Giles Hoover

Photography and design for print production

Tag: adobe

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

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

    “Welcome to the new,” he said, pointing to the old, now dressed in a new suit. You’re reading this because the words and ideas resonated — and it’s why only the style is newly tailored.

    Sometimes, though, a new look can be enormously satisfying. Enjoy.

    This month’s Spine
    Beacon Press.

    “Paperwork. Nice,” I said, while potentially allowing a smidgen of political speak through the door. (Not sorry.) Read the column here.

    Design and type
    Matt Dorfman’s many hats

    Matt Dorfman’s book covers are a regular item here on Foreword, including several of my Favorite Book Covers of the Year posts. So it was a delight to see a new interview with It’s Nice That.

    [B]usy days and late nights begin with, as Matt puts it, “churning out a generous amount of trash”. Much to his frustration he will be “working through what often feels like a landfill-sized hill of boring ideas”. Despite taking up quite a bit of time, it’s a necessity, as among this trash will be a shred of an idea worth expanding upon. “Usually it’s a minor detail from an earlier comp made in haste and far afield from anything that book is actually about,” he says, “but it typically has a quality of brokenness or something unfinished that just looks interesting.”

    — Harry Bennett, It’s Nice That

    “Do anything except what’s right in front of you,” he tells them, while mentioning that he often favors collage. “Collage has become one of my shorthands for pairing themes and ideas together that aren’t so readily represented in nature or culture.” As in:

    VQR. Book design by Matt Dorfman. Image via It’s Nice That.

    Did I mention that he’s also the art director The New York Times Book Review? Yeah:

    One of Matt Dorfman’s covers for the NYT Book Review. Image via It’s Nice That.

    And a quick preview of next year’s Favorites list, with this gem:

    Cover design by Matt Dorfman.

    If it looks familiar, that’s because…:

    Cover design by Matt Dorfman.
    Cover design by Matt Dorfman.

    Both previous Favorites here on Foreword. Awesome.

    Read the whole interview at It’s Nice That.

    “It’s All Greeked to Me”

    Glenn Fleishman, writing at Six Colors, points us at a YouTube documentary on the history of Lorem Ipsum:

    A screenshot of the YouTube video.

    “I found it riveting and hilarious, and exactly the kind of Rabbit Hole (her channel name) that I fall down with printing and type history myself,” he writes. “[H]er dogged research has largely filled in the missing pieces of the story of where the run of seemingly Latin text used by designers to act as placeholder (or ‘Greeked’) text in mock-ups since the late 1960s came from.”

    I agree: it’s well put-together and, more importantly, answers a question you might not have actually had — but now can’t resist. Enjoy.

    Side note: Privacy where possible: I’ve switched to screenshots of YouTube videos rather than embedding them. That way folks who choose not follow the link aren’t stuck with the trackers embedding foists upon all.

    Special bonus #1: Glenn is one of those people who wears many hats — 2019’s awesome Tiny Type Museum project is his, for instance — but it’s the comics connection that might be most appreciated. He’s got a book out about it, now in its second edition, which has just been nominated for Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards — the Eisners. Read more.

    2026 logo trends
    The Logo Lounge has posted its 2026 Report.

    The quality of the Logo Trend Report has slipped over the past couple of years — there are suggestions that parts of it are generated rather of written — but I think the zoom-out is still useful for those of us in design.

    If, for no other reason, to make sure our work is ahead of the curve.

    Via Brand New, one of the only subscription sites I’ll link to. (Because it gives me an excuse to encourage you to subscribe, too: at $20/year, it’s sensibly priced and very much earns its keep.)

    Best new fonts: a one-off

    This month’s CreativeBoom post on new fonts was shorter than some — it’s summer! — with only one I’d like to highlight:

    Sahlia, by Arcane Type Foundry.

    But what a one it is. How often are we given an excuse get excited about stencil-style?

    Close-up details (and more butterflies).

    Sahlia is available from Arcane Type Foundry.

    Font previews: not simple

    Marcin Wichary, whose brilliant Unsung continues to impress, has a neat item that we’ve all seen at this point: font menus that preview the font name in the style of the typeface, sometimes poorly.

    Turns out, that’s not at all easy.

    Oopsie. Screenshot courtesy of Unsung.

    “Font previews are fascinating because they are the perfect showcase of how tricky fonts can be at scale,” he writes. The question is: why?

    It’s actually impossible to left align or center text. Ever. Not just because each font does whatever it wants – font size is a number that doesn’t really give you anything to hang a hat on, and the font can place itself in its box however it desires, too – and not just because fonts often lie (via bad metrics) about what they store inside, but also because aligning and centering are really in the eye of the license holder, and have more than one definition.

    So, every time you align text to anything, in whatever way, it’s only an approximation. Most of the time that’s good enough. Here it is not.

    — Marcin Wichary, Unsung
    It takes a surprising amount of work to get this right. Screenshot courtesy of Unsung.

    “There are icon fonts, color fonts, and non-Western fonts so rich in variety and tradition that this category itself is basically a fractal,” he says. “There’s a craft to getting it right.”

    Read the rest.

    Special bonus #2: Wichary also built something called Fontificator. “I thought it’d be fun to share this internal tool I made over a decade ago to aid with exploring options for Medium’s typographical redesign,” he says.

    Fontificator. Screenshot courtesy of Unsung.

    “The motivation for building Fontificator came from two observations:

    • font previews on type foundry sites were generally too limited to get a real sense of how a certain typeface feels, and it was best to see a font in situ,
    • often an extremely tiny nuance — like adding some letter spacing, or messing with line height — was what separated something that was promising from something that seemed very far from working.”

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

    Adobe does AI

    I know, I know, more Abode stuff. I’ll keep it quick(ish).

    PetaPixel reminds us that, “the vast majority of working photographers are using AI to help save them time, handling tedious tasks that aren’t necessarily all that creative.” Adobe’s latest updates address that:

    AI removal tools now have flavors, including on-device if needed.
    • Lightroom’s AI Sharpen tool can now use Topaz Labs’ Noise-Aware Sharpen model directly in the app. This promises to recover fine details more effectively, per Adobe. (More on Topaz below.) 👍
    • Lightroom’s Assisted Culling automatically stacks similar images into groups and automatically suggests the “strongest one.” 👎
    • Lightroom has a new Photo to Video feature that uses Firefly and Google Veo to turn a still photo into “polished b-roll or reels with AI-generated motion.” 👎
    • Photoshop’s reflection removals are now isolated on a separate layer, “giving users control over opacity for more natural-looking results,” according to PetaPixel. 👍
    • Photoshop’s Remove Tool, which uses generative AI to erase a selected object and replace it with realistic-looking pixels, can now be used offline using an on-device AI model. 👍

    Get the full story at PetaPixel.

    The agentic AI “assistant” might — or might not — be good. (Subscribers pay $$ for it, so….)

    Meanwhile, Adobe’s promised “creative agent” — ’cause agentic AI — has “fully arrived” in Creative Cloud, PetaPixel writes. “Inside Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io, users can tell Adobe’s Firefly-powered AI Assistant how to edit photos, videos, and other graphics.” It runs in a panel, like having Chat GPT or Claude right in the app.

    “As a creative, you remain in control, choosing what to hand off, what to refine and how to apply your taste, expertise and judgment to shape every editable outcome. These tools are built for how you’ve told us you actually work,” Adobe explains.

    I’m going to have to try this one. Maybe. Someday.

    Several days after the above items were debuted, Adobe purchased Topaz outright. It’ll “fully integrate Topaz’s [AI scaling] models across apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, and its AI image generator Firefly” — which should be a good thing.

    Special bonus #3: In case AI-all-the-things is getting to you, there’s this:

    “A ‘centaur’ describes a human augmented with a technology, like machine learning, or even just driving a car or using autocomplete,” ArsTechnica writes as part of an interview with Doctorow. “A reverse centaur ‘is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine.’”

    “Being a centaur is generally viewed as a positive thing; few people relish being a reverse centaur. And yet the AI industry….” Read the rest.

    People
    Jason Snell

    Amongst the tech names I’ve know for what seems forever, Jason Snell’s is up there. He was first at MacUser, then Macworld, then hung out his own banner at Six Colors.

    From Macworld: Jason Snell (highlighted) at the introduction of the iPod, 2001.

    My first day on the job at Macworld, Apple was perilously close to going out of business. It was the fall of 1997, and Steve Jobs had returned to Apple and engineered the ejection of Gil Amelio as CEO, but there was no iMac yet, no visible turnaround in terms of products at all. Beyond the release of the iconic “Think Different” ad campaign, there was nothing.

    Apple’s survival hung by a thread. Steve Jobs asked everyone to trust him. At Macworld Expo, he had enlisted Bill Gates — Bill Gates, of all people! — to help him instill belief in the world that Apple would find a way to survive.

    The world was skeptical, to say the least. My family asked what job I thought I’d get once Apple went out of business.

    —Jason Snell

    Ah, the good old days. (I jest.) Hard to believe, but that was almost 30 years ago. Sheesh.

    So long, in fact, that another milestone has passed: Jason’s left Macworld. Read the column. I’m glad he’ll be continuing with Six Colors, and am looking forward to his new podcast on Apple’s history, Designed in California.

    David Hockney

    I was familiar more than a fan, but it’s undeniable that the world has lost a character — something very ably underscored by the tribute illustrations posted at CreativeBoom:

    Illustration by Nia Gould.

    “From Bradford to Beverly Hills, Hockney’s bold colours and irrepressible joy for living inspired a generation. Here’s what they created in response to his passing,” they write. See the rest.

    Om Malik

    Early this month, Om released an essay for the times — and the ages:

    Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying. The nose grows. You get caught. Lesson learned. But that reading misses almost everything Collodi was actually doing. The book is a close study of a society where deception has gone ambient, woven into every institution, every transaction. Courts punish victims. Authority figures perform competence without exercising it. Experts are decorative. Society holds together through spectacle and habit rather than accountability. Into this environment, a naive creature is released, constitutionally unable to resist a good story about easy reward.

    The nose is the least interesting lie in the book. The interesting lies are the ones that work.

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

    Okay, sure, it was social commentary cleverly disguised as an essay about a pen. This Mont Blanc, in fact:

    The point is, it was as insightful as ever. (See also the previously-cited “Velocity is the New Authority.”) It was immediately deposited in the to-be-posted folder. Before I could could get to that, however, heart disease snatched him away. He was 59.

    I first heard via Pixel Envy, which linked to Om’s excellent photographs posted to Glass (social media),1Forgive the repetition, but just in case: I don’t participate in social media. While I’d heard of Glass, I didn’t know of Om’s posts there — and wouldn’t have followed in any case. Perusing those photos, and posting that link, are a one-off celebrating Om’s talent. and, later, appreciated John Gruber’s thoughtful piece at Daring Fireball.

    Both reminded me of Om’s love of Leica and preference for black-and-white:

    “Sleepy in Seattle.” Photograph by Om Malik.
    “Does This Qualify as Flora?” Photograph by Om Malik.

    Or almost-black-and-white:

    Untitled. Photograph by Om Malik.

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

    Special bonus #4: The day after Om’s Pinocchio essay, above, Daring Fireball posted on Jason Zweig’ on’s three ways to get paid. I won’t spoil it — just go read.

    Photography
    2026 Beaker Street Science Photography finalists

    “This is the 10th anniversary of the Australian Beaker Street Festival. Each year, the competition celebrates fantastic photos of rare and unusual scientific phenomena, endangered species, conservation missions, and much more,” PetaPixel writes.

    Some of these are awesome:

    “Southern Ocean Energy.” Photograph by Nick Green.
    “Just Another Bioluminescent Tantrum.” Photograph by Deni Cupit.

    26 finalists in all. See the rest (and, if you’d like, vote at the link).

    2026 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year shortlist

    This contest takes entries from the majestic Australasian Realm, including the ANZANG bioregion consisting of Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and New Guinea, and to quote PetaPixel, “there are some real bangers on there.”

    “Bin Turkey.” Photograph by Emma Perry.
    “Penguin Poe.” Photograph by Matt Bell.

    Nature in all its marvelously diverse glory. See the rest.

    Burton’s America

    I’m surprised I haven’t linked to Brendon Burton’s work before, ’cause it’s right up my alley:

    Traces #10. Photograph by Brendon Burton.
    Traces #6. Photograph by Brendon Burton.

    His second book, Epitaph, “is a series that attempts to unravel the knot of mystery that exists within the dark corners of North America, shedding light on unseen histories and buried past lives.”

    See more. (Via This is Colossal.)

    Landscapes three-fer

    • Travel and nature photographer Jake Guzman has spent the past two years creating Otherworldly America, his new 256-page photography book:

    “Picture Lake Washington.” Photograph by Jake Guzman.
    “Richardson Highway, Alaska.” Photograph by Jake Guzman.

    • Arpan Das has fallen in love with the Kishtwar Himalaya in the Jammu and Kashmir region, part of the Indian Himalayas:

    “Barnaj Rainbow.” Photograph by Arpan Das.

    •  Michael Shainblum photographs the volatile, weather-driven landscapes of New Zealand with “a body of work shaped less by fixed composition and more by responsiveness to constant change”:

    “New Zealand #19.” Photograph by Michael Shainblum.
    “New Zealand #40.” Photograph by Michael Shainblum.

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

    Finally: soothing surf
    “Venice Beach: Dreamy #3.” Photograph by Craig Hubbard.

    Hubbard’s photos are ethereal and cinematic, with surfers and wave crests illuminated by the early morning sun or backdropped by the marine layer. Sometimes the intense spray, curl, shoulder, or lip become the sole subjects of the portraits. “The water is the muse and artist,” Hubbard recently told an interviewer. “I’m just a biased translator and documentarian. Lastly, my ego relaxes in the ocean; the need to peacock recedes. This is where my best work comes from — or favorite, I should say.”

    — Kate Mothes, This is Colossal
    “Venice Beach: Dreamy #9.” Photograph by Craig Hubbard.

    See more at This is Colossal.

    That’s it for this month. As always, thanks for visiting.

    For folks in the US, have a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend as America turns 250. Let’s hope that we can make it a better place.

    Also: Please don’t forget to let me know of any problems or concerns with the new site. I’ve got a list of items — going to work on them now — but always welcome feedback. Thanks.

    • 1
      Forgive the repetition, but just in case: I don’t participate in social media. While I’d heard of Glass, I didn’t know of Om’s posts there — and wouldn’t have followed in any case. Perusing those photos, and posting that link, are a one-off celebrating Om’s talent.
  • Beautifully Briefed 26.5: May All Things Be Grand

    Beautifully Briefed 26.5: May All Things Be Grand

    Design is grand; illustration and type are grand, too; the new BMW Alpina is a grand tourer extraordinaire; and space photography is grand indeed. Only Adobe, unfortunately, is the outlier, but on balance, a grand sendoff to Spring.

    This month’s Spine
    University of Chicago Press.
    University of Chicago Press.

    I inked as many jokes as I could — penishment, one could say — but the University Presses column is still worth a read when you have a moment.

    Painting book covers

    Hyperallergic comments, “In a market flooded with design templates and AI-generated imagery, the painted cover stands out as distinctly human.” Which, they suppose, is why when you “[w]alk into any bookstore in the United States lately, […] the shelves and new-release tables resemble group exhibitions.”

    Cover design by Rodrigo Corral Studio. (A 2025 Favorite Book Cover here on Foreword, too.)

    The recent shift from color fields and geometric abstraction to gestural figuration on book covers may reflect a broader craving for embodiment and physical presence — proof, in other words, of the artist’s hand and subjectivity in the era of the internet. Just as painting implies time, so does the novel, demanding sustained attention to both write and to read. It’s a tension that undermines the forces driving creation and consumption in the service of ever-increasing profit margins, both in the art market and the publishing industry.

    — Tara Anne Dalbow, Hyperallergic

    Cover design by Jaya Miceli.

    Regular readers will know this isn’t a new thing, but I think the post — whose author is much more likely to be familiar with social media and bigger-picture trends than I am — is correct in the notion that, “the painted cover seemingly aligns the book with an art-historical lineage rather than the curation of an algorithmic feed.”

    Aside from misspelling Jaya Miceli’s name, there’s lots of good stuff in the article. Take a look.

    Note: I somehow hadn’t seen I Am You before, and am disappointed to have missed this great cover … that would absolutely have been in running for the 2025 Favorite Book Covers. Apologies.

    Speaking of great book design: Jenny Volvovski

    In 2012, Jenny Volvovski “really wanted to design book covers but didn’t have any book cover work. So I hired myself to redesign my personal library.” An interesting approach, to be sure:

    A small selection of items from Volvovski’s unsolicited covers collection.

    That, as it turns out, has worked very well for her — she’s now amongst the elite:

    Cover design by Jenny Volvovski. Was a finalist — but not selected — for my 2025 Favorite Book Covers.

    “Yeah,” I hear you say, “but that’s only a runner-up.” Okay:

    Cover design by Jenny Volvovski. One of my 2025 Favorite Book Covers.

    In addition to the above, Beethoven, The Novel and the Blank, and The Master of Contradictions are among several that fall into the outstanding category; see many more in the “published” section of her website.

    Enjoy! (Prompted by Kottke.)

    Fantastic early 20th-century movie posters (and more)

    Eric Rohman wasn’t a name I was familiar with — he’s Swedish, so I suppose there’s an excuse — but the great design transcends not only the language barrier but the years, as well:

    Poster design by Eric Rohman, 1918.

    “Eric Rohman (1891–1949) was born in Nyköping and grew up in Helsingborg. He was one of the very few people in Sweden who could make a living by only producing posters. He produced about 7,000 works, according to his own estimate. 

    “Rohman’s brother was the manager of one of the big cinema chains and the need for posters was great. Rohman usually worked with few colors and did not spend much time on details, he had a great ability to quickly pick out the essentials.”

    Poster design by Eric Rohman, 1917.

    From Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin to Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo, this online archive is both inspirational and sure to bring a smile to your face.

    When you’re done, the site, Artvee, has countless more from artists worldwide, in hi-res where possible, all in the public domain. A fantastic resource.

    (Another via Kottke.)

    Special bonus #1: Quentin Blake, at 93, continues to advocate “for a discipline that’s lacked attention and prestige for far too long,” CreativeBoom writes. 

    Photograph courtesy of CreativeBoom.

    The master illustrator of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, The BFG, and around 500 more instantly-recognizable titles has been working on a singular goal for more than three decades; the fruit of his labor, The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, “the world’s largest permanent public space dedicated to illustration,” opens its doors in Clerkenwell, London, this summer.

    One of the famous cockatoos gifted to the world by Quentin Blake.

    Update, 6 June 2026: Dezeen has a great article on both the Center and its facility: “The site, known as New River Head, was once the end of an artificial river created in the early 1600s to channel drinking water into London,” they write. 

    Facility by Tim Ronalds Architects. Photograph courtesy of Dezeen.

    “Many of the structures on the site were created as part of the endeavour to pump this water to people’s houses. The oldest of these was the base of a windmill dating back to 1707, which stands at the entrance to the museum’s site and has been converted into a gallery space for temporary exhibitions.” Check it out.

    This month’s new fonts

    CreativeBoom‘s monthly feature has twelve choices, a couple of which I’d love to have the opportunity to use.

    Ardent, by Typofounderie
    Ardent, by Typofonderie.

    “Jean François Porchez began designing Ardent in January 2021, starting from his earlier Le Monde Journal and asking what that typeface would need to become to serve modern screen reading. The answer involved drawing wider letterforms and more open counterforms, following the research of Ladislas Mandel and Matthew Carter on legibility and apparent size. Serifs in the italics (an unusual, but actually sensible choice) serve readability on screen, rather than print conventions. […]

    Ardent’s ”angular counters,” as they call them, do stand out.

    “More broadly, the font draws on a rich historical lineage: Elzevirs, Albertus, Vendôme, Meridien, even Verdana. Angular and triangular shapes sit alongside round terminals and both bracketed and unbracketed serifs, creating what Jean describes as a typeface that reveals subtle contrasts invisible at small sizes but gives graphic projects a distinct identity at large ones.”

    Have to emphasize: unlike my usual selections, this is aimed at screens, not the printed page. Still, good stuff.

    Tareco, by Dalton Maag
    Tareco, by Dalton Maag.

    “Deiverson Ribeiro’s pulled off something a bit special here. Developed at Dalton Maag, Tareco takes the beloved sweet treat of the same name as its starting point. This is not a polite, restrained script, but one with a loud, confident personality. Thick, confident strokes and precise details give these letterforms a jazz-like syncopation: a sense of forward propulsion and playful energy that helps to bring designs to life on the page.”

    And seriously: who doesn’t love a biscuit?

    Software woes, rants and hopes
    Part One: Adobe

    I’ve not had much good to say about Adobe recently, I’ll admit. I’m also not thrilled to be back, bemoaning something else. It’s a shame they’ve given me another reason to.

    Recently, I’ve noticed that in Photoshop, the “canvas size” dialog (among others) has looked … well, off. Windows-like, even, which is most assuredly not a compliment. But on a more fundamental level, it’s broken — it has, to use the parlance, lost its focus sequence: the standard workflow of open dialog, type value, tab, type, enter (no mousing required) is just gone. Each value has to be manually selected and entered, a much more arduous process — it’s additional movement, clicks, and time unnecessarily added.

    The old interface is on the left, “new” on the right. Screenshot courtesy of Unsung.

    You can bet I’m not the only one to have noticed.

    Marcin Wichary, at the excellent Unsung:

    I generally avoid such harsh labels on this blog, but: this is awful work. 

    I’m angry. (Clearly.) We should all be angry in the face of stuff like this. This is how people get fed up with software – because it feels unstable and deteriorates on its own without needing to. 

    I know I brought up that an existing power user base can be a huge pain in the ass, and I am a decades-old Photoshop power user. But this is different than other examples where the product needs or at least wants to evolve past its core audience or toward a different market. For Photoshop here, nothing I see indicates any change in course or clientele – and yet all of these good moments in UI that used to help me out no longer exist.

    Plus, all those transgressions are solved problems. Those issues are not buried in pages of heavily litigated patents, or in seven collective brains of world-class interface designers whose driveways are presently occupied by cash-filled trucks sent over by frontier companies. This isn’t some long lost art that requires archaeologists to decipher. This feels like carelessness and laziness in face of basic UI engineering; in a likely internally-motivated effort to refresh the interface, the team threw an entire nursery worth of babies [out] with the bathwater.

    — Marcin Wichary, Unsung

    “It’s not just about disservice to craft. It’s not even about disrespect for change management, trivialization of institutional memory, and disinvestment in quality assurance. This isn’t only […] sloppy coding,“ he continues. “This is a failure of imagination.”

    Jason Snell, at Six Colors:

    I have been using Photoshop since John Sculley was the CEO of Apple. Longtime users can be brutally resistant to change, but I would like to think that I remain open-minded. One can’t have used Photoshop for more than three decades without having adapted to change and found utility in the new features Adobe has added over the years. I’ve used generative fill. I’ve used AI-enhanced edge detection. I’m hip and with it.

    But, as Wichary detected, what Adobe is doing with the Modern User Interface is not to make a new, improved, modern interface. Adobe’s own description gives it away: It’s a hammering of all of Adobe’s user interfaces so they look alike, across Creative Cloud. It’s a “multi-platform design system,” which means in addition to Adobe being committed to “modernizing” Photoshop by making it look like Premiere, it’s also going to make it look the same on the Mac as Windows.

    Already, Photoshop desperately wants to run in single-window mode, with multiple documents opening in a single uberwindow—in other words, the stink of Windows. Fortunately, you can turn that feature off, and I have. […]

    That all said, of course, this decision could benefit Photoshop users, because Adobe could put in the work to make the app better while also fulfilling its own corporate goals of homogeneity.

    Ha ha ha. Sorry. I tried to write that with a straight face.

    — Jason Snell, Six Colors

    It gets worse. Nick Heer, he of PixelEnvy, noted:

    If you do a little poking around in Adobe’s application bundles, a key reason for the jankiness of these user interfaces becomes apparent: it is because they are little webpages. These dialog boxes are HTML files that reference a chunky CSS file and oodles of JavaScript […].

    This is loathsome.

    There are people out there who will insist it is unfair to blame the tools and that bad user interfaces can be built in entirely native languages, too, which is true. Also, Adobe’s interface has always been unique and not quite at home on either MacOS or Windows. Maybe it really is possible to build a web app that feels platform native. But I have never used one — not once — and for this mess to be increasingly used in the industry-standard professional suite of creative tools is maddening.

    — Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

    John Gruber, on Daring Fireball, notes that, “The before-and-after screenshots look like examples from a lecture on user interface design  —  if you swap them around make the new ones ‘before’ and the old ones ‘after’. Better balance, better focus behavior, appropriate platform-native typography.”

    Michael Tsai has a post on the whole “conversation” if you’d like to get a sense of just how many people are upset; for what it’s worth, it includes a comment from Adobe’s “Lead Scientist” for user interface: “These sharp edges are acknowledged, and we are working on them.” I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t entirely trust their reassurances.

    Wichary did provide a solution, however temporary: turn off the interface “improvements.” There’s an option buried in the settings:

    Uncheck the box, then note the last line.
    Part Two: Folklore

    The hope part: Gruber followed up with a thought-provoking piece called, “Software as the Product of Obsession Times Voice.” He reminds us of a famous quote from Walt Disney — “We don’t make movies to make money; we make money to make more movies” — and that it applies to software development, especially for independents. To wit:

    It feels like the world of software is bifurcating quality-wise. This whole thing about Adobe’s new craptacular “modern” UI language (a.k.a. “Spectrum”) exemplifies one side of that bifurcation — the bad-and-getting-worse side. Software that is the product not just of an ignorance of long-established principles of interaction design, but of a willful disdain for those principles. What Adobe is now shipping is just inexplicably bad UI, ignoring literally decades of great work and long-mastered concepts — a lot of which work was pioneered by Adobe itself!

    — John Gruber, Daring Fireball

    He goes on to discuss that what’s expected from Apple is “insanely great,” and that Adobe is failing so hard precisely because they’re Adobe and know better. He also mentions a concept known as software brain — read the post to get that — but, in a nutshell, it’s not about the quality of the software. It’s about the quality of the profits. Quelle surprise.

    However, “[t]he other side of the software fork is not deserted. It’s just populated, more than ever, by the products of small independent developers who obsess, first and foremost, over quality and artistic vision.”

    Which leads us to Folklore. Mentioned on Upgrade’s Apple 50th anniversary podcast episode, Folklore is a list of 123 great stories from Apple’s early days, from when Apple was that company obsessing, first and foremost, over quality and artistic vision.

    Great stuff. Wander through the list at your leisure — and revel in the glory days.

    Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

    — Margaret Mead

    Special bonus #2: Taken, a single webpage that shows just how much information you share by … visiting a webpage. Sigh.

    Special bonus #3: Boring, an interactive essay arguing that some of the items mentioned above have, in fact, gone too far — and that forces are at work to redress. Speaking of hope: let’s do that.

    BMW Alpina

    So, it’s finally happened: after what seems like forever — including several mentions here on Foreword — we’ve now seen where BMW is going to take the Alpina brand.

    I’m both relieved and excited: it could be very cool.

    Image courtesy of BMW.

    Unlike BMW M, which is focused on sport, BMW Alpina will be focused on speed. Mile-munching, cross-continent stuff. (If you’re a Mercedes fan, think closer to Maybach than AMG — or maybe an amalgamation of both.) “[T]he understated character of ALPINA fits the way wealthy buyers are spending now,” writes BMW Blog. “That is the market BMW is aiming at — not M buyers, not 7 Series buyers, but the segment above both.”

    “An ALPINA is for connoisseurs, meaning people that love driving, they like driving fast, but they don’t want to communicate to the outside world that they bought a race car,” said BMW Group Chief Designer Adrian van Hooydonk. “That would be an M customer. And therefore we thought that is the position, that is the opportunity for ALPINA.”

    Image courtesy of BMW.

    Which makes sense. It’s what Alpina always stood for: faster than standard models, more luxurious than M models. Exclusive and expensive.

    Four images above courtesy of BMW Blog.

    There’s nothing about this I don’t like. It’s a great design in a great color with a fantastic interior. Indeed, it’s a great presentation, and looks like a great place to park yourself for hours on end while scenery rips by.

    Of course, not all is perfect: it’s only a “vision.” BMW’s concept cars tend to get watered down fairly extensively, and this one’s no exception; the first model isn’t even going to be a coupé but rather a modified 7-series sedan. They’ll be both gas — ahem, petrol — and electric, and will cost Bentley money.

    The concept on stage at the 2026 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. Image courtesy of BMW Blog.

    Alpina has always been the car for people who found M too loud and Rolls-Royce too theatrical. The buyer who knew what a it was and didn’t need anyone else to. I’m excited that Alpina is going to, thankfully, continue to represent that — and seemingly, successfully transition to a new era under direct BMW control. 

    Read more at BMW Blog (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) or The Autopian.

    This month’s photography round-up
    Space #1: More from Artemis II

    “NASA has released a tranche of 12,000 photos taken during the historic voyage that were shot on a combination of the Nikon D5 SLR, Nikon Z9 mirrorless, and iPhone 17 cameras that the Artemis crew took with them,” PetaPixelnotes in a post showing some of their favorites. (This is Colossal has a post of their favorites, as well.)

    Hank Green — of the Sci Show YouTube channel, among many others — has put together the very cool Artemis II Photo Timeline, as noted long-time Mac guy (and co-founder of the Relay network of podcasts) Stephen Hackett.

    The timeline is an interactive way to scroll through photos from the mission — but pinned to NASA’s official schedule. Green also explains something I was wondering, which is why there are no credits on the photos: “the four astronauts together agreed that they did not want credit for any photos taken on the mission. I’m somewhat conflicted about this because this project is about giving as much context as possible, but of course there is also something very beautiful about not wanting to take individual credit for something that was the result of so much collaboration.”

    Hat tipped to all of that. A month later, and the excitement is still palpable.

    Space #2: The Milky Way
    “Night at the Remarkables.” Photograph by Tom Rae.

    The 2026 Milky Way Photographer of the Year winning images have been announced, and they’re stunning. “Every year, this collection reminds us that photographing the Milky Way is not only about technique or planning. It is about curiosity, patience, and the desire to experience the night sky in places where it still feels wild,” says Dan Zafra, editor of Capture the Atlas.

    “Perseid Meteors Over Durdle Door.” Photograph by Josh Dury.

    See all of the winning images at This is Colossal, PetaPixel, or the contest website.

    Space #3: Triple Arch
    The Matterhorn, the summer arch (left), the Gegenschein (center), and the winter arm of the Milky Way (right). Photograph by Angel Fux.

    From high up in the Alps, a stacked image of events that took place in one night, taken from one location by one photographer, with no AI involved: a celestial phenomenon that has never been captured in this exact way before. Awesome. PetaPixel has the details.

    And Finally: Lightning Bugs, Indeed
    “Presence,” Australia. Photograph by JJ.

    PetaPixel brings us the story of JJ, who went on a mission to capture lightning sprites, an elusive-yet-beautiful item — and got something else, too.

    “Those little fireflies reminded me of why I do this in the first place. It reminded me that it wasn’t about getting something better; it was about fully appreciating things there in the moment. And this is why I named the image ‘Presence.’” 

    Special bonus #4: Engagement with the arts slows aging!

    “[R]esearchers believe that a significant part of why engaging with the arts slows biological aging is the diverse range of visual, sensory, and physical stimuli associated with art, as well as the social interactions that often accompany it,” PetaPixel notes. 

    “The new findings go much farther than that, though: they also found evidence that artistic engagement can have roughly the same health benefits as physical exercise. This is a huge deal, especially for those in middle- and late-age groups who may find strenuous physical exercise too difficult.”

    So, be glad: taking the time to read Foreword today may have had benefits beyond entertainment. Thanks for visiting.

  • Beautifully Briefed 26.3: The Ides of Equal Madness

    Beautifully Briefed 26.3: The Ides of Equal Madness

    This month, some optimism, some interesting books, some creative fonts, and some fantastic photos, and somepositivity — plus a smidgen of pessimism — in the form of Adobe.

    On the whole, it’s mostly optimism, promise. And there’s butter. And a sleeping fox. And duck.

    This month’s Spine
    Rutgers University Press. Cover design by Ashley Muehlbauer; production editor, Vincent Nordhaus.

    “Our initial direction for [the designer] was to create a clean, simple text design that conveyed crisis, dread, or the element of threat,” this title’s production editor said in response to my request for information.

    “To say that someone lit a fire under those directions is an understatement,” I wrote in this title’s commentary. “In today’s American academic reality, where every day could indeed be … shall we say, fraught, this cover takes the brief and runs straight onto the dean’s list.”

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

    Why she’s an optimist 

    Joan Westenberg (previously) has another great essay up about the AI doom loop — why it’s easy to believe that the downward spiral is tightening, to roughly paraphrase — and why she believes it just isn’t true:

    In 1810, 81% of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. Two hundred years later, it’s about 1%. If you had shown someone in 1810 a chart of agricultural employment decline and asked them to model the economic consequences, the only rational projection would have been apocalypse. Where would 80% of the population find work? What would they do? How would anyone eat if the farmers were all displaced by machines?

    The answer, of course, is that entirely new categories of work were created that no one in 1810 could have conceived of, and these new jobs paid dramatically more than subsistence farming. Factory work, office work, services, knowledge work, the entire apparatus of modernity: none of it was visible from the vantage point of the pre-industrial economy.

    — Joan Westenberg, “Everything is Awesome”

    “The transition was brutal and uneven. [People] suffered,” she writes. “But the trajectory was real, and the people projecting permanent immiseration […] were, in the fullest sense, catastrophically wrong.”

    The essay isn’t perfect; it’s too long, and the editor failed to catch a few typos (he said, hypocritically). But … it scales. Zoomed out, it applies to more than AI.

    “The doomers may have the best stories. I believe the optimists have the best evidence,” she concludes. I agree. Or, at least, I’d like to. 

    Go read it and see whether you do.

    Great web moments, x2
    Kottke.org 

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

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

    Dave Winer shoots for the stars:

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

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

    Scripting News has been around since ’94 and if you’re even a little interested in a free web, his site is a fine place to start learning how you can contribute to keeping it free.

    Note: scripting.com is, famously, still non-https — which means that if you click on either of the above links you’re likely to get a warning that the site isn’t secure. It’s very much a safe link.

    Book notes, x3
    Oliver Munday, Head of Household
    Somehow, I expected someone older. (Courtesy of Debutful.)

    Nearly every one of his book cover designs could be called an instant favorite. He has a wry, brief expression that often delights.

    So, when he wrote a book, did he do the cover? Well … no, as it turns out — and he preferred it that way.

    Cover design by Chris Brand.

    Munday’s collection of stories has an interesting cover by industry veteran Chris Brand, and I like it — although some of the alternatives seem to me like better fits for Munday’s take on life. 

    But, of course, that’s the point: it’s not about him, it’s about his book.

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

    The Butter Book
    Book design by Lizzie Vaughan.

    No, it doesn’t soften when left out — or spread any larger meaning. It’s just a great book cover (and jacket).

    Chronicle gets a kick out of “things that look like other things.” We made a notepad called Pad of Butter that has been selling steadily since 2015. So, imaginations did not need to stretch when a butter-focused cookbook with a vellum jacket was proposed. It’s our “bread and butter,” so to speak.

    — Q&A with author Anna Stockwell and designer Lizzie Vaughan, PRINT

    “It’s important to find joy wherever you can these days and it’s hard to hate on butter,” the article says. Read the rest at PRINT.

    “Naïve” design
    Image courtesy of the LA Times.

    The LA Times examines the latest book design trend: naïve design. (Yes, I pretentiously style that like the New Yorker does. The LA Times does not.) It’s where serious subjects wear … nostalgic cover designs, to use a phrase. Find out why.

    Parenthetically, of the covers mentioned in that article, only one — by design legend Na Kim — has found its way into my 2026 Favorite Covers folder. It’ll be a minute, but stay tuned to find out which.

    Special bonus #1: “You’ll need a magnifying glass to read these,” says This is Colossal:

    Courtesy of the V&A Museum.

    Special bonus #2: A favorite collectible (and slight tangent), these books “keep a lost design legacy alight,” says It’s Nice That:

    A sample from The Matchbook Book by CentreCentre. 

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

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

    CreativeBoom‘s regular feature contains sixteen choices this month — awesome! — but I’d like to just highlight my three favorites: 

    Archibrazo by Rubén Fontana.

    “Rubén Fontana is one of the most respected figures in Latin American type design, and Archibrazo, released through TypeTogether earlier this year, represents a characteristically considered piece of work. The typeface brings together two traditions that might seem at odds: the fluidity of calligraphic practice and the hardness of sculptural form. The result is a serif family that wears its sources with confidence, without collapsing into historicism or affectation.”

    See more at TypeTogether.

    Djaggety by Alessia Mazzaarella.

    “Djaggety began in a classroom. Alessia Mazzarella of Typeland, who teaches type design to BA Graphic Design students, uses an 8×8 grid exercise as a standard introduction to letterform construction. The constraint, she explains, strips away the paralysis of infinite choice and forces students to focus on what makes a character recognisable within a tightly defined system. During one iteration of the exercise, she found herself drawn into the process rather than simply demonstrating it. […] Overall, it’s a good lesson in how constraint can generate, rather than foreclose, creative possibilities.”

    See more at Typeland.

    Musikal by Fred’s Fonts.

    “After three years in development on Future Fonts, Fred Wiltshire’s Musikal has reached v1.0: a significant milestone for a typeface that began with a conscious act of divergence. Herman Ihlenburg’s Obelisk (1880s) served as the starting point: a high-contrast, ornamental display face of considerable geometric rigour and decorative confidence. Rather than reviving Obelisk directly, Wiltshire took its ‘playful nature’ as a conceptual springboard and built something clearly of the present.”

    See more at Future Fonts.

    Letterform Archives’ new celebration of hand-painted type
    One example — I mean, who can argue with “Lettres Riches Fantaisie“?

    “A new book published by Letterform Archive, Lettres Décoratives: A Century of French Sign Painters’ Alphabets, celebrates the vivacity and timelessness of French sign painting from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Compiled from lithograph portfolios, which range from 1875 to around 1932, the volume includes more than 150 full-color reproductions of these bold lettering samples. These portfolios once served as catalogue-like albums, providing inspiration for styles and motifs that could be translated onto large billboards and small signage alike.”

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

    Cambridge’s old Baskerville ounches

    Heavy metal for the type crowd:

    Image courtesy of Cambridge University.

    “John Baskerville was an influential 18th-century printer and type designer; you’ve probably used (or at least heard of) the Baskerville typeface. Cambridge University has the original punches used to create his signature typeface and has made high-res digital photos of them available online,” Kottke writes. “[S]eeing close-ups of the actual cut & shaped metal from 1757 is something else.”

    In case you’re not familiar:

    The typographic punch is the initial design for the letterform and one of the first of three stages in the manufacturing of metal type: short lengths of steel onto which his letters were cut in reverse and in relief. The punch was ‘tempered’ to increase its toughness and enable its use as a tool. Secondly, the punch was struck into the surface of a softer piece of metal (copper), leaving an impression of the ‘right-reading’ character to be cast. This was called the matrix. Finally, type was manufactured when the matrix was passed to the type-caster and inserted into a mould, into which molten lead-alloy was poured. This produced a cast of the type in relief and in reverse which were then arranged to create a text block and once inked, paper could be pressed against it.

    Not just hi-res photos of punches for various sizes of type, either: some have 3D versions. Very cool.

    Special bonus #3: The menu that never was:

    World Class Female Singers.

    Okay, okay, that’s not actually an unused menu from before Apple’s Macintosh was released in 1984, but how it came about isn’t something I’m going to quote. Instead, I’m just going to ask you to read it in full — it’s fantastic.

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

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

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

    (Via Kottke.)

    AIGA NY: 50 years of posters
    Just one example of the many posters now available for your persual.

    “A 50-year goldmine of design: AIGA New York unveils its poster archive to the public,” It’s Nice That reports. “A newly opened window into its design archive, this unique visual library provides the public with an inside view of the design, art and activism that’s emerged from the city’s recent history. AIGA NY has ambitions for the collection to become physically accessible with an accompanying book that will showcase the posters in more depth.”

    Adobe, yet again
    DNG now standard

    Let’s start with the positive:

    “In March 2004, Australian photographer Robert Edwards asked a simple but meaningful question on Rob Galbraith’s now-defunct photography forums: ‘Could Adobe make a RAW format?’ The answer was very much ‘yes,’ and Adobe announced the DNG format, or Digital Negative, later that same year. Now, more than two decades later, DNG is now the official standard under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO),” PetaPixel writes.

    From back in the day.

    I remember lurking on Rob Galbraith site. Such were the importance of his forums — and, for that matter, the overall size and condition of the ’net in the early Aughties — that Thomas Knoll himself, one of the creators of Photoshop, would post there.

    In case you’re not familiar, a camera’s RAW file is what the sensor sees at the moment of exposure, stored in a format for later editing. It’s completely different from a JPG file, which has all the camera’s choices baked in to the final image. Sports or journalism photographers usually shoot JPG, due to the need to post immediately; social media photography is, of course, its own animal.

    Most fine photographers — that is, folks who shoot for art or pleasure, including your author — only shoot RAW, because it gives you maximum flexibility in “look.”

    I’m honestly not sure how much of a difference this will make, but it’s nice to see DNG accepted as a standard — and it’s an example of Adobe meaningfully contributing to the bigger picture. 

    Train Adobe’s AI on your style

    From the “mixed” department:

    It’s not tin foil.

    Adobe has launched Firefly Custom Models, “allowing artists to generate image variations that ‘more consistently reflect’ their own style, subject, or characters. 

    Adobe’s Deepa Subramaniam says, “Today, we’re expanding access to Firefly custom models, which let you turn your creative style into a reusable model trained on your own images. In this public beta release, custom models are optimized for ideation in character, illustration and photographic style.” 

    The goal of Custom Models, according to PetaPixel, is to “allow artists to train Adobe’s Firefly AI specifically to unique workflows so that when it generates content, it is more aligned with their specific style.”

    Hmmm. How ’bout practical effects? Seriously, this might turn out to be useful. Time will tell. Helmet of tin flowers and all.

    CEO retires. Stock … down?

    Here’s where the attitude sneaks in: most of us, present company included, are sick of Adobe’s attitude towards its customers.

    “Adobe’s longtime CEO, Shantanu Narayen, announced this week that he is stepping down after 18 years as CEO and nearly 30 years at the company. If you ask shareholders, Narayen was, for a long time, among the very best in the biz. If you ask Adobe’s core customers, the artists who were once indispensable to the company’s success, it’s a different story,” writes Jeremy Gray in an opinion piece for PetaPixel.

    Adobe made more than $7 billion in net profit last year, a clear win for shareholders. This is due to their choice to treat creatives as a profit center. But their stock is down because their AI efforts have fallen flat — Firefly is way behind Midjourney or Gemini — and the planned additional profit center has failed to materialize. 

    And by “down,” I mean significantly. During Narayen’s tenure, Adobe’s share price increased from around $40 in late 2007 when he took over to an all-time high of $688.37 in 2021. But as of this writing, it’s $243. “Although Adobe and Narayen are painting his departure as entirely the outgoing CEO’s decision,” Gray continues, “it’s easy to wonder whether tumbling share prices had something to do with the transition, or at least sped up existing plans.

    “I respect the sheer scale of what he achieved. I admire that he grew Adobe so that it could hire more great workers to build better software. But for me, Narayen’s legacy is ultimately one of treating [creatives] like an afterthought […] using our passion and love for art to boost his brand.”

    I understand that Adobe has become one the Internet’s favorite punching bags of late, and I try to distance myself from that sport (no matter the subject). But I can’t help but agree with many of the things expressed in that piece.

    Let’s hope that the future bring change, one way or another. For many professionals, Adobe essentially holds a monopoly. 

    But then, so did Microsoft.

    Special bonus #4: Unsung asks, “Why wouldn’t everyone deserve the gift of focus?” He’s talking about the tragically-short-lived focus mode in Photoshop, wherein the user isn’t automatically shown pop-ups or blaring (bleating?) buttons regarding new features.

    I mention this because I just uninstalled Acrobat, Adobe’s PDF management program, because I couldn’t turn off the pop-ups, sharing invitations, or requests to add comments. All I wanted was to proof documents, but what I was gifted with was frustration — even anger, on days where a deadline was involved. 

    Special bonus #5: “A slap on the wrist” is understatement writ large:

    “Canceling a software subscription is supposed to be easy — that’s what US law dictates. Adobe, however, has played fast and loose with its Creative Cloud subscriptions in the past. The company was sued by the Department of Justice in 2024 due to its practice of hiding hefty termination fees when customers signed up. The case has now been settled, with Adobe agreeing to a $75 million fine and matching free services to users of its products,” Ars Technica writes.

    The company doesn’t admit to violating the law. “While we disagree ⁠with the government’s claims and deny any wrongdoing, we are pleased to resolve this matter,” Adobe said in a statement.

    March photo round-up

    Okay, let’s switch gear and end with inspiration — even happiness.

    International Garden Photographer of the Year 2026

    Yes, you read that right: there’s an international contest for the best garden photograph. (If you want hard-hitting stuff, see Sony’s awards. There’s enough “news” in the world, so….)

    Grange Fell Last Light. Overall Winner. Photograph by Mark Hetherington.

    Soothing. The image also earned first place in the Breathing Spaces — more soothing —category, and was captured in Borrowdale in England’s Lake District; the “photograph shows heather, silver birch trees, and the warm light of sunset viewed from Grange Fell,” PetaPixel writes.

    See all the winning photographs at the contest website.

    British wildlife
    Asleep at the Wheel. Winner, Urban Wildlife. Photograph by Simon Withyman.

    It’s a shame these are still photographs. Hearing a red fox bark in a British accent would be a hoot.

    Standing Tall. Winner, Animal Portrait. Photograph by Alastair Marsh.

    Proof that excellence in photography extends to all parts of the realm. See all twenty-one winners at This is Colossal or PetaPixel.

    London Camera Exchange Photographer of the Year 2026

    Last of the items originating in the UK this month, although the excellent photographs within aren’t limited to just those countries. Some examples:

    Crossing the Curves. Winner, Street. Photograph by Helen Trust.

    “A lone cyclist moves through sweeping arcs of light and shadow at the City of Arts and Sciences. Reflections echo the architecture’s rhythm, momentarily aligning human motion with structure, symmetry, and space.”

    Saving Lives at Sea. Winner, Action. Photograph by David Lyon.

    “Captured from the shore, during a regular Newhaven training exercise.”

    Magical Uphill Lincoln. Winner, People’s Choice. Photograph by Andrew Scott.

    “This image was taken during golden hour in Lincoln. The image captures the historic streets and architecture of Lincoln as a golden sunset sets in. […] The golden glow of the sky, cobbles and light from the window add that extra dimension in terms of how the overall image works as a result.” (The description somehow missed “soothing.”)

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

    Andrew Moore: Theater

    “Known for his atmospheric photographs of landscapes, interiors, and urban centers that feel mysteriously locked in a not-so-distant past, Andrew Moore’s enigmatic images invite us into a slippage of time,” This is Colossal writes.

    Grand Luncheonette, New York, 1996. Photograph by Andrew Moore.

    Not only great, but currently on display: Moore has a solo show running at Atlanta’s Jackson Fine Art. (Update: The show ended March 21st, darned it. I’d have gone if I’d read that properly.)

    Cinematic plastic

    No, not current events — something better:

    Jurassic Pit. Photograph by Chuck Eiler.

    “Chicago-based photographer Chuck Eiler transforms action figures into cinematic, story-driven miniature worlds that blur the line between toy photography and film. Through meticulously crafted sets, practical effects, and careful lighting, he creates immersive scenes that bring nostalgia and storytelling to life,” PetaPixel writes.

    Apex Predators. Photograph by Chuck Eiler.

    Awesome. (And available as prints, in case you want for your sandbox walls.)

    Finally: duck this

    Last month saw the incredible fresh pasta camera. Well, in case you think I only recommend a vegetarian lifestyle, there’s…:

    Four Minutes in London.

    Martin Cheung’s Chinese roast duckcam. 

    Presumably, he throws a fresh camera into the oven every time he needs one: “I will continue making Duckcam while I travel, so next time when you see a person with a roasted duck on a tripod, please say hello to me.”

    Enjoy your spring, everyone!

  • Beautifully Briefed, 25.11: More than Turkey Here

    Beautifully Briefed, 25.11: More than Turkey Here

    This month, the usual fontastic newness and photographic excellence. and I veer into nostalgia — maybe, perhaps, soapboxing — for the web’s “old days.” Also, for those in the U.S., I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Pack up your leftovers and settle in.

    University Press Coverage on Spine

    This month’s column has some good stuff — On Gaslighting has been a favorite for a minute, and Post-Weird is pretty much guaranteed to make an appearance in January — but I thought I’d give the first of two shout-outs to the University of Georgia:

    Cover design by Erin Kirk.

    Check out my regular column at Spine. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the other UGA mention below.

    50, Mega: It’s all auld Neue
    CreativeBoom: 50 Fonts for 2025
    Hatton by Pengram Pengram.

    In their annual feature (previously), CreativeBoom lists fifty fonts that “will be popular with designers in 2025.” Most are paid, a few are free, and several are awesome.

    Neue Machina by Pengram Pengram.

    It’s sometimes hard to see — yes, a new website is on the radar — but there are links in the captions if you’re interested. (Just to the website; I don’t do affiliate links, full stop.)

    RST Thermal by Reset.

    See the whole list.

    Megazoid
    DJR’s mega effort. The website is cool, too.

    Described by Kottke as having “Radio Shack vibes,” David Jonathan Ross — DJR — brings us this retro-futuristic fantastic-ness, to coin a term.

    Auld English
    A “playful experiment” that is, in fact, quite a bit more.

    In addition to the “Mock Tutor” long-s character (optional), it’ll even (temporarily) change your spelling to proper English, none of this American stuff. Oh, and it looks properly auld school. Free for personal use, with licensing for professional use.

    Special Bonus #1: 90 years of Penguin type, brought to you by CreativeBoom.

    I must be getting old, part one: griping
    Needy software
    A detail of the advertisement in the print edition (!) of The Onion.

    The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.

    — About Us page, theonion.com

    “It is an incredibly competitive market for Creative Software. Adobe knows the best way to stay relevant in a space with so many options is to provide their customers with incremental adjustments and AI-powered conveniences to improve their birthday invitations on a monthly basis, all at a fluctuating yearly price point,” The Onion tells PetaPixel in an email. “This is the kind of ingenuity and integrity we are proud to advertise in America’s Finest News Source.”

    Meanwhile, Pixel Envy points us to a post by Nakita Prokopov — no, I’ve never heard of him either — with an incredibly salient point: that software has gone from something we need … to something that needs us.

    The company needs to announce a new feature and makes a popup window about it. Read this again: The company. Needs. It’s not even about the user. Never has been.

    Both of those are worth a read — but it’s the notation after the quote that makes the Pixel Envy post special: mention of Photoshop’s “Quiet Mode.”

    Wait. What?

    That’s right: Adobe actually recognizes that it’s gone so overboard with it’s notifications, blue dots, pop-ups, and helpful “feature introductions” that it’s invented a preference setting to reduce — not eliminate, ’cause — interruptions to your workflow.

    Now all they need to do is bring it to InDesign, Lightroom, Illustrator, ….

    Cracker Barrel: falsehoods, cheesy falsehoods, and statistics

    CreativeBoom usually works for me: more content than not, if you know what I mean. (The article on typography and Penguin linked above, for instance.) Alas, their recent article on Cracker Barrel — “The Cracker Barrel rebrand: a $100M masterclass in brand value” — so widely missed the mark that it’s shameful.

    All because the author is speaking to a fixed narrative instead of the facts.

    “When Cracker Barrel’s shiny new look caused its stock to drop by almost $200 million, the internet laughed. But buried in the chaos was a golden lesson: what happens when you forget that brand isn’t just visuals—it’s value, emotion, and culture, all rolled into one,” writes Cat How, a founder and executive creative director of How&How branding agency and, apparently, her real name. (“A former journalist and design critic, she leads climate and mentorship initiatives including GetSet and GetEven, and […] an Ambassador for UN Women,” her bio reads.)

    The thing is: her journalism is at issue here. But what gives me, basically a nobody, the right to say that? Well, thank Brand New.

    That website is subscription, so I’ll have to summarize their brief post. No, to heck with that, I’ll quote it in its entirety:

    Cyabra, which offers an AI platform that shields companies and governments by uncovering fake profiles, harmful narratives, GenAI content, deepfakes, and other digital misinformation, analyzed the Cracker Barrel backlash and found that 21% of profiles discussing its logo change were fake accounts orchestrating a coordinated disinformation campaign that, in turn, triggered thousands of direct engagements from real profiles, which is when things start to snowball. This, apparently, is a full-fledged business known as Rage Farms, deploying bots to purposely harm brands. 

    — Armin Vit, Brand New

    Those twenty-one percent of profiles discussing Cracker Barrel’s logo change were identified “as fake accounts orchestrating a coordinated disinformation campaign, whose […] content reached over 4.4 million potential views and thousands of authentic profiles’ engagements, [and that] manufactured outrage correlated with a 10.5% stock price drop,” and, viola, $100M in market value, Cyabra writes.

    “Disinformation-as-a-Service” has become a profitable, global criminal enterprise: low-cost, high-impact bot networks hired to attack and destroy businesses and individuals … like you. And the social media platforms that could stop them won’t, because chaos is profitable. Propelled by AI, these strikes are targeting brands big and small. And the financial consequences are real — sliding stock prices, damaged brand equity, ruined careers.

    — Mark Schaefer, businessgrow.com

    That second quote, a follow-up to Cyabra’s post, is worth reading.

    Now, to be clear: without complete information, Cat How’s post at CreativeBoom seems legit. But with that information, published almost a week before, it’s exactly what those fake profiles were after: justifying something when it shouldn’t be — and damaging reputations, including Cat How’s.

    “One wonders how often this occurs,” he said … without a trace of snark.

    Special Bonus #2: Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era. “This is likely not the first story you have read about a freelancer managing to land bylines in prestigious publications thanks to dependency on A.I. tools,” Pixel Envy‘s Nick Heer writes, “but it is one told very well.”

    Special Bonus #3: Things do not necessarily need to be an outright fake to contribute to the problem. Many of you might have seen this image:

    Accomplished, complicated, and … not quite what it seems.

    PetaPixel speaks glowingly of the process, the coordination, and laps up the marketing. But: it’s a composite. Interesting parts made with a good deal of effort — but made into something implied to be awesome when, in fact, it’s Photoshop.

    I must be getting old, part two: those were the days

    Elizabeth Spiers, “Requiem for Early Blogging”:

    The growth of social media in particular has wiped out a particular kind of blogging that I sometimes miss: a text-based dialogue between bloggers that required more thought and care than dashing off 180 or 240 characters and calling it a day. In order to participate in the dialogue, you had to invest some effort in what media professionals now call “building an audience” and you couldn’t do that simply by shitposting or responding in facile ways to real arguments.

    There’s a part of me that hopes that the most toxic social media platforms will quietly implode because they’re not conducive to it, but that is wishcasting; as long as there are capitalist incentives behind them, they probably won’t. I still look for people with early blogger energy, though — people willing to make an effort to understand the world and engage in a way that isn’t a performance, or trolling, or outright grifting. Enough of them, collectively, can be agents of change.

    — Elizabeth Spiers

    A progressive columnist, Spiers makes the argument that it is possible to work against the rage that so dominates at the moment; if you’ve not heard of her, she says, “Whether I like it or not, the first line of my obituary will probably be that I was the founding editor of Gawker.com.”

    As a reminder, I don’t participate in social media. What I have to say is said here, on the record, under my own name, with all the consequences that entails. (Especially this month.) I’m old school enough — I’ve been blogging since the ’90s — to expect want any responses to be posted in a similar venue: a conversation between people rather than a fight between usernames.

    Special Bonus #4: Doc Searls, old school emeritus, suggests that it is, in fact, appropriate to capitalize: Internet and Web, even if there’s a “the” involved. On the other hand, Dave Winer, arguably the most emeritus of the old school, doesn’t. Section 7.85 of the Chicago Manual of Style says no — but Doc’s argument is a strong one.

    While we’re on the subject of social media…

    Short-form video platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are now a major part of daily life for many people. Our synthesis of 71 studies revealed that greater engagement with these platforms is associated with poorer cognitive and mental health in both youths and adults.

    — 2025 American Psychological Association study

    One fix? Art. According to The Guardian:

    The research clearly shows the stress-reducing properties of viewing original art and its ability to simultaneously excite, engage and arouse us. Stress hormones and inflammatory markers […] are linked to a wide range of health problems, from heart disease and diabetes to anxiety and depression. The fact that viewing original art lowered these markers suggests that cultural experiences may play a real role in protecting both mind and body.

    — Dr Tony Woods, researcher, King’s College London

    “It’s always a good time to look at art,” Kottke writes, pointing to Korean artist Lee Hyun-Joung’s work, Poetic Texture:

    Artwork by Lee Hyun-Joung.

    We all need museum breaks — make time whenever you can. Even if it’s from home.

    Special Bonus #5: I would argue that the average reader of this blog would suggest books, too; check out LitHub‘s interviews with National Book Awards Finalists for some worthwhile titles.

    November’s photography round-up
    UGA: Historic Rural Churches

    For a while, I had it on my list to do a photographic tour of rural and abandoned churches across Georgia. There are a ton, and some of them are quite photogenic.

    This one in Talbotton,1I took the opportunity to remaster these photographs to both correct an unnoticed error and for better consistency between the photographs taken in 2022 and those in 2025. for instance:

    Historic Zion Episcopal Church, Circa 1848, Talbotton, Georgia
    Zion Episcopal Church (Detail #3), Talbotton, Georgia

    Alas, that project faded in importance, partially because I learned of the first volume of … you guessed it, Historic Rural Churches of Georgia, from UGA Press.

    Now there’s a second volume — and a bundle — available. Check ’em out.

    Oregon’s Trail of Tears, photographed

    While we’re on the subject of interesting photography projects, this one is worth notice: retracing one of America’s (all-too-many) Trail of Tears:

    Photography by Nolan Streitberger.

    By any measure, photographer Nolan Streitberger has built a practice that bridges art, history, and the profoundly personal. His work, particularly his acclaimed project Oregon’s Trail of Tears, transforms beautiful photography into both historical document and dialogue, a means of reclaiming memory and giving voice to stories long overlooked.

    — Kate Garibaldi, PetaPixel

    Done manually, using a wet-plate, Eastman No. 33A large-format camera from 1935, he’s done something extraordinary. Take a moment and explore this great work.

    Where George Orwell wrote 1984

    Another large-format discovery:

    Jura Stream, Scotland. Photograph by Craig Easton.

    “Easton’s interior photographs of household items perfectly capture the simplicity of Orwell’s life[.] Collectively, they create an atmospheric vision of Orwell’s time on the island and the mood, desire and hope he experienced,” PetaPixel writes.

    Table Still Life, Scotland. Photograph by Craig Easton.

    Get the story.

    Close-Up Photographer of the Year shortlist, 2025
    Fatal Jump. Photograph by Bence Mate.

    Some great stuff to peruse — admittedly, most long-list than shortlist — in multiple categories of natural subjects at the website. The winners will be announced in January.

    Farewell to Autumn. Photograph by Catherine Illsley.

    Via This is Colossal.

    Nature Photographer of the Year, 2025
    Overall Winner: Sundance. Photograph by Åsmund Keilen.

    Another in the “annual treat” category, this European contest features some incredibly accomplished work.

    Chamois. Photograph by Jakubowski Radomir.

    See a round-up at PetaPixel or visit the contest’s website.

    British Photography Awards, 2025

    Standard photography contest, perhaps, but I swear there’s a bit of that uniquely British humor showing.

    Bar Hair Day. Photograph by Jayne Bond.

    If you’ve ever been close up to a pelican, you’ll know that they’re neither small nor particularly friendly; this great shot ably demonstrates both.

    While we’re on the subject of neither small nor particulately (sic) friendly:

    Shadows of Industry. Photograph by Harvey Tomlinson.

    Imagine living there. No, don’t: go enjoy the other winners instead. (Via PetaPixel.)

    Royal Photographic Society Awards, 2025

    The Royal Photographic Society Awards began 147 years ago — the world’s oldest — celebrating photography as an art form.

    This shot, for instance, taken without a camera:

    Full Moon, Hawthorn. Artwork by Susan Derges.

    The RPS notes that Derges’ photographic work explores humanity’s relationship to the natural world, often by bringing natural phenomena to life in the photographic medium in new and exciting ways. For example, Derges has exposed the physical movement of rivers and oceans onto photosensitive materials at night using moonlight, carefully composing plants and other natural matter in front of photosensitive paper, and then exposing it to light, and exposing photosensitive materials to sound waves, letting the frequencies create the final prints.

    — Jeremy Gray, PetaPixel

    Plenty of other deserving artists, as well, but they use cameras:

    Artic Heroes, Ittoqqortoomiit Storm. Photograph by Ragnar Axelsson.

    See the website for all the honorees. (Via PetaPixel.)

    Best nature photography, 2026 showcase

    No, you read that right: the first winners of next year, from the North American Nature Photography Association:

    Cormorant Diving. Photograph by Kevin Lohman.

    Most of these contain detail best seen at larger sizes. (See the website.) Well, okay, except maybe this one, which is cute at any size:

    Fox Kit with Helper. Photograph by Marcia Walters.
    Thank you for visiting

    That’s it from here for November. I still owe you coverage of AIGA’s 50 Books | 50 Covers (update: posted); weather permitting, there will be a new photography gallery mid-month; there will, of course, another Beautifully Briefed at the turn of 2026; and, don’t forget my annual Favorite Book Covers post mid-January. Please have a happy and healthy holiday season.

    • 1
      I took the opportunity to remaster these photographs to both correct an unnoticed error and for better consistency between the photographs taken in 2022 and those in 2025.
  • Beautifully Briefed 25.6: Spine

    Beautifully Briefed 25.6: Spine

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

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

    University Presses Coverage on Spine

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

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

    I said “yes” without a second thought.

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

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

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

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

    Extraordinary artwork, handled extremely well. Also:

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

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

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

    Special mention: Macon’s Mercer University Press:

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

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

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

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

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

    An insightful highlight:

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

    — Arsh Raziuddin, wearing her book design hat

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

    Book design by Arsh Raziuddin.

    It’s a treat to see some rough drafts:

    Book design by Arsh Raziuddin.

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

    Book design by Arsh Raziuddin.

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

    More Great Design Items, Briefly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    — Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

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

    Sigh.

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

    “The glove,” he said.

    Special Bonus #2: Quentin Blake illustrates Animal Farm.

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

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

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

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

    Thankfully, Apple listened. Sort of.

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

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

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

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

    In other words: Liquid Glass > tradition.

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

    Photographic Goodness
    Theibault Trebles

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

    Richard Wagner station, Berlin. Photograph by Theibault Drutel.

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

    Solna Centrum station, Stockholm. Photograph by Theibault Drutel.

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

    Nat Geo Traveler Photo Contest 2025

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

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

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

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

    National Park Foundation Celebrates America the Beautiful

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

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

    See more at PetaPixel.

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

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

    Full Circle: 2.1 Trillion

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

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

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

    Source: Photutorial

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

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

  • Beautifully Briefed 25.5: Cool

    Beautifully Briefed 25.5: Cool

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

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

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

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

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

    Thanks very much for stopping by — genuinely appreciated.

    “Good Movies as Old Books,” Again

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

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

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

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

    The History of Album Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There May be Typefaces Here

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

    The Sita Collection, from Order

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

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

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

    Sofia Pro by Mostardesign.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    RobinHood, as rebranded by Porto Rocha.

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

    See if you agree. (Via BrandNew.)

    Let’s Talk about Adobe, again

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

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

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

    And hyping the value:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    May Photography Round-up

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

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

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

    The German Society of Nature Photographers

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

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

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

    From Norway to Hong Kong

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

    Photograph by Arild Heitman.

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

    Photograph by Arild Heitman.

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

    “44.” Photograph by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze.

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

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

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

    Paris in Color

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

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

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

    Google Street View, undated.

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

    Looking Up

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

    Photograph by Aman Chokshi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Have a great weekend!

  • Beautifully Briefed 24.8: Picture This

    Beautifully Briefed 24.8: Picture This

    A trio of miscellany, a trio of space photography, more than a trio of great black and white photography, and a single, very serious photography question for you this time — let’s get right into it.

    Summer of Fun Miscellany
    Intermezzo, Explained
    The UK cover for Intermezzo. Book design by Kishan Rajani. (The US cover doesn’t compare.)

    GQ UK has an interview with Kishan Rajani, a senior designer at Faber, and Pete Adlington, the publisher’s art director, “about how the Intermezzo design came together, the role of social media in modern book design, and how to make books ‘as pickupable as possible.’”

    The endpapers for Intermezzo (UK). I really like that they’ve sweated the little details.

    We can discuss “pickupable” as a word another time — your time is better spent, for now, reading the interview.

    WeTransfer Sold

    “Some of Bending Spoons’ most successful products are tools that serve creativity, therefore we are confident that this milestone will complement both businesses, supercharge our growth, and help us create even more value for creative industries at large,” says WeTransfer CEO Alexander Vassilev of the acquisition.

    I like and appreciate WeTransfer — unlike the corporatespeak above (but hey, we’re inventing words today … right?) — and hope that despite being corporatized, nothing substantive will change.

    PetaPixel: “The companies did not say whether or not all staff or leadership at WeTransfer would be maintained after the conclusion of the acquisition. That may come into question since Bending Spoons does have a track record of buying completed products, training its internal staff on their upkeep, and then releasing the original development team.”

    Crap.

    Update, 9 September, 2024: “Bending Spoons acquired file-sharing platform WeTransfer in July and has now laid off 75% of WeTransfer’s staff,” PetaPixel reports. “The Italian app company Bending Spoons has confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch, which comprise at least 260 people based on WeTransfer’s employee headcount of around 350 people.”

    Adobe, Again
    The Adobe “World Headquarters” buildings in San Jose, California. Image via PetaPixel.

    Adobe (previously) recently sat down with PetaPixel to discuss the shambles where things stand — clearly, an attempt at damage control. PP published it … and got some feedback:

    Adobe couldn’t explain why it let its once excellent relationship with photographers and media lapse, only that it is sorry that happened. I do believe [their explanation], at least when I hear it from the people responsible for making the software. There is a big divide between the folks who code Photoshop and the C-level executives who are so out of touch with the end users. The thing is, it doesn’t matter what those people down in the trenches of development say or even how good Adobe’s software happens to be, some photographers just don’t like the feeling of giving money to the company because of the people at the helm.

    Jaron Schneider, PetaPixel

    The thing is: it’s less photography, really, than design. If you’re a photographer, how you get to the point of printing or publishing the photographs offers options in software — whether iPhoto, Affinity, Photoshop, or the Pixel 9 Magic Editor — Instagram doesn’t care, Zenfolio takes multiple file formats, and so on.

    But in design — that is, desktop publishing or especially book design — Adobe has a monopoly over the software used by the industry, full stop. I used to love working with their software. Today, not so much. (And for the record, it’s more than their fees, it’s the quality of the software.) It’s extremely frustrating and, at the moment, there is no alternative even on the horizon.

    Crap. (Again.)

    Extraordinary Astrophotography

    So, how many can place Kyrgyzstan on a map? It’s a former Soviet Republic in Central Asia, and, clearly, a great place to do some astrophotography.

    Star Trails Above Tash Rabat by Soumyadeep Mukherjee.

    PetaPixel highlights the work of Soumyadeep Mukherjee, who traveled there specifically for the purpose — and succeeded wildly. It’s awesome to see a country I’m not familiar with served so well. (My favorite, of course, is the short depth-of-field portrait — if you can call it that — of Yuri Gargarin, seen in the header image above.)

    Alternatively, This is Colossal points us at “Bisected by the Milky Way, a Stellar Image Captures the Perseid Meteor Shower Raining Down on Stonehenge“:

    Perseid Meteors over Stonehenge by Josh Dury.

    “Josh Dury, aka ‘Starman,’ is an award-winning landscape astrophotographer, presenter, speaker and writer from The Mendip Hills ‘Super National Nature Reserve’ in Somerset, United Kingdom,” his web site trumpets.

    The thing is … despite looking like he’s about 25, he’s earned it. Great stuff.

    Meanwhile, back at PetaPixel, “Photographer Aaron Watson, who goes by Skies Alive Photography, has seen many incredible things in the night sky. His latest sighting is a rare double ‘moonbow,’ a rainbow created by bright moonlight in precise conditions.”

    Double Moonbow by Aaron Watson.

    All three of these folks need special thanks for their patience. I have trouble standing still long enough to set up a tripod, let alone do long exposures under rarely-encountered combinations of time, weather, equipment and location — plus lots of good luck — in the middle of the night. Well done, all.

    “Majesty of Monochrome”

    The winners of the third annual Black and White Photo Awards have been unveiled, showcasing the best in monochrome photography across multiple categories.

    Monochrome Majesty: Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, by Robert Fulop. Bronze Mention from the Black and White Photo Awards 2024.

    Naturally, I gravitate towards architecture — and the winners (of the nearly 5000 entrants) demonstrate serious talent.

    Bench, by Colin Page. Finalist from the Black and White Photo Awards 2024.
    The Double Helix, by Md Tanveer Rohan. Finalist from the Black and White Photo Awards 2024.
    Windows by Manfred Gruber. Finalist from the Black and White Photo Awards 2024.

    See the winners — and especially, take in the finalists, many of which I’d personally judge to be winners in their own right — at the contest’s web site.

    Special Bonus #1: It’s time once again for the annual iPhone Awards, “a powerful testament to the art of storytelling through photography.” I especially liked this one:

    Bicycle Forest by James Kittendorf. 3rd place in the Cityscape category, 2024 IPPAwards.

    It’s a great photograph, certainly, but it was taken by a now-quite-elderly iPhone X — proof, once again, that it’s the camera you have with you. See all the 2024 winning photographs, in multiple categories and taken worldwide, here. (Via PetaPixel.)

    So … What’s Next for Photography?

    The Verge: “Anyone who buys a Pixel 9 — the latest model of Google’s flagship phone, available starting this week — will have access to the easiest, breeziest user interface for top-tier lies, built right into their mobile device.”

    A montage from The Verge, thankfully clearly labeled.

    Life-changing moments have long been captured using photography, from Moonrise to George Floyd. But, generally, fakes were the exception, not the rule. We’re, unfortunately, arming the folks who cry foul.

    Another montage from The Verge. Note the woods filled in behind the helicopter less convincingly than the accident, above — but how many are going to notice?

    It does this article disrespect to summarize. Just go read: “No one’s ready for this.”

    Special Bonus #2: Nick Heer, at Pixel Envy, articulates what needs to be said: “anyone can now radically and realistically alter an entire scene within minutes of taking a photo. [O]ur expectations need to change.”

  • Beautifully Briefed 24.6: Summer of Win (Mostly)

    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.