creativeboom – Giles Hoover

June 30, 2025June 30, 2025

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”:

It’s a treat to see some rough drafts:

“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:

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:

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:

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.

May 31, 2025June 9, 2025

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

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:

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.

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:

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:¹

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.

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:

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:

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.”

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!

1
Oddly, Mother Design’s page on Adobe, mentioned in Google Search results, now nets a 404 error. I wonder what that’s about.

March 31, 2025April 29, 2025

Beautifully Briefed 25.3: March Madness

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

On Seriousness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rupert Murdoch, NYC. Photo by Fionn Guilfoyle.

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

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

From Citation Needed:

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

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

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

Update, 10 April 2025: Nick Heer:

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

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

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

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

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

On Libraries, Type, and Type Libraries

Museums and Libraries

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

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

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

The North Boulder library. Photograph by Bruce Damonte.

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

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

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

Type and Typography

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

Some of the typefaces offered at Feckled.

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

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

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

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

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

On A Wild Jaguar

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Wild Photography

Leica Turns 100

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nature and Wildlife Photography Awards

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

Fireworks, Brazil. Photograph by Marcio Esteves Cabral.

Feathers, Sri Lanka. Photograph by Pandula Bandara.

Devghali Beach, India. Photograph by Mantanu Majumder.

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

Ankle Bracelets, United States. Photograph by Charlotte Keast.

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

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

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

Street Cleaners, London. Photograph by Ben Lucas.

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

Declaration of Love. Photograph by Roland Kranitz.

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

2025 Sony Photography Awards

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

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

Naturally, I gravitate towards the architecture category:

Monochrome Majesty: Cuatro Torres Business Area, Spain. Photograph by Robert Fülöp.

The Guard, Netherlands. Photograph by Max van Son.

Centre of the Cosmos, China. Photograph by Xuecheng Liu.

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

The Darkest Skies

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

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

Special Bonus #3: Lego F1 action photography!

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

March 29, 2024July 30, 2024

Beautifully Briefed 24.3: Bloomin’ Breadth

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

Kottke Meets 2024

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

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

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

Fab Spring Type

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

Arillatype.Studio brings us a thousand glyphs of greatness.

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

See ’em all here.

Literary Three-Fer

M.C. Escher’s Lesser-Known Works

“The Drowned Cathedral,” a 1929 woodcut.

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

Multidimensional Libri

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

Oh, those Italians. Read on.

Book Design Snobbery

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

Photography Three-Fer

Winners of Monochromatic Minimalism

“Black Pearl” by Sascha Kohne. An honorable mention for the magazine, but a winner for me.

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

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

Aging Facades of France

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

Sony Photography Awards: Architecture

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

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

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

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

Old logo, left, new, right.

Late at following the industry trend of flat-is-better, because, well, Volkswagen. (Okay, I undersell. Perhaps.) Read the lack of news at Motor1¹ or The Drive, where they manage to convey the brand’s use of the phrase “digital touchpoints.”

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

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

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

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

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Motor1 also has a decent roundup of new car logos, from 2016-present, which underscores the “flatness” trend.

November 30, 2023March 30, 2024

Beautifully Briefed 23.11: Considerations

A selection of diverse items for this entry in the series: a new publication from The Guardian, open source fonts for your 2023 goodness (along with more for ’24), and the Natural Landscape Photography Award winners. Also: DAK. Let’s get into it.

The Long Read

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of The Guardian, including its unusual-for-journalism payment model (that, frankly, some outlets in the US would be wise to copy). Now, they’re on newsstands with a “bookazine” called The Long Read.

The back cover. (See the front cover at the left in the header image.)

“We know that for many people, myself included, when it comes to long, immersive pieces, reading in print […] is still the most satisfying reading experience, and one that should be cherished in a climate so saturated by disturbance,” quotes It’s Nice That. With most of these more evergreen stories taking months or even years to build, hardy print felt the best way for them to live. [A] ‘bookazine’, it balances all the things we love about magazines (“the drama, the pace, the energy”) with the considered typesetting of a book. A lot of attention was given to packaging its large volume of text – clocking in at 55,000 words – to make the reading experience as relaxing as possible, from body type size to column widths.
Liz Gorny, It’s Nice That

An article title page — indeed, the best of a newspaper magazine in book form.

Read more at It’s Nice That, and give The Long Read a look at The Guardian bookstore or a newsstand near you.

Three Open Source Fonts for 2023, and 50 for ’24

As a self-confessed font junkie, I’m always interested when a new one comes across the bow — but there are so many these days, they’ve unfortunately become almost commodities. (That’s a huge shame, but also a discussion for another time.) So it’s interesting when I see ones that are not only good but also available for everyone, free and open source.

Monaspace is the first of three I want to highlight, “a monospaced type superfamily with some modern tricks up its sleeve.” Designed for code — hence the monospace — it’s a successful answer to the question, “Letters on a grid is how we see our code. Why not make those letters better?”

Get the full story or download from GitHub.

B612 is designed for — get this — the screens on Airbus commercial planes. “[T]he challenge was to improve the display of information on the cockpit screens, in particular in terms of legibility and comfort of reading, and to optimize the overall homogeneity of the cockpit.” Read the back story here.

B612 is available from Google or GitHub.

Inter is described as, “The 21st century standard,” “a workhorse of a typeface carefully crafted & designed for a wide range of applications, from detailed user interfaces to marketing & signage.” One of the world’s most-used font families, it’s perfect when readability is at the fore.

Inter is detailed and downloadable here.

But there’s more!

Brinca by In-House International. (Image via *CreativeBoom*.)

CreativeBoom has their annual compilation of 50 new fonts for the coming year up, “a comprehensive list of the best fonts that demand your attention in 2024. We’ve compiled this comprehensive list by asking the creative industry for their favourites, analysing work from the last 12 months, and taking on board the design trends emerging right now.”

National Museum in Gdańsk by Tofu Studio. Featuring Migra by Pangram Pangram. (Image via *CreativeBoom*.)

Great stuff. Creative. Boom!

Special Bonus: Simon Garfield publishes biographies on Albertus, Baskerville and Comic Sans. Seriously:

The Natural Landscape Photography Awards

For once: a contest that demands more — like the original RAW files. (Literally the raw image from the camera, before processing, for those who don’t know — think film negatives, rather than the resulting prints.) Okay, sure, it’s not perfect; there are entry fees and it doesn’t have a long track record, but the rules are solid with respect to image integrity.

Of course, the quality of the subject chosen to photograph is, if you’ll pardon the expression, subjective. The overriding theme here seems to be the perfection of dramatic subtlety — not an easy thing to get right.

The two photographs above are both by Adam Gibbs and reflect the judges’ desire to reward photographers who display a diverse portfolio of subjects.

A winner from the “abstracts and details” category for the first and a great title for the second image that does indeed tell so many stories. Rounding it out, another beautiful black-and-white:

See the contest website for the complete selection of 2023 winners. (Via PetaPixel.)

Remember the DAK catalogs?

If you’re a certain age — that is, were around in the ’80s — the DAK catalog was a regular. (Give me one, together with a JC Whitney catalog, and a weekend was gone.) A recent post by Cabel Sasser brought it all back:

Oh, the products. The explanations. The fun.

I’m not going to spoil the effort put into the story of Drew Alan Kaplan, a.k.a. DAK, Joseph Sugarman, Products That Think, or any of it: go enjoy for yourself.

February 9, 2021January 29, 2022

Latest in Regular Sport: New Orwell Covers

Creativeboom points out that Heath Kane, not a citizen but in fact a subject of the Crown, has designed new covers for George Orwell’s classics Animal Farm, 1984, and more.

Two interesting things about this: they call it the “final printed edition,” without further explanation. I somehow doubt there won’t be more editions in print — high schoolers everywhere would mourn, professors cry, and surveillance societies everywhere smile. Okay, overdramatic, but still.

And, I really preferred this one: