “beautiful foolishness,” after a line from a poem in Okura Tenshin’s The Book of Tea — but, as usual for them, something different. Something good.

Like the FP before it, there’s nothing you don’t need, bordering perhaps on a minimalism that’s … stark? No viewfinder, no stabilization, no mechanical shutter, built-in memory (so no card slot), haptic interface. But style for days, a great shape and texture, and absolutely the right size.

It’s made at the rapid clip of nine per day, because it’s made from a single billet of aluminum — shades of the Leica T/TL/TL2 (something I maintain was before its time, and discontinued short-sightedly) — except full-frame. And, of course, supported by Sigma’s extensive catalog of L-mount lenses. (Another commonality with the TL.)

At $2000, it’s the right price, too. Read more here or here or here.

Oh, and one more thing: Sigma has a new identity to go with the BF:

Slightly more formal, slightly on-trend typography, which is fine — but the logo is clever in being both a letter and a lens. More of that just right to close out the day.

Special Bonus #6: Sigma’s CEO Kazuto Yamaki is charismatic, interesting, and dedicated, as seen in the videos PetaPixel has introducing their new HQ building in 2022. Love the library-wrapped staircase.

Update, 4 March 2025: PetaPixel has posted a YouTube podcast/interview with Kazuto Yamaki, in which he talks about the BF and possibly a new, “serious” camera to compliment their 300-600mm lens. (This is probably a better intro to Sigma’s CEO than the above.)

Special Bonus #7: TTArtisan, the Chinese manufacturer making interesting L-mount lenses — I have two, both solidly in the cheap-and-cheerful category — is about to introduce their first camera … and “interesting” is, in fact, the best way to describe it:

Purely mechanical, no batteries required, instant film camera that’s decidedly retro.

See you in the spring!

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Beautifully Briefed 24.12: New Year’s Eve Fireworks

Let’s continue a couple of discussions before closing out 2024, and send you into 2025 with some photographic and typographic goodness.

More AI Book Design

This was mentioned in another context in July, but is heading our way more aggressively as time goes by, with Microsoft and TikTok, among others, getting into the publishing arena.

Cover design: unknown. (Human or machine: unknown.)

While Microsoft’s new imprint, 8080 Books, plans “to test and experiment with the latest tech to accelerate and democratize book publishing.” They’re not entirely up-front about what that is — and might not know themselves yet, given the rapidly evolving tech and marketplace. That said, with the corporate giant’s name attached, we can be assured of some level of quality.

Yes, I just wrote a sentence suggesting that Microsoft is a guardian of quality. (“Books matter. In a deluge of data. In a bloat of blogs, a sea of social, and a maelstrom of email. Books will always matter,” they write.)

With others, the for-profit nature — TikTok’s engagement-before-all-else approach speaks volumes (or writes volumes, as the case might be) — assures that quality might come behind, say, slop. Publisher’s Weekly reports that 320 publishing startups have emerged just in the last two years, most in the AI space, adding to the 1,300 noted as of 2022. (PW also notes, “It is widely believed that each of the Big Five publishers has internal AI projects discreetly hidden from view.”)

And then there’s this: introducing Spams Spines, your AI book design and book completion service: “[f]rom manuscript to book in your readers’ hands – a single platform to help any author proofread, cover design, format, print, and distribute over global channels — zero tech know-how required.” Prices start at $1500 and promise a finished product in less than 30 days.

Their goal is to release 8,000 books per year. AI is heavily involved:

There’s a Sherlocked joke here somewhere….

Because, yes, you want a machine to suggest that Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle needed assistance regarding a turn of phrase. (Never mind his expensive editor.)

The first and third are really “only” bad. However, Dr. Seuss would like a word with Spines’ AI training dataset, please, and the cover for “Stay Humble” defies words.

But it’s the book design that got my attention: these are apparently the good ones, the cited examples to which someone says, “Yes! Take my money!”

The sad thing is that people will say that. Have already said that. And there’s much, much on the publishing industry’s horizon. Our horizon.

Read more at The Conversation, “The tech world is ‘disrupting’ book publishing. But do we want its effortless art?” Shout out to the AV Club and the aforementioned PW article.

The Cat Leaps

Last month, we left off Jaguar’s continuing road trip with a teaser. Let’s get right to it. The car’s called the Type 00:

Some details:

The interior:

The internet, predictably, has lost its collective … um, mind. However, amongst the melee, there are a few items worth mentioning.

Creative Boom: “If the new logo seemed divisive in isolation, seeing it brought to life with Type 00’s design has brought much clarity. The flush surfaces, panoramic roof, and glassless tailgate – all adorned with the new Jaguar device mark and reimagined leaper – create a cohesive vision of modern luxury. Rawdon Glover, managing director of Jaguar, emphasised the importance of this shift: ‘We have forged a fearlessly creative new character for Jaguar that is true to the DNA of the brand but future-facing, relevant and one that really stands out.'”

The quote there is something to pay attention to. Read those words again, and think about the actual choice of language; it’s this, exactly, that has struck some. Armin at Brand New, for instance: “[W]hat I dislike the most about the new Jaguar brand: its tone of voice is INSUFFERABLE. Everything from the platitudes in the campaign to the script of McGovern’s presentation to the press releases is obnoxiously over-confident and self-congratulatory.” (Brand New, while excellent, is subscription-only — alas without a sample article. Here’s a link anyway.)

Meanwhile, Dezeen provides us some real-world images from the Miami launch:

Wai Shin Li, via Dezeen

But it’s The Autotopian that stands out. They have not one but two excellent articles by Adrian Clarke, an ex-JLR1That’s Jaguar Land Rover, before it was, um, initialized by owner Tata. designer, who has several important points to contribute:

A couple of weeks ago, the cancelled X351 Jaguar XJ leaked onto the internet. During my time at Land Rover, I saw this car back in 2018 and can confirm this is indeed, or rather was the EV XJ. Back when Mr. Tata was still alive every six months or so there would be a big board level presentation for him on upcoming products. […] I was privy to all the future production Jaguars and concepts. There was a J-Pace SUV to sit above the F-Pace (no problem in revealing this as it’s common knowledge) and everything else was as you’d expect. These cars were then cancelled as part of the revamp and one absolutely incredibly beautiful and exceptional proposal aside, nothing of value was lost.

It’s the first time I’d seen the cancelled-just-before-release XJ EV, and despite the incomplete body panels and obviously-on-the-sly phone shot, it’s incredibly disappointing. They made the right call.

Compare it next to a Rolls Royce Spectre, a car the production Type 00 will be a competitor for, and see how successfully it hides its bulk in profile. [I]n the side view, particularly in the bottom half, I’m seeing some Range Rover. The crisp shoulder line, the kick-up of the tail behind the rear wheel, and the feature line along the bottom of the bodyside all scream Range Rover. This is exacerbated by the verticality of the front and rear of the car – the new full-size Range Rover and Sport have sharply docked tails. I heard that the initial sketch of this car was done by Massimo Frascella before he departed for Audi. Frascella was McGovern’s right-hand man at Land Rover for decades before Ian Callum retired and McGovern used the opportunity to bring both the Jaguar and Land Rover studios together. So maybe that’s where this Range Rover influence comes from.

The Jaguar Type 00, top, and Rolls-Royce Spectre, bottom, courtesy of The Autopian.

We must remember this is only a concept. The actual production car will be a four-door GT. This is only a preview of the visual style of future Jaguar models. It’s certainly striking, but you’d struggle to call it beautiful. It’s also monolithic and slabby.

Let’s hope this brutal revamp is […] successful, because there are a lot of jobs depending on it.

— Adrian Clarke, ex-JLR designer

There’s much more from those two articles, too much to quote here, so please go read them — the initial report is more on the design, while the second delves into the why: “Why Jaguar Had To Blow Up Its Brand In Order To Save It.“

Meanwhile, I’ll actually be rooting for JLR to pull this one off. I’m not in the target audience — at all — but Jaguar needed to do something radical and, by God, they did just that. The concept is interesting. Some of the details are fantastic. Here’s hoping, indeed.

Update, 15 Jan 2025: Turns out the Jaguar’s designers were a little worried about the outcome — or the outsourcing, in this case — and its effect on the brand. The Drive has the details.

Special Bonus #1: Motor1 has a feature on Ian Callum’s current whereabouts. There are too many hypercars these days, but the Skye looks cool:

The Callum Skye concept. (An island buggy?)
Some Extraordinary Items of “Normalcy”

To close out 2024, let’s take a break, pour a beverage, and enjoy some of what you read Foreword for: great photography, typography, and design.

Northern Lights

I didn’t know — or didn’t remember — that amongst the glut of photography contests is one dedicated to the phenomenon known as the Northern Lights.

Cosmic Explosion, Isteria, Croatia. Photograph by Uroš Fink.

PetaPixel reminds us that Capture the Atlas’ Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition features some exceptional opportunities to make spectacular captures this year due to the solar maximum — the peak of its eleven-year cycle.

Celestial Reflection, Dartmoor National Park, UK. Photograph by Max Trafford.

The 2024 competition awards feature 25 winners, each with a narrative and each a striking example of the larger system we’re part of. Check it out. (Also via This is Colossal.)

Nature

PetaPixel is among several that point us to the Nature Photographer of the Year contest, with images both poignant and funny. Since it’s New Year, let’s go with the latter:

Besties, Washington State, US. Photograph by Marcia Walters.

Of course, there’s just “spectacular,” too:

Cross to Bear, Talek River, Kenya. Photograph by Paul Goldstein.

The contest’s winners page features many more, separated into categories; be sure to click on the individual photographs to get larger sizes and the story with each. Fantastic stuff.

Frozen Prairie Landscapes

Saskatchewan gets cold in the winter, but there’s a beauty to those temperatures, photographer Angela Boehm tells PetaPixel.

Image from Minus Thirty. Photograph by Angela Boehm.

“The frozen prairie landscapes, while a subject in their own right, serve as a powerful metaphor for the deeper themes the book explores: loss, memory, and resilience,” she says. […] “The loss is embodied in the emptiness and biting cold. The memory, or its gradual fading, is represented by the snow obscuring the horizon, softening and blurring the scenes. And the resilience is in the solitary tree — a steadfast survivor of countless storms in this unforgiving landscape.”

— Angela Boehm, Minus Thirty

Read more of PetaPixel‘s story of realization to publication or just check out the title.

Special Bonus #2: Another book on an interesting subject — Japan’s brutalist architecture, which somehow manages to bring an inherent quality to the cement:

Mixed-use complex, 1994, by Kuniyoshi Design. Photograph by Paul Tulett.

Dezeen has more.

Ukraine’s “Fight for Visual Identity”

This PRINT piece is excellent: “A cultural gap persists in how history is organized and interpreted. I left the library without my requested images but with a lingering realization that how we organize history, even within the hallowed walls of an institution like the New York Public Library, can reflect the biases and oversights of a collective cultural perspective,” writes El. Stern.

Home Soon, Dear. Image by Maria Kinovych, 2022.

“Today, Ukrainian graphic design is rooted in national identification, in search of future needs, and in understanding the cultural influence of a painful past on a, once again, painful present.”

Ukraine’s search for a future — and present, and past — in design. Great read.

“A must-have manual for hot metal enthusiasts and linotype lovers”

Type Archived, a new book whose fundraising campaign I didn’t see in time: a “stunning visual tour of traditional typefounding and offers a definitive account of London’s legendary Type Archive,” writes Wallpaper*.

Custom metal for the book project.

The book “traces the origins of typography through the physical tools, objects and machinery that made the printed word possible. Full of rich photography, [it’s] a visual journey through the punches, matrices, presses, type and paper which tell the story of the UK’s preeminent typefounding industry.”

Hopefully available at bookstores soon.

“The Arresting Typography of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps”

Jason Kottke writes, “Several years ago, Brandon Silverman become obsessed with the lettering and typography on the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Silverman’s launched an archive of the maps, an absolutely fantastic way to pass a few minutes hours.

Special Bonus #3: Nick Heer, at the always-excellent Pixel Envy, has an essay on the essentials: “[E]fficiency and clarity are necessary elements, but are not the goal. There needs to be space for how things feel.” Delicious Wabi-Sabi is worth a few moments.

Wishing you and yours a very happy New Year!

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Beautifully Briefed 24.9: Falling Up

A long and diverse list this time, with a few thoughtful things and a ton of photography. Set aside a few minutes to get lost in links — and enjoy!

Books and Values

This article from the New Yorker is highlighted a little behind schedule — it’s from August (although, in my defense, I get my NYers second-hand) — but worth the read for the phrase “practitioners of bibliotherapy” alone.

Illustration by Pierre Buttin. © New Yorker.

Before we get into the meat of it, though, a primer on the growth of available titles in the United States:

  • 1939: 10,640 (est.)
  • 1970: 36,000
  • 2020: 1,000,000 (est., including ebooks)

The New Yorker article lists this last figure as three million, but various internet sources dispute this; either way, it’s a huge number that no store could ever hope to stock. But … on to the important stuff.

The central question:

Amazon offers something like thirty million different print titles. The company has deals with purveyors of used and remaindered books, who are linked to on the site. It owns AbeBooks, the leading site for rare and out-of-print books. And there are many other places online where you can buy books, including barnesandnoble.com. So why does the world need bookstores?

— Louis Menand, New Yorker, August 29, 2024 issue

The New Yorker is kind enough to let you read a few articles a month without crashing into a paywall, so go find out the answer, appropriately enough, in their book review of Evan Friss’ The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore.

Meanwhile, Nick Heer of the always-excellent Pixel Envy cites another New Yorker article on pricing for non-physical books — “The Surprisingly Big Business of eBooks” — and comes up with a few spending figures of note regarding the New York Public Library and Barack Obama’s title, A Promised Land:

  • $29,450, for 310 perpetual audiobook licenses at ninety-five dollars each;
  • $22,512, for 639 one- and two-year licenses for the e-book; and,
  • $5,300, for 226 copies of the hardcover edition.

If you want to know why publishers so aggressively fought the Internet Archive on its model of lending out scanned copies of physical books, this is the reason. Publishers have created a model which fundamentally upsets a library’s ability to function. There is no scarcity in bytes, so publishers have created a way to charge more for something limitless, weightless, with nearly no storage costs.

— Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

You know what you can’t do with an ebook license? Put it on a shelf for re-reading in ten years’ time. Or resell it. In other words: control what happens to it. “[I]t is hard not to see publishers as the real villains in this mess. They are consolidating power and charging even legitimate libraries unreasonable amounts of money for electronic copies of books which the publishers and their intermediaries ultimately still control,” Heer writes.

Exactly.

Special Bonus #1: Nick Heer gets something else right, too, by noting the sharply divergent goals of social media platforms and his own wishes — indeed, those of what we would idealize as “normal people.” “Guided by Vices” is excellent. Check it out.

Book Design: Kafka
Cover design by Peter Mendelsund.

Few subjects could more appropriately follow the above, so it is with a certain sense of joy that I highlight these fantastic new covers Frank Kafka’s works, brought to us by the incredibly talented Peter Mendelsund1“Get inside the mind of Peter Mendelsund, the pianist who went from Tchaikovsky to Tolstoy and became one of the best book cover designers working today, with editor Zac Petit’s interview in PRINT’s 75th Anniversary Issue,” with the link at the source article. via an interview with Steven Heller at PRINT:

Cover design by Peter Mendelsund.

The whole article, and especially, the whole series of title designs, are exactly why I treasure book design. Read on.

Special Bonus #2: From Rolling Stone, an image reposted without comment (and absolutely not related to Kafka):

Illustration by Victor Juhasz. © Rolling Stone.
Colossally New

This is Colossal, one of the very few sites elevated to “check daily” status and a frequent contributor to posts here on Foreword, has a new look:

The new look of This is Colossal, September 2024.

The last site, more than seven years old and designed by the great Armin Vit — he of Brand New fame — needed a refresh, mostly for technical reasons.

Check it out. (And, separately, read the details.)

Update, 4 Oct: More details from Firebelly. Great to see the progression of ideas.

Update, 18 Oct: Part 3, “Crafting Colossal’s Whimsical Web.”

SM[all] Majesté
Photograph by DS Automobiles.

I had to lead with an image there — even as concept cars go, wow. “DS’ tribute to the bewitching Citroën SM is the cure for concept car burnout,” The Autopian says, and I completely agree.

The lights bleeding into the skirted rear wheels is, perhaps, perfection:

Photograph by DS Automobiles.
Photograph by DS Automobiles.

Okay, it’s not even a Citroen, and the 1970’s are hot right now, but still, it’s an out-of-the-park home run from the staggering — perhaps even stumbling — juggernaut that is Stallantis. Read about it at Motor1 or Wallpaper*, or see one of these two YouTube videos from DS or YouCar.

Special Bonus #3: Another design icon, the Volvo 240 series, celebrates its 50th birthday this year. (I learned how to drive on a 145, the immediate predecessor, and was surrounded by 240s in my teens. I remember them fondly.)

A 1974 Volvo 245 in the perfect shade of blue. Fabulous.
Photography Turns 200

According to an article in French photography publication Réponses Photo, quoted on PetaPixel, photography turned 200 on September 16. While that’s surely a conclusion rather than documented fact, it’s worth remembering and considering the journey photography has taken over the past two hundred years.

Indeed, one need only glance at the “phone” we all carry around to realize how democratized photography has become; those of us who carry bigger, more professional gear have become the exception — and our reasons for doing do more varied. (More on that soon.)

Meanwhile, let’s celebrate with some of the latest and greatest photography from September, 2024.

Tahiti Waves

Via Kottke and This is Colossal, a great series of ocean photographs from Tim McKenna:

Heaving Waves (Tahiti). Photograph by Tim McKenna.
2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Via This is Colossal, something quite, uh, jaw-dropping:

“Deadly Bite.” Photograph by Ian Ford.

“The 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition broke its 60-year record with a whopping 59,228 entries from 117 countries and territories,” and is connected with the Natural History Museum in London. (See also the 2024 Bird Photographer of the Year, via the BBC.)

2024 Astronomy Photographer of the Year

“The Royal Observatory Greenwich, in partnership with BBC Sky at Night Magazine, announced the beautiful winners of its 16th annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. The images show some of the most incredible cosmic objects and events in the Universe,” PetaPixel writes. (Also noted via This is Colossal, just ’cause.)

“Shadow Peaks of Sinus Iridum.” Photograph by Gábor Balázs.

See all the winners at Royal Museums Greenwich.

Not included in that — taken too late to be entered, I understand — is this stunning photograph:

“Saturn’s Ingress.” Photograph by Andrew McCarthy.
2024 Natural Landscape Photography Awards

Last but not least, some fantastic photography in this newish contest, now in its fourth year, set up to “promote the best landscape and nature photography by digital and film photographers who value realism and authenticity in their work.”

Some of my favorites:

“Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada.” Photograph by Andrew Mielzynski.
Guatemala Adventure Volcano Panorama. Photograph by Thomas Skinner.
Nightscape, 3rd place. Photograph by Takeshi Kameyama.

Via PetaPixel.

Special Bonus #4: Phil Edwards brings us a history of one the most iconic photographs ever:

  • 1
    “Get inside the mind of Peter Mendelsund, the pianist who went from Tchaikovsky to Tolstoy and became one of the best book cover designers working today, with editor Zac Petit’s interview in PRINT’s 75th Anniversary Issue,” with the link at the source article.
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Beautifully Briefed 24.7: Generated

This time, another automaker logo, some automotive and architecture photography, and the special bonuses that have all become a regular part of the Beautifully Briefed standard. But we’re going to start with some generated content.

AI Book “Design”

From the “We knew this was going to happen” category, we have the first — that I’ve seen, anyway — “let AI do the work” research paper suggesting that book design is something that can be automated.

We have presented a novel approach to computationally design books. The presented system implements a generative design process which takes advantage of the scripting capabilities of Adobe InDesign to procedurally typeset books from content provided by the user. We have shown the ability of the system to (i) create book designs that consistently comply with a series of typographic rules, styles and principles identified in the literature; (ii) produce visually diversified books from the same input content; and (iii) produce visually coherent books with different contents.

Design by “AI.”

Let’s please remember that “AI” as the term is currently used is actually “applied machine learning;” in this case, specific rules within specific containers in a specific application. It’s a first step towards something, as most “AI” is in 2024.

But it’s absolutely not the only step. It’s inevitable that the necessary subsequent steps will be taken, probably sooner than later.

As usual where someone is seriously discussing replacing a human worker with a computer, there’s a pitch for the upside:

The work presented in the paper may challenge the typical roles of both the tool and the designer. First, by automatically creating and suggesting design alternatives, the tool ends up playing a more active role in the design process. Then, by modifying and developing custom tools, the designer is no longer a mere tool user and becomes the author of tools tailored to specific needs. We believe this shift can be fruitful since it enables the exploration and discovery of new technical and creative possibilities.

In other words, the designer is now responsible for creatively writing the rules then policing the output — like so many things in the machine-learning, or “AI” space — rather than the actual drudgery of directly designing the output. “Design great rules, get great design.”

And there is room for this. Amazon, especially, is going to jump on book design generated this way; never mind those folks in China or India earning (a paltry few) dollars a day, the computer can do it better for less . . . . Poof! With no human interaction whatsoever, your book is ready to publish. Indeed, for some, the bar to publish has just been lowered made easier. Perhaps even Adobe, who trumpets “AI” at every turn these days, they may choose to take this up. (Probably for a surcharge to the already-high subscription pricing.)

Let’s not even speculate about the major publishing houses for now.

But like AI-generated anything, getting actual art requires hand-tuning the input by an artist. For what amounts to “slop” — see this fantastic PixelEnvy discussion — the generated approach to book design might even be appropriate. But for book design that’s artistic, cared-for, or even “just” thoughtful, you’re going to need a human for a long time yet to come.

The paper is available on Cornell University’s arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. (Via Hackernoon.)

The excellent Odd Apples, which I’m sure I’ve highlighted before — but in a very human way, can’t find.

Special Bonus #1: I had the occasion to recently flip through Pentagram’s book design section. Some seriously interesting, seriously artistic work. (See the Odd Apples listing specifically.)

It could probably be argued that computers took book design jobs away, but….

Special Bonus #2: CreativeBoom links to three free archives on Victorian illustration to inspire — or perhaps use creatively in a book.

Untitled (Fiddleheads), 1928. Photo by Karl Blossfeldt.

Special Bonus #3: The ever-great Kottke.org. points us at Public Work, “an image search engine that boasts 100,000 “copyright-free” images from institutions like the NYPL, the Met, etc. It’s fast with a relatively simple interface and uses AI to auto-categorize and suggest possibly related images (both visually and content-wise).” As Jason Kottke points out, not great in the attribution department, but good stuff nonetheless.

Mazda’s New Logo
Mazda’s logo as of 2023, seen on one of its cars.

From the automotive logo thread (previously), we have to note Mazda’s new look, reduced from the current 3D-style grayscale to flat and black and white. This one gets some criticism from me: it lacks grace, pace, or space. (Hmph. That might be someone else.)

Angry Bird, anyone? (Pardon the artifacts — this image is enlarged from a Japanese trademark post.)

Then again, Mazda has not always been successful with logos. Anyone remember the 1991–1997 version?

Mazda’s complete logo history.

The 1931–1934 version lays the name over Mitsubishi’s logo, which was responsible for sales. The 1975–1991 version is the one I remember best, but that’s likely a youth/rose-colored glasses sort of thing. See Wiki for more information.

Meanwhile, Mazda is trying to move upmarket right now, and the new “look” isn’t really in keeping with that. Curious to see where this goes. (Via The Autopian.)

Mazda’s new electric concept, the Errata, sporting an interim, flattened version of the current logo. Wait, might have gotten something wrong there, too….

Special Bonus #3: BrandNew points us at the 2024 Logo Trends report, the annual fun item from Logo Lounge that looks at what’s hot in this year’s crop of — you guessed it!

Freely (Smiley category) and Droplet (Elliptic category), left, and Olá and Backcountry Wanderer, right, from the Sticker category. (Olá could be in the Smiley category, too.)

Some of my favorites are above, but the whole report is worth a look. (Spoiler: more than flattening is on trend.)

Auto, Auto+Arch, Arch
Auto Photo Manual

Via Wallpaper*, we have Auto Photo Manual, a new monograph from Benedict Redgrove that “explores the art and science of photographing the world’s most striking cars:”

A very orange Lambo. Photo by Benedict Redgrove.

Always a sucker for a Saab, especially this concept:

The 2006 Saab Aero-X concept. Photo by Benedict Redgrove.

Auto Photo Manual is a Kickstarter item that could use some love — stop by if you can. Wallpaper* has the full story.

A Time • A Place (Vol. 1)

Also via Wallpaper*, we have a “celebration of the European Car of the Year and changing perceptions of modern design, pairing the best buildings of the age with their automotive contemporaries:”

London’s Camberwell Subamarine and the Mercedes W116. Photo by Daniel Hopkinson.

“Through the lens of time, both [cars and buildings] have become highly symbolic of their eras and hindsight will allow us to trace the roots of each design to determine how it is viewed from a 21st century perspective,” says Holroyd, noting that over this period architecture underwent a stylistic retreat, just as car design became emboldened and more avant-garde.

Great stuff in this new title, available now from The Modernist. Read more at Wallpaper*.

World Architecture Festival 2024 Shortlist

Via The Guardian, we have The World Architecture Festival’s 2024 shortlist, revealing projects from around the world spanning categories such as childcare, energy, transport and science. A couple of faves:

The Chodge by DCA Architects of Transformation — interesting name(s), surely — in Whakamaru, New Zealand. Photograph by Simon Devitt.

The live awards event will take place in Singapore from November 6-8. This year’s finalists represent 71 countries.

Woven Passage to Cloudy Peaks by line+ studio in Shaoxing, China. Photograph by line+studio.

See more at The Guardian, or the complete shortlist at The World Architect Festival.

Special Bonus #4: This is Colossal brings us the drone photography of Eric Waider, shot in Iceland:

As glaciers expand and recede, they have the capacity to grind rock so fine that geologists refer to the pulverized material as glacial flour. It slips down rivers and into lakes, carrying the otherworldly turquoise hue through a unique and resilient ecosystem. In Iceland, the blue-green color is complemented by rivers that flow yellow, thanks to sulfur from nearby volcanoes, or red from dissolved ferrous iron—also known as bog iron. Coursing over rock and black sand, the streams take on dazzling, rhythmic patterns.

Photograph by Erik Waider.

Brilliant. See his website (“Abstract Landscapes of the distant North”) and enjoy that series and more — including faves such as Ocean Blues and Glacial Macro.

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Beautifully Briefed 24.6: Summer of Win (Mostly)

In this installment of Beautifully Briefed, let’s take a look at some great posters, great print items, and great photography. Plus, an update from Adobe’s continued campaign to lose friends and attract government attention. Fun stuff!

GET LECTURED (ON ARCHITECTURE)

Back in September, I mentioned Archinect’s Get Lectured poster series. They’re back with the Spring 2024 winners, including these two faves:

ELAC lecture poster design by Tashfiah Ahmed.
Lecture poster from the University of British Columbia; designer not listed.

Great examples of design in a often difficult category. See the rest.

Architecture Photographs by Hélène Binet

While we’re discussing architecture, let’s talk about a Dezeen post that caught my eye: photographer Hélène Binet has a new book out, adding to her long career capturing the old-school way — using film.

“A Sentimental Topography by Dimitris Pikionis, landscaping of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece.”

This series captures shadows and light with exceptional talent, including the above, where she’s praised for “captur[ing] in a single image the tactile and textured presence of tectonic form, both in built and natural environments.”

“Staircases in Sperlonga, Latina, Italy.”

I love the softer shades of gray than shown in the previous image, and both this and the image below demonstrate a deep understanding of architectural expression.

“Kolumba Museum, Cologne, Germany, by Peter Zumthor.”

Read the post from Dezeen, see more examples of outstanding work on her website, or buy the book with 170 photographs, essays, and more.

2024 Audubon Photography Winners

This is Colossal posted about this a day before my Audubon magazine showed up with these prominently featured, and they’re all winners.

Wild Turkey, Female Bird Prize Winner, by Travis Potter.

Bird photography is a difficult skill requiring patience, perseverance, and specialized gear; those who excel at it deserve recognition. Plus, there’s this:

Audubon’s climate science report Survival by Degrees reveals that two-thirds of North American birds are threatened by extinction from climate change, including species featured in this year’s Audubon Photography Awards like the Blackburnian Warbler, California Quail, and Sedge Wren.

Forster’s Tern, Professional Honorable Mention, by Kevin Lohman.

Check out the Colossal post, or see the full story at the Audubon website.

Special Bonus #1: Kottke points us towards the Siena 2024 Drone Photography Awards. “Look! Up in the sky! It’s … another contest!” Good stuff nonetheless:

“Jiashao Bridge” by Sheng Jiang, China.
PRINT 2024 Awards

The annual PRINT awards are out, featuring — natch — great items in print, including items like the Smithsonian’s annual report and a Naked Trails brochure. Here are a couple of items from the book design category:

Jacket design by Robin Bilardello.

Author sketch and lettering by the author. Also, let’s get the . . . :

Cover design by Milan Bozic, with illustration and typography by Lauren Tamaki.

Fantastic.

Special Bonus #2: Hoefler & Co. brings us Typographic Doubletakes: “While good typefaces have prodigious families of carefully related styles, some of the best typography builds unexpected relationships between unrelated fonts.”

Left: Chronicle Hairline + Landmark. Right: Vitesse + Gotham.

Their blog refreshes as you scroll in more ways than one — enjoy.

Left: Mercury Text + Ideal Sans SSm. Right: Whitney + Operator and Operator Mono.

Special Bonus #3: Kottke points us to a LitHub post arguing for adding full credit pages to books acknowledging everyone who worked on them. “How lovely it is to be seen and appreciated.”

Adobe “Too Easy to Hate,” Say Users, Employees

Adobe continues to score big with the public — in the best Boeing style, a formerly-great company has put profits before users and employees. While successful from the shareholders’ point of view (record profits, again), some are . . . upset. PetaPixel:

Just over a month ago, an Adobe exec called AI the “new digital camera.” Simultaneously, an Adobe marketing campaign chucked photographers under the bus, and not for the first time, which caught the attention of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). At the very top of Adobe, there is a concerning and frustrating lack of understanding about art and the people who make it.

Even “exasperated employees implored leadership to not let it be the “evil” company customers think it is;” while that might be a stretch — “ignorant greed” is a better description — either is not a winning look.

The latest was a terms-of-service update that many saw as a rights grab, allowing the company to use users’ work to train its AI services. While those have been amended, the seemingly clear language — “We’ve never trained generative AI on customer content, taken ownership of a customer’s work, or allowed access to customer content beyond legal requirements” — comes from a company that has lost the trust of users, making those words just that — words. Time will tell if they are truth.

But there’s more: Adobe’s just been sued by the FTC (via PetaPixel, Pixel Envy) for hidden fees and difficult cancellations:

“For years, Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms,” the lawsuit alleges. “Adobe fails to adequately disclose to consumers that by signing up for the ‘Annual, Paid Monthly’ subscription plan, they are agreeing to a yearlong commitment and a hefty early termination fee that can amount to hundreds of dollars. Adobe clearly discloses the early termination fee only when subscribers attempt to cancel, turning the stealth early termination fee into a powerful retention too that [redacted] by trapping consumers in subscriptions they no longer want.”

I’m actually glad for this, as I wasn’t aware that my $60+ monthly fee is a payment on an annual plan. (Ug.) Not too big an issue — I actually feel like there’s decent value in the plan and will continue to subscribe for the foreseeable future.

But I’d also be lying if I said I’m completely satisfied with our business arrangement: alternatives are few and far between. While Adobe does not have a monopoly legally or technically, in the publishing industry at least, they are, for all intents and purposes, the only game in town. It would be nice if they would at least demonstrate a modicum of respect for their users.

Update, 25 July 2024: “Adobe Exec Says Early Termination Fees Are ‘Like Heroin’ for the Company,” according to PetaPixel. Hmph.

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Beautifully Briefed 24.5: On Into Summer

This time, we welcome the start of summer with a selection of photography and book design items — with, as usual, a couple of bonuses. Oh, and a computer item with its own “bonus.” The Summer of Joy starts now.

SteerMouse

Like many who spend a ton of time mousing, my production Mac sports an aftermarket pointing device: a Logitech MX Master 3S. It’s a great mouse: ergonomic, covered in button options, and with a freewheeling scroll wheel that makes both design and surfing a joy.

Unfortunately, Logitech’s software doesn’t live up to the hardware’s promise. I’m certainly not alone in thinking this way, but like many, I’d resigned myself to living with it . . . with one glaring, continually-irksome exception: over the years, they’d actually removed a regularly-used feature.

There’s something significant missing from the available options. (Logitech.com screen capture.)

That’s right — there is no way to reprogram the two main buttons. They’re a single click (left) and a command/control click (right), whether you want ’em that way or not. Most of the time, I don’t.

It’s fine for surfing, sure, and for other applications as well. But for book design, not so much. The right button has to be a double-click. That way, word, sentence, paragraph and section selections are readily available through a combination of first- and middle-finger clicks. Sure, they could be assigned to the side buttons (4 and 5, above), but if you’ll forgive me mangling an analogy, race drivers don’t try to get their feet on the door handles when clutching.

Thankfully, while sitting in a tire shop the other day — speaking of driving — I was making the wait more palatable by listening to Accidental Tech Podcast, wherein Steven Hackett’s post on Logitech software was briefly mentioned. And the clouds parted.

Okay, sure, it was technically unrelated. But he’s trying SteerMouse — and that’s all the recommendation I needed:

It may not look as flashy, but it’s the content that counts. Kudos.

My double-click is back! Quality independent software, highly recommended.

Special Bonus #1: From another chapter of less-than-ideal software, Adobe continues to flub the landing. PetaPixel has been on their case in a significant way, with Adobe Says AI is the New Digital Camera, Adobe’s CEO is Just Not on the Same Wavelength as Artists, Adobe Throws Photographers Under the Bus Again: ‘Skip the Photoshoot’, and ASMP Calls Out Adobe for Its ‘Shocking Dismissal of Photography’. Whew.

A Couple Library of Congress Photographs

Speaking of PetaPixel, they’ve posted a story on someone retiring from what seems like a great way to spend a career: “The Prints and Photographs collection in the Library of Congress number more than 15 million images. Maintaining the archive is a big job and a retiring librarian has picked her favorite pictures after working there for 34 years. [Read] Jan Grenci’s final blog post.”

Even the cats know the refrigerators contain plenty of food at the Casa Grande Farms. Pinal County, Arizona. Photo by Russell Lee, 1940.
Two pigeons on a ledge with a view of the Chrysler Building in the background. Photo by Angelo Rizzuto. June 1957.

The LOC’s Picture This has a plethora of great posts, and 15 million photographs is a great way to pass a rainy afternoon (or two). Enjoy.

Special Bonus #2: From the archives comes another PetaPixel post on Getty’s Open Content Program, with its 87,000 free-to-use photographs: “Add a print of your favorite Dutch still life to your gallery wall or create a shower curtain using the Irises by Van Gogh — the possibilities are endless,” Getty explains.

Kirkus: 20 Books that Should Be Bestsellers

Kottke points us to a Kirkus Reviews post, 20 Books that Should be Bestsellers. Some good book design here:

Both of the above have been added to my “potential best covers” folder (without designer attribution, alas); the former for what I’d call “the quintessential 2024 style,” and the latter for the quintessential book cover purpose: fantastic type treatment and compelling imagery combined with the-question-that-has-to-be-answered. (“The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas […] weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick,” Amazon explains.) Good stuff.

There’s also this, which isn’t quite up to the above but still interesting:

…with its box o’ quotes on Amazon:

Nice.

Special Bonus #3: Chip Kidd has been promoted: “VP and art director at Knopf and graphic editor at Pantheon.” Few are more deserving, as the long list of accomplishments on his Wiki page attests.

A couple of faves from “Good is Dead,” a selection of book covers he’s designed:

Cover design by Chip Kidd.
Cover design by Chip Kidd.

And, of course, Naked, in this post’s cover image. Kudos.

Special Bonus #4: One the subject of great designers, this film on Charles and Ray Eames was a winner. (It’s from 2011, but was new to me — and hopefully you, too.) Watch when you can:

YouTube won’t allow me to embed this, unfortunately — click the link above to view.

Special Bonus #5: The lede-of-the-day award: “Do all book covers look the same today? Euronews Culture goes under the dust cover with those that design them.”

The interesting thing here is a discussion of risk — ’cause, of course, in today’s culture, a book cover alone can result in a title getting cancelled banned — revolving around things, um, yellow:

One of my favorite covers of 2023, still without a cover designer attribution. (Darn.)

Special Bonus #6: Penguin Books reveals the Cover Design Award 2024 shortlist, a contest for non-professionals to take a crack at Penguin greatness. (Via CreativeBoom.) My favorite:

Cover design by Charlotte Gill.

Update, 27 June 2024: The winners for the Penguin item, above, have been posted. CreativeBoom covers it.

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Beautifully Briefed 24.3: Bloomin’ Breadth

The end of March here in Middle Georgia means flowers aplenty, and usually with that, some photography — but I’ve not yet had a chance. (Stay tuned.) I have, however, been saving up links o’ interest: fonts, books, photography, and new(ish) car logos. Let’s go!

Kottke Meets 2024

Starting with one of the very few places that is still around from Foreword’s old days, the always-interesting Jason Kottke:

2024 marks Kottke.org’s 26th year on the ’net.

Great new looks for great content, with better Quick Links — the previews are ace — and incredibly-appreciated gift links to places like The New York Times and The Atlantic. If you haven’t been in a while, click and enjoy.

Fab Spring Type

With “a plethora of captivating new typefaces,” CreativeBoom celebrates spring with 11 new faces to tempt, inspire, and bring joy:

Arillatype.Studio brings us a thousand glyphs of greatness.

Zanco, with its bell-bottom style; Seabirds, inspired by 1930s book covers; Module, a “fluke side hustle;” and Graffeur, improvised from gaffer tape and glimpsed in this post’s header image, are all great. My far-and-away favorite, though, is At Briega, “inspired by the concept of hybridisation” and shown above.

See ’em all here.

Literary Three-Fer
M.C. Escher’s Lesser-Known Works
“The Drowned Cathedral,” a 1929 woodcut.

“Unique perspective” never does justice to someone whose name defines the term. See some never-before-seen images alongside old favorites in a new Escher book highlighted at Hyperallergic.

Multidimensional Libri

“Experimental books are flourishing, [a]nd the evidence is seen” in this Daily Heller from PRINT: a traveling exhibition on three-dimensional books, all published titles.

Oh, those Italians. Read on.

Book Design Snobbery
Hoover vs. Atwood — no joke.

“Don’t get held back from the simple pleasures of reading,” argues Natalie Fear at CreativeBloq, “not everything needs to be minimalist.” Justification for commercialism or a common-sense explanation for the bookshelves’ current look? You decide.

Photography Three-Fer
Winners of Monochromatic Minimalism
“Black Pearl” by Sascha Kohne. An honorable mention for the magazine, but a winner for me.

Some incredibly good stuff here — but perhaps more importantly, did you know of Black & White Minimalism Magazine? There’s no end to today’s continued diversification, methinks.

“Traveling through Costa da Morte, Galicia. 600m above sea level where the mountains separate the Cantabria sea from the Atlantic Ocean,” explains third-place winner Alexandre Caetano.
Aging Facades of France

“Shuttered blinds, peeling paint, and aging doors don’t usually indicate an invitation, but for French photographer Thibaut Derien, the fading facades of long-closed shops are well worth a stop,” This is Colossal says.

Sony Photography Awards: Architecture
The Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences) in Valencia, Spain: “Hemispheric,” by Eng Tong Tan, Malaysia.

ArchDaily‘s coverage of the annual Sony awards shortlist announcement was an insta-click.

New Bull: Now Flat. (And a BMW.)

Lamborghini practically defines flamboyant. So it’s worth a link when their logo gets less interesting:

Old logo, left, new, right.

Late at following the industry trend of flat-is-better, because, well, Volkswagen. (Okay, I undersell. Perhaps.) Read the lack of news at Motor11Motor1 also has a decent roundup of new car logos, from 2016-present, which underscores the “flatness” trend. or The Drive, where they manage to convey the brand’s use of the phrase “digital touchpoints.”

I don’t know whether this will make any more sense in a few or even many months — which is relevant because of BMW. Four years ago, one of the industry’s design leaders expressed strong this new style, and I didn’t get it. But it’s worn better than most, and superlatively on occasion — check out the logo’s use on the Vision Neue Klasse X:

Rather than a standalone, plastic part sitting on the paint, it’s etched into the finish. Man, I hope that makes it into production.

Neue Klasse: do like. Bull? No so much.

Update, 2 April: BrandNew, itself sporting a new look, has weighed in on the new Lambo style, calling it “not good.” (FYI, BrandNew is a subscription, quite possibly the best $20/year someone interested in design can spend.)

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    Motor1 also has a decent roundup of new car logos, from 2016-present, which underscores the “flatness” trend.
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Beautifully Briefed 24.1: Optimism, Hopefully

In this installment, Honda’s new(ish) logo, the Travel Photographer of the Year 2023 winners, and the Macintosh turns 40. Plus, one more thing. But first:

My Favorite Book Covers of 2023

In case you missed it, the annual favorite book covers post is up — all 78 items (plus some extras). It’s best viewed large, so click and enjoy.

Honda’s New Logo: Not a Zero
Not a zero — an “H.” Clever(ish).

As car manufacturers go, Honda’s tiny. As a result, they’re way behind on the electric push: they’ve got some hybrid stuff, a hydrogen fuel-cell item only available in California, and a new battery vehicle built by GM. Not where you want to be in 2024.

So they’re trying to make a splash. And to their credit, they’re doing it in an attention-getting style. Introducing the Honda Zero series, starting with the Saloon:

Futuristic indeed.
There’s no mistaking this for an Accord — but then, that’s the idea.

And the Honda Zero Space Hub:

Not minivan, Space Hub. (The no-rear-window thing is becoming a trend, alas.)

Other Zero Series cars will follow, and of course, being concepts, details are scarce. Both concepts, however, highlight a new logo for Honda’s EV effort:

Yeah, not earth-shattering. (And distinct from the Zero-series logo, above, which does not seem to appear on the cars — only marketing materials.) Here’s a history, for reference:

It’s worth noting that the non-electric cars will retain the current logo they’ve used since 2001. Read more at Motor1 or The Drive. (The latter has more on Honda’s Zero cars, too.)

2023 Travel Photographer of the Year (Contest)

Disclaimer up front: it’s another pay-to-enter photography contest, which seem to have proliferated. The problem here is the outstanding quality of output — perhaps I should just get over it and move on.

The rules of this one require both prints for final judging, no composite images, no AI, and a RAW file to check results against. All of which mean, to me at least, a higher level of achievement in order to enter. Okay.

Shout out to the BBC for bringing this year’s winners to my — our — attention.

Travel Photograph of the Year 2023 overall winner: AndreJa Ravnak, Slovenia

Slovenia is a beautiful country, and AndreJa Ravnak’s winning portfolio of photographs absolutely reflects both that and its hard-working agricultural nature. But there’s more:

Nature, Wildlife, and Conservation Portfolio Winner: Martin Broen, USA

A “ray of sunshine” joke here . . . .

Leisure and Adventure Winner: Andrea Peruzzi, Italy

Certainly a lesson in how not to enjoy the wonderful city of Petra, in the Jordanian desert — but an attention-getting photograph.

Landscape and Environment Portfolio Winner: Armand Sarlangue, France

Seriously amazing stuff: moody, dramatic, and yes, fluvial morphology. Nice.

See more at the Travel Photographer of the Year website. (Also via PetaPixel.)

The Macintosh Turns 40

1984 seems like so very long ago — and let’s face it: 40 years is a long time. Indeed, these forty years of technological progress has been unrivaled in human history. But the Mac is not only still with us but better than ever.

A Mac Plus, circa 1986.

There are a stack of articles that’ll retrace the history, tell a story, cite unusual examples of the breed, or even come up with the original press release:

We believe that [this] technology represents the future direction of all personal computers,” said Steven P. Jobs, Chairman of the Board of Apple. “Macintosh makes this technology available for the first time to a broad audience–at a price and size unavailable from any other manufacturer. By virtue of the large amount of software written for them, the Apple II and the IBM PC became the personal-computer industry’s first two standards. We expect Macintosh to become the third industry standard.

— Apple Computer, January 24, 1984

My first Mac was the one pictured above: a 1989 Mac Plus, with an external 20MB (!) Jasmine hard drive. (I even still have the case, although mine was a black Targus item.) It didn’t last long, though, because I’d been bitten by the graphic design craze and soon traded it for a Mac called a Quadra, with its separate 256-color monitor.

A preview of the future: 2000’s PowerMac G4 Cube.

Such was the pace of technology those days: that one was replaced with another, then another. (Including one of the Macs pictured at the top of the post. Bonus points if you know which it is.) I did not have the G4 Cube, pictured above, because by then I was rocking a tower and scoffed at Apple’s first attempt at desktop miniaturization — not to mention the inferior quality of the first generations of flat screens.

All-in-ones were — and remain — the domain of Apple’s iMac.

But less than ten years later, the computer had become part of the flat screen, and these days, I’m still using a 27″ iMac. Sure, its days are numbered, but I love its ability to get huge book and photography projects out the door with a minimum of fuss — all in a simple, elegant package with very much more than a passing resemblance to the original Macintosh.

Here’s to another 40 years, Apple. Congrats.

Special Bonus: There are few folks more “Mac” than John Siracusa, who has penned a thoughtful piece on AI: “I Made This.” (Via Pixel Envy.)

One More Thing: Word of the Year, 2023

From none other than Cory Doctorow: “enshittification.”

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

— Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, 21 January 2023

He’s specifically referring to TikTok, and cites Amazon and then Facebook as further examples, but oh, so many, many other items apply. I’ve not read something that represents where we sit — in America, sure, but beyond — at the start of 2024.

And this year promises to be a doozy.

“‘Monetize’ is a terrible word that tacitly admits that there is no such thing as an ‘Attention Economy,'” he writes. And yet, “monetize” is where business, education, and perhaps society is at. Ug.

The whole thing is fantastic and very much worth a read. But, “[n]ow that [they] have been infected by enshittifcation, the only thing left is to kill [them] with fire” might be taking things a bit far. Let’s hope — and work — for a better solution. For all of us.

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Beautifully Briefed 23.10: Shifting, Branding, and Creating

A variety of interests addressed this time: a bit on Shift Happens, a great question on branding, and Leica’s new M camera — and its content credentials. (Plus, bonuses.) Happy October!

Booking a Keyboard

We talked about this title back in January, but it’s worth the reminder:

A 3D rendering of Shift Happens.

Marcin Wichary has long been interested in keyboards. In his words,

Keyboards fascinated me for years. But it occurred to me that a good, comprehensive, and human story of keyboards — starting with typewriters and ending with modern computers and phones — has never been written. How did we get from then to now? What were the steps along the way? And how on earth does QWERTY still look the same now as it did 150 years ago? I wanted a book like this for years. So I wrote it.

—Marcin Wichary, Shift Happens

This title fascinates me, partially because it’s an interesting subject — one we’ve all interacted with, often without thinking about — and partially because it’s a great, well-covered exercise in book design.

A very cool photograph of an IBM Electric. Photo by Marcin Wichary.

Further, Marcin has done a fantastic job in getting the word out. He’s designed a killer web site, written some great updates, and gotten some good press — including a recent interview with Ars Technica, in which he says:

I am a web guy, and I used to think that the web (just like typewriters, once) took away a lot of hard-won typesetting nuance and tradition. But it turns out that the web also makes it much easier to do certain things. To have a word be surrounded by a rounded rectangle—a visual representation of a key—is a few lines of CSS or a few clicks in Figma. But for the book, I had to cut my own font and then write Python scripts to do typesetting inside the font-making software, which I’m pretty sure you are not supposed to do[.]

—Marcin Wichary, Shift Happens

Really looking forward this title. Copies are, as of this writing, still available.

Let’s Talk Branding.

It’s Nice That asks a great question: “Are rebrands starting to look the same? The challenges facing commercial design,” in which author Elizabeth Goodspeed discusses whether “shortened turnarounds and economic tensions” are taking a toll on originality.

Westinghouse branding guidelines from the ’60s.

The answer might seem to be, “Well, duh,” but it’s nonetheless a thoughtful and insightful article that asks the correct question: “how does one define originality in an age saturated with visual stimuli?”

[T]he digital applications more often associated with modern rebrands, while comparatively easy to update, may counter-intuitively promote less care and attention towards their making. [A]nother possible issue contributing to rebrand redundancy: lack of rollout support beyond rebrand launch. Even a unique identity may lose its spark when its primary consumer touchpoint is what a social media manager produces on Canva after skimming the brand guidelines once. Further still, many clients no longer approach design studios to harness their expertise but, instead, with preconceived notions of the result they expect; design studios may want to create original work, but sometimes clients are willing to pay more for a rebrand that mirrors their own preconceived ideas of what the work should look like.

— Elizabeth Goodspeed, It’s Nice That
The logo’s the same, but the applications vastly different.

The whole article is great (and richly illustrated) — give it a few minutes of your time.

Special Bonuses #1 & 2: Let’s look at a couple of places where branding has been in the news recently (pun intended). Also from It’s Nice That, an article on The Irish Independent rebrand. Here, as is often the case recently, it’s the custom illustrations that carry the day:

“Andy Goodman is the illustrator responsible for the lively work found throughout, which toe the line between measured and playful,” It’s Nice That writes. Agreed 100%.

Less successful is England’s The Guardian, whose ongoing campaign to raise money — they don’t have a paywall, relying instead on reader contributions — perhaps could have used more work:

These ads don’t really have me on the fence: The Guardian deserves better.

Meh. (And this from a huge fan of The Guardian.) Creative Boom is more positive.

Special Bonus #3: From the wildly successful, original branding department comes, of course, the brilliantly-named Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity. They’ve been covered here twice before, but are back in the news with a new branding Manual. See why that’s capitalized at Dezeen.

The Eames Institute branding oozes positivity, class, and — you guessed it — infinite curiosity. Nice.
Leica, Adobe, and Content Authenticity

One would assume that Leica users are the epitome of content authenticity — there’s nothing like the world’s best lenses (IMHO), attached to some incredible cameras, to provide photographers with all that’s needed to make the best possible images.

Leica’s new M11-P, however, packs a world first: hardware encryption that supports a system called the “Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI).” In CAI corporate-speak, it’s “the future of photojournalism […] usher[ing] in a powerful new way for photojournalists and creatives to combat misinformation and bring authenticity to their work and consumers, while pioneering widespread adoption of Content Credentials.”

Leica’s new M11-P. A bargain at $9,195. (Lenses extra, of course.)

B&H puts it another way:

The Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) is a collaborative effort initiated by Adobe in partnership with various other organizations, including The New York Times and Leica, among others. Announced in late 2019, its primary goal is to develop a standard for digital content attribution. The rise in manipulated digital content, deep fakes, and misinformation has underlined the need for a more transparent system of content attribution, which the CAI seeks to address.

The interesting thing here is Adobe’s initiative. What’s their goal?

Adobe has been suffering a few hits recently. They’ve just raised prices — on the heels of record profits — and “monopoly” is not in any way a stretch. Photoshop? Entered the lexicon. InDesign? No credible alternatives. Illustrator? Professional standard across multiple industries. In other words, we’re stuck with ’em, and they know it.

This line of thinking is expanded at CreativeBoom: “Is Adobe Becoming the Frenemy of Creatives? But that’s not all.

Ignore’s Adobe’s unfailingly cute examples: AI + texture = exactly what some “creative director” needed. Seriously uncute.

They’re pushing hard into AI, too, and surprisingly up-front about it changing creative work in ways potentially less creative:

Firefly 2 was unveiled yesterday at the 2023 Adobe Max conference with the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool incorporated into Lightroom’s new lens blur feature that simulates depth of field along with a host of other tools. However, it was the new “Generative Match” tool that will allow users to upload a reference image to guide the AI image generator to a specific style that prompted Adobe to comment that the new tools could mean less work for photographers. 

Adobe is appealing to companies who want a “consistent look across assets.” It is offering brands the chance to generate hundreds, if not thousands, of similar images for different uses such as websites, social media, and print advertisements.

— Matt Growcoot, PetaPixel

Or how about this example: An agency or freelancer working on a vector image in Illustrator, and need to add something that they either don’t have the time or talent to do myself. Previously, they could find either a stock item — made by a human (who is paid, by the way) — or hire it out (again, to a human, and again, one who is paid for their work). Now? Just tell the computer what you need.

Get more from Ars Technica’s Unlimited Barbarians Dept.

All of which ties nicely back to the previous section on whether branding is beginning to homogenize. Is AI going to accelerate that process? You betcha.

Value human creativity, folks. Artists, teachers, writers, thinkers: all the people pushing at the edges of the envelope will now have to push even harder, in an era when envelope-pushing is increasingly demonized.

Special Bonus #4: Ars Technica argues that the U.S. Copyright Office’s blanket ban on the copyright-ability of AI-generated images isn’t going to age well, using photography as an argument.

Special Bonus #5 (Updated 31 Oct): Via Nick Heer’s excellent Pixel Envy, we have a great explainer from Tim Bray regarding The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), the actual implementation of CAI. Better than my brief description by a country mile.

Special Bonus #6: To round out this post, from the department of envelope-pushing: PRINT Magazine put together the book covers of the 11 most-banned books in America. Dangerous, indeed!

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Beautifully Briefed 23.8: Summer Stew

The August heat is met with some refreshingly cool items for you this time: beloved movies reimagined as vintage paperbacks, graphic design on the Internet Archive, and winners of the 2023 iPhone photography awards. Plus, a bit on social media that hopefully won’t leave an aftertaste. Let’s dig in.

“Good Movies as Old Books”

This is Colossal points us to an extraordinary personal project by graphic designer Matt Stevens: classic, acclaimed movies visualized as vintage paperback books. Everything about these spells “win.”

From the aged look, illustration choices, and director-as-author to the logo and occasional price, these are all … perfect.

Volume One is 100 titles, and while that book is sold out, prints are available at his website. The items in Volume Two, due this month, are guaranteed to be awesome.

Graphic Design on the Internet Archive
Emigre #20 – Expatriates. Courtesy of the Internet Archive via archive.digital.

Another treasure via Jason Kottke:

archives.design is a labor of love site run by Valery Marier where she collects graphic design related materials that are available to freely borrow, stream, or download from the Internet Archive. I’ve only scratched the surface in poking around, but so far I’ve found Olivetti brochures, a collection of theater programs from the 19th and early 20th centuries, several Apple things, The Vignelli Canon, a specimen book of wood type from the 1880s, and many issues of Emigre. What a resource!

Jason Kottke, kottke.org
An advertising brochure for the Olivetti Tetractys, circa 1956.

Some of these are fantastic — set aside some time to explore and enjoy.

2023 iPhone Photography Winners

I don’t always link to these contests — it often seems like the publicity (and rights!) are all about the folks holding the contest rather than the people entering them — but I often look, and am always impressed with the quality coming out of a “simple” iPhone.

Long Nguyen, France – 1st Place, Travel – “Last Night before Xmas”
Scott Galloway, United States – 1st Place, Nature – “Wonder Wheel”

And while both of the above are (relatively) recent phones, in the latter case showing the macro capabilities of an iPhone 12 Pro Max, even older phones can highlight the talent of the person using it:

Derek Hager, United States – 3rd Place, Photographer of the Year – “Tucson Morning”

Shot on a 2017 iPhone X. Nice.

See all the winners, for 2023 and years past, at IPPAwards.com. (Via PetaPixel.)

A Moment Regarding Social Media

I’m not going to spend much time on this; I eschewed pretty much all forms of social media years ago now, and don’t regret it. That said, I do keep up with social media in the meta sense (a word that’s been stolen, as far as I’m concerned, by — wait for it — a social media company), and have noted the pain and concern associated with the implosion of Twitter.

While this conversation started with Nick Heer and the always-excellent Pixel Envy, it’s obviously evolved as the year has seen one extraordinary cage fight event after another.

Threads on Apple’s App Store, via the BBC.

For the past decade, It’s been all but required for serious brands to maintain a social media presence […] yet instead of scrambling to claim digital real estate across all these newly emerging platforms, some companies are choosing to be more judicious about which platforms they choose to join. In some cases, they’re learning from brands who jumped the social media ship years ago.

Chris Stokel-Walker, BBC

The quote above, from the BBC, attempts to answer the question, “Why your favourite brand may be taking a social media break.” Short answer: it’s complicated. I’d argue there’s an even shorter answer — it’s smart! — but for people and brands that aren’t yet established, social media is often key to discoverability.

This may be especially true for artists, designers, photographers, and others in the self- and small-business-employed creative field. Indeed, let’s go to a great source for those in the arena, Creative Boom, who recently spent a minute asking, “Creatives are saying social media is over… so what next?”

Like any new craze, it was fun for a while. But there’s certainly nothing new about it any more. Facebook’s now been around for almost two decades. Twitter’s 17 years old. Even Instagram has reached its teens. And while many of us joined these platforms during their fun, “anything goes” eras, when everything was about the users, now it’s all about the algorithms and their use to make venture capitalists vast amounts of money.

Tom May, Creative Boom

While I agree that social media is a mess and has been for a while, I’m absolutely not going to tell you to give it up — only to remind you that I have given it up and continue to be completely okay with the decision.

I do want to ask you, though, to choose wisely:

Facebook’s “Threads (an Instagram app),” their answer to the Twitter/X debacle, as shown via Apple’s iOS App Store privacy report.
Tapbot’s “Ivory,” available in Apple’s iOS App Store and showing that app’s privacy report, for the Mastodon social platform.

Enough said. Turn off the computer, go forth, and enjoy a beautiful summer’s day.

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Beautifully Briefed 23.7: Items of Independence (Day)

The mission for these posts is simple: independent, unrelated items which add up to something interesting. This time, it’s nifty type, aka NFTy.pe, photographic AI (or not), the 2023 Logo Trends Report, great London Review of Books illustrations, and a worthy art book list hijacked for a rant on stickers. Boom!

Better Than it Sounds: NFTy.pe

Typefaces have become, from this designer’s point of view, become commodities — perhaps even part of a broken system. Most clients don’t have a budget for unique type, there are too many spread across too many different sites, and, as Creative Boom puts it, “ownership has become poorly policed, if not non-existent.”

NFType really flips the script on all of that and attempts to reimagine the industry from creation to sale. In a nutshell, NFTy.pe uses a combination of modular type design and generative scripts to create fonts with unique visual attributes. The upshot is that no two character sets are exactly the same. And thanks to smart contracts and embedded metadata, ownership is quick and easy to verify.

— Craig Ward, NFTy.pe creator, via Creative Boom
Create a unique typeface that rewards, in more ways than one.

As pointed out, it’s not just for type users:

There’s a lot of work to be done to put some distance between the dumpster fire that represents much of the NFT space and projects – like this one – with actual utility. I wouldn’t vouch for the worth of a lot of what I’ve seen out there, but the underlying tech – the smart contracts themselves – [is] actually genius and will be a game changer for any industry where provenance is a key factor – agriculture, property, fashion etc.

— Craig Ward

The whole article is worth a read, or go straight to the source.

Photographic AI

This year has been centered around AI, it seems — and, as illustrations go, some of the results are indeed a new form of art. Take this one posted by Dezeen as part of their AItopia competition:

Created by Midjourney for Daniel Riopel.

Fantastic. Its creator, a production technician in the prefabricated housing industry, deserves major kudos for describing something to the Midjourney engine that’s intricate and, if I dare use the term with AI, creative. (Several of the images there are excellent — check ’em out.)

That said, I’m not a fan of articles like PetaPixel‘s recently-posted “Photographers May Have to Embrace AI, Whether They Want To or Not.” Simply put: no. I don’t have to embrace it, because nothing has changed — either I can get the photograph I want using the cameras and lenses I have or I can’t. I’m not going to “generate the fill,” pure and simple. (I don’t control the computational photography my phone produces, but Apple isn’t prone to creating what isn’t there.)

I’ve been trying to write on this subject for a while, without success. Possibly because I don’t need a longer version of the above paragraph, possibly because it’s something else I haven’t been able to articulate yet — even to myself.

The 2023 Logo Trends Report

It’s back! BrandNew points us to the latest in styles and, as advertised on the tin, trends:

“Sonics,” part of the 2023 Logo Trends Report.
“Ritz,” as in the cracker, part of the 2023 Logo Trends Report.

Always an interesting read, including this fantastic tidbit directly related to the previous section:

“Don’t worry about AI stealing your job. To replace graphic designers with AI, clients will need to accurately describe what they want. We’re safe.”

— Bill Gardner, LogoLounge

Read the full report, “a whirlwind of ideas, symbols, and AI, evolving how creators like us create,” at LogoLounge.

Illustrations at the London Review of Books

Because we cover books here often (pun intended), an article on Jon McNaught’s awesome illustrations for the London Review of Books absolutely caught my eye. “A collaborative relationship,” it’s called — and the results produced not only illustrate a huge variety of subjects in a consistent style, but do so in a way that delights:

A great illustration by Jon McNaught.
Of the examples posted, there’s not a single one I don’t like. Copyright Jon McNaught.

Since 2011, Jon has been collaborating with the renowned literary journal, creating works that have a quietly mesmerising quality. His scenes breed comfort with their universality, but also their ability to evoke specific memories and feelings in the individual viewer. Through his covers, Jon artfully captures the essence of everyday life by representing the vastly contrasting nature of British weather, plus the uniqueness of London’s architecture, green spaces and public transport.

— Olivia Hingley, It’s Nice That

See many more illustration examples and read the article at It’s Nice That.

Hyperallergic‘s Art Books to Read this summer

Hyperallergic‘s coverage of art, despite the annoying pop-ups, is worth its bookmark — illustrated by this list of 11 Art Books to Add to Your Reading List This Summer. Some, like the Philip Guston I recently saw highlighted on Perspective, are as relevant as ever. It’s a great list.

As usual, whenever I see something like this, I’m going to do something else at the same time: mine it for potentially great book design. Which, if you’ll indulge, leads to this short rant: I hate good covers marred by stickers.

“Read with Jenna?” Seriously?

Solid cover. Soooo, who’s Jenna? Is she important enough to mar the cover with? (I DuckDuckGo’d the answer: maybe … if you watch television. Not sure that’s the audience publishers should want to cater to.)

This time, the “sticker” is National Book Award Finalist. Better, but still.

Another solid cover — perhaps even really good, something that’s appropriate for a title up for the National Book Award. Real shame, then, that the sticker gets in the way, winding up completely distracting from the very nice circular title treatment (I’m sorry I don’t know either book designer to list here.)

I understand that it’s a little like trying to hold back the tide with a shovel, but it’s something I needed to express. [/rant]

Bonus #1 (awful): From the disturbing trends department: TikTok may start publishing books. Barf.

Bonus #2 (amazing): Via Kottke, a fantastic poster and perhaps better question:

Poster for the 2023 International Book Arsenal Festival, by Art Studio Agrafka

A book festival. During a war. In a city under martial law. While schools and legislatures here in the US ban books about Black and LGBTQ+ experiences based on bad faith complaints of tiny fundamentalist parent groups. Tell me, who’s doing democracy better right now?

— Jason Kottke, Kottke.org

That’s all for early July, folks. Go forth and make your summer a better place.

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Beautifully Briefed 23.1: Winter Potpourri

From book design and minimalist photography to … well, book design and what absolutely isn’t minimalist photography, plus some street signs and another warning about Adobe. Let’s dig in.

Book Design #1: People Really Do Judge a Book by its Cover

From University College Cork — that’s Ireland, folks — we have something that, on the surface, seems obvious: a book cover “is the most likely factor to convince a person to read a book if they are unfamiliar with the work or its author.” Maria Butler, a PhD candidate in the School of English and Digital Humanities at UCC, reminds us why.

Design by Kimberly Glyder.

You’re reading Foreword, so you likely agree — and shown above is one of those worth-a-thousand-words images: the first of the 2023 titles I’ve set aside for my favorites of the year, and absolutely something good enough to make me pluck it off the shelf without knowing anything about either the title or author.

Bonus: See 70 (!) more of my Favorite Book Covers of 2022.

Book Design #2: Shift Happens

A fantastic website has clicked our way: Shift Happens, for a book about keyboards.

A screenshot from the Shift Happens website. Great stuff.

This project not only scores with great web design — check the interactive version of the book, pictured above — but what also seems like great book design. It’s a Kickstarter project (or will be, next month), so the usual cautions apply, but I might just go ahead and take the leap.

Couple of interesting book design items, by the way: the TOC is at the back, the endpapers are awesome, and the macro photography is tops. The book design reminds me of The Playmakers, still my favorite book design project ever.

Bonus: Tim Walsh, author of The Playmakers, is still going strong. Nice.

Photography #1: Minimalism

The winners of the Minimalist Photography of 2022 awards are in, some are fantastic. Here are a couple of favorites, from the architecture category:

“Prince Claus Bridge in the Netherlands,” by Arthur van Orden
“Blue Window,” by Andrea Richey

The Minimalist Photography Award is the only foundation that deals extensively and professionally with minimalist photography as a branch of photography in which the photographic artistic vision takes the lead.

Milad Safabakhsh, President of Minimalist Photography Awards
Photography #2: Wonders of Street View

This is Colossal brings us another gem from Neal.Fun: the Wonders of Street View.

“Wall Driver,” indeed.

Direct quote, just because: “A man with three legs, a vintage car scaling a building, and an unsettling formation of people donning bird masks are a few of the scenarios highlighted in the terrifically bizarre Wonders of Street View.”

I didn’t know it was a thing to dress up and pose for the Google cameras. Perfect.

Street Sign Style Guide

Speaking of street views, did you know there’s a style guide for highway signs? Would you believe that I’m a fan?

Interestingly, there is an I-42/I-17 interchange in Phoenix, but this ain’t it: these signs are representational.

As with most things government, there’s confusion, too many regulations, and yet it’s based around good ideas. Beautiful Public Data has a guide to the guide.

Adobe Steps in it, Again

From DPReview: “If you’re an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, you might want to go and turn off a new setting immediately. It’s been discovered that Adobe has automatically opted users into a ‘Content analysis’ program that allows Adobe to analyze your media files […] for use in its machine learning training programs.”

It’s important to note that Adobe only uses the files saved in the “Creative Cloud,” something I don’t do as a matter of course, but even still, this is yet another example of Adobe using its monopoly position in the creative field to take advantage of its paying customers.

Adobe, unsurprisingly, didn’t return DPReview’s request for a comment/clarification.

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Beautifully Briefed, Holiday Edition (Late December, 2022): Nick Heer, Jason Kottke, Stealing Sheep, a Landscape Photograph, and Some Old Logos

“The Bleak Cycle”

I don’t usually think it’s fair to quote another blog post in its entirety, and I certainly won’t make a habit of it. With that out of the way, the always-interesting Pixel Envy, written by Nick Heer, hits us with a doozy — one that, due to its length and depth, requires the complete quote:

The Bleak Cycle

It’s a cycle. People create something, together, that reflects their energy and weird work; that thing becomes compelling as a result, and that makes it valuable, and at some point someone puts a price on it and someone else pays that price. It is at that moment that the thing begins to change. The new owner will almost always decide that what is most interesting about this thing is not the human essence that gave it value, but The Owner Himself, and will act accordingly. People will come back for the valuable stuff until the owner succeeds in crowding it out; when that crowding is done, the owned thing dies. Until then, what’s left is just what’s valuable—the humanity and brilliance and unpredictability and fun that all that cynical and idiotic and self-serving wealth is always and everywhere busy replacing with itself. There’s nothing to do but look for the good stuff until the looking becomes too challenging, or until it’s gone.

David Roth, Defector

Heer writes in response: “You may disagree with Roth’s headline thesis — ‘everything is Silicon Valley now’ — or his tie-in with the story du jour, Twitter, or his analysis of baseball’s problems. But the paragraph above? That is something to keep pinned in your brain. For most of us, it is a reminder to be wary of how things are changed in exploitative ways; for those in power, it should be seen as a cautionary pattern.”

Pinned.

Kottke is Back!

After a few months off, Jason Kottke is back in the blogger’s seat to enrich all of our lives. As someone who’s been reading for years — he started in 1998, and I’m certain his site was in the blogroll of the old Foreword, back in the Aughts.

Fine hypertext products indeed: Kottke.org, December, 2022.

We might be waiting a while for his so-called “comically long what I did on sabbatical post,” but his Sabbatical Media Diet post is a gold mine of to-read and to-watch items.

Welcome back, sir. May you blog for many seasons more.

Stop Stealing [Free] Sheep

No, not that — the type book:

From Kottke, while we’re on the subject, one of his Quick Links from Dec 20th: “Google Fonts is offering a free download of the newly updated 4th edition of Erik Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works.” It’s a PDF, available now.

9th Annual Landscape Photography Awards

It’s fair criticism to say that I both decry photography contests and yet sometimes celebrate the results. But…:

“The Winding Journey” by Max Rive, Border Between Chile And Argentina, Patagonia

Wow. I couldn’t not highlight that photograph.

Many more at the source. (Via DPReview.)

Oldest Logos Still in Use

Image Relay has an interesting item showing how long some familiar logos have been used — and, yeah, there’s a reason they’re familiar!

The black triangle is when the company was founded, and the bar indicates how long a logo with elements still used today has been around.

That’s but a sample of the complete listing; shown are nos. 3–8. Coca-Cola, the company I’d probably name if asked for the oldest logo, is no. 12. Click through for the rest.

That’s it for this year

Foreword will be back in January with our annual first-of-the-year best-of: my favorite book covers of 2022. Happy holidays, everyone!

Top image: Tree Lights, December 2020, downtown Macon, Georgia.