Beautifully Briefed 25.8: Calming, Hopefully

Type opens up, the best designer you’ve never heard of, and photography to admire and inspire: all this and more for your August edification and enjoyment.

August University Press Coverage on Spine

Rather than show my favorite this month, I thought I’d share four of the runners up:

My favorite of the covers not in the Spine post.

Clockwise from upper left: Duke University Press, Mercer University Press, and two from the University of Washington. These are all good, but just missed being in the post because another option offered a better design — or story.

I’m highlighting these to celebrate the strong design in university work; despite limited budgets — or whatever other, shall we say, challenges universities face these days — most have realized that great design is worth the extra. Long live the University Press!

See the rest at Spine.

Fontastically usable

BrandNew points us at a little treasure posted by Smith and Diction: an expert’s take on which among the Google fonts are worth it, helpfully organized by category. Check it out.

FYI, it’s at Figma, a site I’d heard of but not interacted with, and which took me a minute to learn my way around. (Use the zoom in the upper right, then drag.)

In the comments at BrandNew, several folks point to the two Typewolf lists on the subject, one for Google and one for Adobe/Typekit. (Interestingly, I was not familiar with Typewolf; it was good enough to earn an instant bookmark. Stay tuned for more from them, certainly.)

That was on the 7th. On the 8th, BrandNew linked to a Google Design article on “the benefits of brands — for the brands and for users — making their proprietary typefaces open source and available to all to use, modify, and tinker with.” Google Fonts boasts 17 of them at the moment.

Lastly, on the 15th: Keep Calm and Icon. “Bettina Reinemann, Staff Experience Designer, Brand & Icons, at Adobe, offers an interesting and comprehensive deep dive into the evolution of a handful of Adobe’s most iconic, well, icons and how they have changed over the decades in style, meaning, and depiction.”

BrandNew is subscription, yes, but it’s one of the web’s subscription bargains at less than $25/year and packed with great stuff. I do wish they’d offer a free article or two within a given period of time so new folks can sample before purchasing, but that criticism aside, I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Many Thanks to … Double-Oh Who?

Joe Caroff, designer of so many things yet a so completely unknown personality, died on the 17th — one day short of his 104th (!) birthday. The Guardian has a nice obit … with this graphic:

The 2015 film by Sam Mendes, the 24th James Bond adventure.

That’s right, he’s the guy who designed that logo. John Gruber, at Daring Fireball, has a nice discussion of the logo and its usage within the Bond franchise. He also links to a bunch of Bond one-sheet posters, a couple of which I’d like to post:

The 1962 film by Terence Young, and
The 1987 film by John Glen, the 15th.

I’m of the age to have grown up with Roger Moore, and really liked Timothy Dalton’s first film — it’s a shame it crashed and burned with the second — whose portrayal of the character has an edge you don’t see again until Daniel Craig stepped into the role.

But I digress. Joe Caroff’s poster history covers some greats, including this one:

Original 1961 U.S. one sheet poster by Joe Caroff.

But it’s a tidbit on the Wiki entry that warrants my spending a minute remembering Joe Caroff: he designed the original jacket for Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead:

Jacket design by Joe Caroff. Photograph courtesy of The Norman Mailer Society.

When I had the privilege of redesigning The Mailer Review in 2017, the first cover paid homage to the above design:

The illustration is a self-portrait by Norman Mailer. (See Wikipedia for the old design.)

Read more about Joe Caroff’s many accomplishments at Print (spoiler: Steven Heller hadn’t heard of him before 2016!) or DesignWeek.

And Now For Something Completely … Wait.

A quick drive-by here: this is a Buick.

It’s quite literally out of this world: the Electra Orbit Concept is only for the Chinese market — their biggest. The interior, especially, has more than a few overtones of the Jaguar Type 00 concept. (Which is looking more and more prescient, frankly; see previous coverage.) Read more at Motor1 or the Autopian.

“Sedans are dead,” someone said. Hmph.
August’s Photography Faves
100 Years of the Leica 1
1925’s Leica 1, the world’s first mass-produced 35mm camera.

PetaPixel has a nice piece covering all of the many ways the Leica 1 — the first from “a tiny German camera company” — has had such an outsized influence on the huge world that is photography today.

The 2025 M11 New York Edition. You can absolutely see the family resemblance.
2025 iPhone Photography Awards

It’s time for the annual iPhone Photography Awards — and my annual observation that the camera you have with you is the most powerful of all. And since a substantial percentage of the world carries an iPhone, the possibilities are nearly endless.

PetaPixel has a round up of the winners, but it’s the honorable mentions I’d like to highlight:

Architecture: Photograph by Adrian Beasley, United Kingdom.
Architecture: Photograph by Vladyslav Vasylkevych, Ukraine.
Cityscapes: A second from Adrian Beasley, United Kingdom. (I didn’t see that until after I’d selected ones to post — and decided to post it anyway.)

Okay, one from 2nd place:

The famed “Other” category: Dominic Martín Dähncke, Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spain).

See many, many more — nearly all fantastic — at the IPPAwards website: 2025 iPhone Photography Awards Announces Winners of Its 18th Annual Competition.

Special Bonus #1: “Perhaps no building in the world captures the early 20th-century art deco movement quite like the Chrysler Building, which has been an iconic fixture in the Manhattan skyline since 1930. Its grace and beauty have captivated photographers for decades. For one NYC shooter, the building has become his life’s work. Mitchell Funk has been photographing the Chrysler Building for 50 years; his images are vibrant, eye-catching, and extremely creative.”

2025 Ocean Photographer of the Year Awards, and Prints for Wildlife

“Fragility, beauty, and urgency characterize” this competition, with “an emphasis on ocean conservation and the outsize influence humans have on marine life,” This is Colossal says. (More at PetaPixel, too.)

From the Adventure category: photograph by Ben Thouard.
Human Connections: photograph by Jianping Li.
Impact: photograph by Henley Spiers.

On that last one: “This green turtle was killed by a boat strike, an unnatural and unnecessary death for an endangered species,” says photographer Henley Spiers. “Only recently deceased, it is partly decomposed, with the haunting view of the bare skull in contrast to the skin, which remains on the rest of its body, and the juvenile fish which have adopted the turtle carcass as a form of safe refuge. We came across this turtle by chance, a dispiriting sight at the end of a long and fruitless day at sea. I can only hope that this image acts as a reminder of the enormous human burden placed on turtles and the ocean as a whole.”

It had the intended effect. Impact, indeed.

So, you might ask: how can I help? Prints for Wildlife is one way.

“Lifeboat,” Alaska. Photograph by Casey Cooper. (Sold out, alas.)

“In 2025, the crisis isn’t a virus — it’s a withdrawal of critical funding for wildlife and conservation,” says program co-founder Pie Aerts. “Prints for Wildlife is more than a fundraiser; it’s a platform for connection, consciousness and hope in a time of crisis.” Browse photos by more than 200 photographers on the fundraiser’s website. The limited-edition prints will be available until September 21.

“Caracal,” Tanzania. Photograph by Elena Didevska.

Special Bonus #2: “The Natural History Museum in London unveiled a first look at 15 of the breathtaking photos that are in the running to win the 61st Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, including a lion staring down a cobra, a pack of Arctic wolves, and bats flying through the dark toward the camera; the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest attracted 60,636 total entries, the most ever in the contest’s illustrious history.”

2025 Capture the Dark Sky Contest

DarkSky International announced the winners of its fifth annual Capture the Dark photography contest. Winners across eight main categories showcase the best in astrophotography and demonstrate why it is vital to protect dark skies worldwide; PetaPixel has a nice roundup.

In other words, I’m not going to let you go enjoy your Labor Day weekend (here in the US, at least) without closing out with a photograph of two of my favorite things: lupines against a beautiful night sky.

“Celestial Dance over Lupine Fields,” New Zealand. Photograph by Lucy Yunxi Hu.

Have a great September, everyone.

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

“The Bleak Cycle”

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

The Bleak Cycle

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

David RothDefector

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

Pinned.

Kottke is Back!

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

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

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

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

Stop Stealing [Free] Sheep

No, not that — the type book:

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

9th Annual Landscape Photography Awards

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

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

Wow. I couldn’t not highlight that photograph.

Many more at the source. (Via DPReview.)

Oldest Logos Still in Use

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

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

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

That’s it for this year

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

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

New Website. Finally.

Housekeeping news: I went back to having an actual website in June, 2019; for a few years, I’d just used a photography hosting service, as photography was the vast majority of what I did. However, when book design again became an important-enough part of my work, I wanted to have a space to talk about it. I bought a WordPress template, added photographs, and posted it.

…But I never really liked it. From the beginning, I felt y’all deserved more: better typography, better photography, better everything. Like so many, however, one’s own stuff is always at the bottom of the to-do list. No longer.

I’d like to introduce the new version:

The new gileshoover.com, January, 2022

There were a few bumps getting here (naturally, I broke everything along the way; to say I don’t code is an understatement!), but with some tweaking notwithstanding, the new gileshoover.com is live. It’s got all-original photography, matched sans and serif font superfamily (Merriweather by Sorkin Type, a Google Font), much faster response time, open-source foundations, and so on.

Note that entries on Foreword are best seen individually, as you’ll see bigger photographs (or illustrations, graphics, etc.). Click on entry titles to get there.

Please explore.