Photography and design for print production

Tag: jaguar

Beautifully Briefed 26.10: You’ll Want a Tall
Usually, I try to limit the Briefed posts to ~30 photographs. Today, you get fifty-four. So, unlike some months, where I encourage just any beverage….

Also, if you’ve not seen, I recently had a few-hour layover in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. There was a camera involved.

This month’s Spine

Duke University Press. Cover design by Matthew Tauch with calligraphy by Md. Zahid Hasan; art director, Dave Rainey.

“According to Islamic tradition, God has at least ninety-nine names,” the description says. But it’s the flower on the cover — a mosaic of script, best described as a “calligraphic gift” — that catapults this to the fore. Combined with a simple and classic title treatment, only one characterization is needed: brilliant.

Read the rest.

Design

The PRINT Magazine Awards 2026

Now in its 46th year, the PRINT Awards “continue a legacy of recognizing creative excellence across the design industry,” recognizing “89 winners whose work represents some of the most exciting, innovative, and thoughtful design today.”

The award for best book package is not actually called, “The Mighty Paw PRINT.”

One defining quality stood out across this year’s winning work, reflecting a theme that continues to emerge throughout the history of the PRINT Awards: the power of design as a form of expression, activism, and reflection of the world around us.
— The PRINT Awards jury

The item above exemplifies this: The Mighty Paw is a “visually striking illustrated book that uses the story of a lone cat surviving an ‘Era of the Great Hate’ to explore themes of identity, displacement, war, and intolerance.”

See the rest of the awards at PRINT.

Special bonus #1: The Touch of Art: American Book Design 1880-1930 exhibition is on now through April 9, 2027, at the Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill.

Reelizer: Movie Art

Taxi Driver. Artwork by Roger Erik Tinch.

“Reelizer is a personal project by Roger Erik Tinch,” Jason Kottke writes, “that is a collection of movie art: prints, posters, illustrations, albums, books, covers, etc. Careful, you can lose hours here . . . Tinch has a great eye.”

Russian and Eastern European posters

An Aeroflot Tupolev TU-164 climbs into a stylized Soviet sky in this example.

Also from Kottke: “Princeton houses a large digital collection of posters from Russia and Eastern Europe, almost 5000 total items, spanning 101 years (1904-2004).”

Special bonus #2: Nathan Yau, at Flowing Data, writes: “OKpalette is a tool to grab a color palette from an image. Load the image in the browser, set the number of colors, and define a region in the image and you get a collection of shades. Images stay on your computer and the color picking is in-browser. Nifty.” Bonus movie poster content in their example images — awesome.

Yes, that’s The Motion Picture . . . in Japanese. Note the dots — and corresponding colors on the left.

Type

Creative Boom‘s post is also a honker this month, with 23 choices. My favorites:

Puerile Grotesque

Puerile Grotesque, from Applied Systems.

Social media isn’t a part of my life, but you can bet I heard about Instagram’s redesign; the Style Set 01 variant of a new typeface from Applied Systems feels like the same branch — just slightly farther out. Perhaps amongst the leaves.

“Alister Shapley at Applied Systems Design Studio has been thinking about what ‘play’ actually means in typography,” CreativeBoom writes. “Puerile Grotesque is his answer. While his earlier font, Puerile Display, explored ornament and expressive forms, Puerile Grotesque questions the underlying structure of letterforms. Together, they form a complementary, convention-busting family.”

Pen by DDOTT

What happens when a pen pauses on paper? “Those small drops of ink … form the core concept of Pen, a new typeface from DDOTT, developed in collaboration with Morula,” CreativeBoom writes.

Pen, by DDOTT in conjunction with Morula.

“Pen turns a pause into a mark,” DDOTT writes. “Inspired by the small accumulations of ink left when a pen pauses on paper, it turns these human moments of hesitation, correction, and decision into visible features of the letterform. What would normally be treated as an error becomes part of the design.”

“Pen’s roots lie in standardised lettering systems that accompanied industrialisation, when technical lettering became increasingly regulated and executed through mechanical and digital systems such as plotters and printers. Based on the tradition of round-pen lettering, Pen follows a monoline skeleton without stroke contrast or optical correction, drawing its underlying forms from neo-grotesque models.”

Hyperspace Cargo by Swell Type

Hyperspace Cargo, by Swell Type

“Hyperspace Cargo looks exactly like its name,” CreativeBoom writes (and I agree). “Derived from the earlier Hyperspace Race, it’s an all-caps, stencil typeface available in a range of weights from Light to Heavy.”

“Horizontal-line Stylistic Alternates add further variety, and it also supports Cyrillic, Greek and Vietnamese. The variable version offers Weight and Roundness axes for extra flexibility.”

Special bonus #3: “Bastardica is ‘a foundry for bastard web fonts. Mix, stretch and/or squish them.’ E.g. Nervous Sans: ‘Arial is stacked five times, pseudo-randomly twitching out of line.’” Kottke finds the best stuff.

Mix it up on the Web type platter.

Special bonus #4: On the starboard side of the space shuttle Discovery, the “s” is upside-down. See for yourself at The Autopian.

“Software is Over”

You’ve no doubt heard of utilizing various AI systems to create code, known as “vibe-coding.” The same systems can reverse-engineer, too, a software version of those sites that run new iPhones through X-ray machines to see what’s inside. Fair turnabout, I suppose.

But what happens when you do the same to, say, Adobe’s Creative Cloud? Microsoft Office?

ArtCraft’s new suite of apps.

For a while, those hoping to avoid the difficulty and expense of dealing with Adobe’s Creative Suite have been able to use several free and/or open source alternatives that replicate some or all of those capabilities. Now, one developer is using AI-powered reverse engineering to mimic the look, feel, and functionality of Adobe’s well-known software with what he hopes will soon be perfect fidelity.
— Kyle Orland, Ars Technica

That’s right: one guy.

It’s clean-sheet, which is to say using completely new code. It’s open-source. And, as of this writing, it’s three weeks old and Adobe hasn’t sued — yet. “That practice has generally been found legally acceptable,” Ars reminds us, but “the ArtCraft apps could still face legal trouble if their “trade dress” too closely mimics Adobe’s familiar appearance and interface.”

Here’s the interface for LightCraft, which is only superficially similar to Adobe’s.

AI lets us take back tech and set the clock back to the pre-shitty era. But now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you. We’ll replace Google Search; we’ll build our own smartphones; we’ll build better infra. We’ll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world.

Big tech sowed the seeds of their own commodification with AI. It’s all going to come down to this now that we can rebuild everything without toiling for years to even get close to scaling software capability moats. The internet is going to reset to 1990-2004 (pre-Facebook / “Web 2.0” era). The indie web era. Everything is going to be reborn as open source. We’re going to own it all.
— Brandon Thomas, YCombinator

“The swagger is immense,” Tom May remarks at Creative Boom.. But the same article wonders whether software is facing a Napster moment — and they might be on to something.

As a profession, we’ve become used to the idea that developing creative software requires thousands of highly paid programmers and decades of work. That serves as a moat for a company like Adobe: few others can afford to build anything on the scale of the Creative Cloud. But will AI bring all that crashing down around them?
— Tom May, Creative Boom

“It’s one thing to make a huge promise like this and another thing entirely to actually deliver,” Jeremy Gray at PetaPixel comments. “An app is more than just its codebase; it is also its stability, performance, functionality, and ability to handle the extreme edge cases that make or break professional success.”

“If you’re worried this is just some one-off flash in the pan that will die, it isn’t,” Thomas promises.

Time will tell.

Special bonus #5: On the subject of AI: “Apple, Content Authenticity, and the War to Prove What’s Real,” from PetaPixel, details Apple’s new Reference Image technology. Different from other content authentication systems, for sure, taking advantage of Apple’s ownership of the entire pipeline from camera to output — but of course limited to Apple cameras.

PetaPixel’s header image for the article is awesome.

Special bonus #6: The ongoing Getty/Shutterstock saga/failed merger fallout continues — Getty’s declared bankruptcy. Looks like they’re clearing the road for ~~an equity grab~~ private ownership; together with the Getty family, the Koch bros are involved. Ug. MacFolis has an overview, or PetaPixel has more detail (3 links there).

Automotive

McLaren and Vauxhall

New branding from, shall we say, opposite ends of the automotive spectrum. Let’s start on the high end.

A detail — marketing image, really — of McLaren’s 2026 logo update, highlighting the underlined “c.”

The Internet, in its infinite wisdom, doesn’t like it, suggesting that the new wordmark is more upscale food item than sports car. I disagree — the swoosh/arrow is still very much there, it’s just that the name is styled differently; since it’ll be rolled out with redesigned models, it should serve them well into the next decade. The new look debuts on the M6 GT I ~~drooled on~~ covered last month.

The M6 GT, highlighted here on Foreword in August, wearing the new wordmark.

Creative Boom has an overview of the new branding, and a commentary post from someone on the inside.

Meanwhile, Vauxhall, part of the sprawling Stellantis empire, has redone the whole brand — griffin, wordmark, and stores:

Before, left; after, right.

This one I’m going to have to mark as less successful. With each change, the creature looks less like its namesake and more . . . well, they’ve got the “bird head” thing kinda right, but the wing, the talons, and the whole “lion thing” are tragically missing in action.

“In the latest update, [the] previous flat logo introduced in 2020 was further simplified,” Dezeen writes,¹ “with the griffin made more angular. In particular, the mythical creature’s neck hair was simplified while its beak was closed.”

Also, “for the first time in the logo’s 121-year history, the flag depicting the letter V no longer forms part of the logo.”

I mentioned it only in passing in 2020; this time, not so much. Take a look at the progression pictured above. Is this the best it’s ever been? Better than ’71 or ’89? I’m honestly surprised the corporate executives evaluated those, looked at the new proposal, and said, “yes.” (See their press release for some “reasons,” along with a few more images.)

The Jaguar Type 01

On the subject of the Internet’s wisdom, as you know, Jaguar’s Type 00 concept car landed with what could be best described as a “thud.”

But wait: that’s not the concept — that’s the production version.

It still lacks a rear window, and it’s still festooned with the new logo that may or may not do it any favors. The did, at least, more prominently feature the leaping cat.

But the rest hews remarkably close to the concept: it’s long, low, wide, and with 1015 horsepower and four cocooned seats, it seems like something that steamroll through traffic with ease. (Less sure about a back road.)

The “impossible panel,” named for its difficult manufacturing process.

I’m glad Jaguar stuck to its guns here. To say it has “presence” is an understatement.

Tons of coverage, unsurprisingly: Dezeen, CreativeBoom, even Daring Fireball — none car sites, which speaks volumes — along with Ars Technica, The Drive and The Autopian.

Special bonus #7: The reviews for Ferrari’s 12Cilindri Manuale are out — none better than Jason Cammisa’s fabulous Icons series for Hagerty on YouTube:²

Ferrari “reinvented the transmission,” Jason Cammisa argues. (Note the pin striping — it’s relevant.)

When Foreword previewed this expensive delicacy in July, I said was convinced that this setup — or, at least, something like it — is the future of the manual transmission. Cammisa agrees, and lo and behold, so might Porsche. I hope BMW hears the call, too.

The Porsche Mission S

Porsche’s fortunes of late haven’t been spectacular: between too many EVs aimed at folks who aren’t convinced electric is “right” for a sports car brand — or, at least, for them — and being tied to Volkswagen’s many, many missteps have meant buyers’ interests have waned.

Fortunately, they decided to do something about it.

It’s called the Mission S. It’s a concept, with no production planned, but make no mistake: a production version, which will sit above the 911 in Porsche’s lineup, will be along.

It’s mid-engined. Rumors say it runs a flat-eight, although Porsche themselves are coy about the drivetrain. It’s an automatic in pictures, but:

And get this: the interior basically defines “minimalist.” The screen, pictured below, is your phone.

That’s right, Porsche has declared that “real sports cars” should not feature distractions. It even has a real tach. (“Digital detox is now a luxury item,” The Drive says. They may be right.)

But never mind that: equal parts nostalgia — 917, 959, many more — and future, the Mission S is the first Porsche I’ve insta-clicked in a minute. Well done.

Read more at Ars Technica, The Autopian, or The Drive.

The Paris Motor Show

Cornucopia of goodness — almost entirely unobtanium, but still.

“Alpine offered up one of the true show stars in the shape of the Alpine A310 Concept. Another exercise in retro design, this two-seater sports car is a contemporary update of the 1971 original.” — Wallpaper*

“The modern version doesn’t stray too far from the proportions and details of the striking four-seater 1970s version, one of the most futuristic production cars of the era. If it goes into production, the new A310 will be an electric supercar that … would only be built in very limited numbers.” — Wallpaper*

“The French hot hatch has always been celebrated for its excellence. In essence, it’s about combining a small, light car with a peppy engine, not a world removed from the core principle of a sports car, even if most French hatchbacks are front-wheel-drive. You still get the full usability and versatility of the hatchback on which the hot hatch in question is based, but it’s faster and drives even better. There have been a number of cars like that throughout the years, but the Peugeot 205 GTI is one of the best known. That’s why the 205’s rally variant, the 205 T16 Group B rally car, was such a beastly creation: it looks like a 205 that’s gone to the gym, a lot, and taken a few supplements.

“Peugeot’s new E-T16 electric concept manages two things: it’s a successful visual throwback to the 205, and it’s also the most powerful Peugeot anywhere, ever.” — The Autopian

“The Peugeot 205 GTi was a Gallic alternative to the late ’80s-era Golf GTIs that Americans will be familiar with, and it’s into this well that Peugeot dipped for Paris. Or rather, the wild 205 T16 Group B rally homologation special that the 205 GTi gave birth to, a car that won the world Rally Championships in 1985–86. The E-T16 Concept shows us that hatchbacks needn’t just be humble devices for running errands; they can excite, too.” — Ars Technica

“The original Renault Espace was very much loved and created the people-carrier segment out of thin air, at least in Europe. The familiar one-box shape remains for the new E-Space Concept … There is a criminal lack of electric minivans on the market today.” — Ars Technica

“I’ve been excited to hear that the car is intended to fit the spirit of the original 2CV (you can read that as affordable) and not just be a retro, nostalgia-flavored cash grab. Well, yesterday the full new 2CV concept was revealed at the Paris Motor Show, and I’m happy to say I think Citroën did a damn good job of translating the archaic 2CV into a modern design vocabulary.” — The Autopian

“The best-received concept … was the long-awaited revival of the legendary Citroën 2CV. Electric only, the concept is — we’re promised — apparently very close to the production reality.

“There’s a wealth of genuinely entertaining detailing here, all of which hasn’t just been carried out in homage to the original, but as a way of finding new methods to keep costs down. Citroën aims to get the production 2CV … to come in at the magic €15,000 mark. Nostalgists will have a field day, and it’s still a delightful sight for the rest of us.” — Wallpaper*

“Back in the day, the original 2CV wasn’t just a family car, it was the vehicle of choice for French business big and small. From La Poste to the local boulangerie, the box-backed 2CV van was everywhere.” — Wallpaper*

“Citroën is hoping that the new generation 2CV Fourgonnette will do similar business. Bringing the admirable simplicity of the passenger car concept to a small van, the focus here is on maximising load space and practicality, whilst not losing sight of the character that will give this tiny van its competitive edge — a serve as a lovable mobile advert for whichever businesses chose to adopt it.” — Wallpaper*

“The French carmaker Renault seems to be having a blast digging into the treasure trove that is its historic output. As Renault’s concept cars show, it’s not done digging.

“Between 1962 and 1976, Renault built a rear-engined family sedan called the 8. The company exported these cars to the United States, and despite being down on power, they were simply marketed as being faster than the previous cars! Yet, the R8 also provided the basis for one of Renault’s early sports sedans, the Renault 8 Gordini. The most recent concept car from Renault takes the visual identity of that late-1960s car and reinvents it for the future.” — The Autopian

“The interior is all 1960s-styled concept car aesthetic, with brushed metal on a very narrow center console. The interior looks great in both renders and photographs, with suede on the steering wheel and velour on the dash.” — The Autopian

“The rear is now swept up, with blocky taillights glowing through a pixelated texture, on a surface that’s completely blank with the lights switched off. To maintain a visual connection to the original, there’s no rear spoiler on the rear deck. Instead, the spoiler is up there at the rear edge of the roof, and the diffuser presumably deals with the rest of the airflow. A large GORDINI logo is proudly affixed to the wide C-pillars.

“It all looks like a school kid’s dream, which it will also remain: no production plans exist, even if some of the detailing and ethos are likely to trickle down to production versions.” — The Autopian

Literally all of these tickle my fancy in one way or another, but it’s the Gordini — naturally the one least likely to make production, let alone come to the US — that I’d have without question. (Well, the Ferrari . . . .)

But that only scratches the surface of the goodness introduced in Paris: from Alfa to Volkswagen, there were dozens of concepts and production cars to delight the eye. The best overview is at Wallpaper* (1, 2), but also see coverage at Ars Technica and The Autopian (1, 2, 3, and 4).

Special bonus #8: Inside GM’s Global Technical Center in Michigan. A long item from Wallpaper* featuring “ample opportunity to celebrate GM’s products, heritage and the all-important ‘surprise and delight.’”

Harley Earl beneath the “dome” back in the day.

“This was the ‘dream factory’, the birthplace of the stylish, status-driven mobility that convinced a nation of its place at the forefront of the industrialised world. To visit the campus today is to simultaneously step back in time to the auto industry’s heyday of boundless confidence, whilst also sampling the far future of manufacturing.” — Wallpaper*

The Center today. The exterior of the “dome” is visible amongst newer buildings and additions.

Photography

“Occasionally bizarre”

“This work does not propose conclusions. It documents a condition in which biological life and technological systems are no longer separable, yet remain unevenly aligned,” photographer Spencer Lowell says.

Aerial of Manhattan and Queens, 2016. Photograph by Spencer Lowell.

Lowell describes himself as a photographer of “science, technology, industry, environment, and people,” and all of that is shown throughout his debut monograph, Futures Past. PetaPixel has more.

2026 Epson Pano Awards

The 17th Epson International Pano Awards have announced its 2026 winners, which drew 4,084 entries from photographers in 93 countries.

‘Center of the Cosmos.’ Photograph by Xuecheng Liu. Winner of the Open Built Environment category.

Tons of great stuff here; according to their rules, by the way, “pano” is defined as a ratio of at least 2:1. See all of the winners and finalists at the Pano Awards website, check out Kottke’s favorites, or see PetaPixel‘s top 10.

2026 Astrophotography Prize

“Established in 2023,” PetaPixel writes, “the Astrophotography Prize is an international astrophotography competition run by astrophotographers, for astrophotographers.”

“Geminids Above Betlejemka,” Poland. Photograph by Lukasz Remkowicz..Finalist in the Astro Landscape category.

They continue: “the competition recognizes excellence across Astro Landscape, Aurora, Deep Space and Remote Imaging. Its emphasis on public live judging and constructive feedback gives entrants an opportunity to have their work assessed by experienced photographers while allowing a wider audience to learn about the craft.”

Some really spectacular stuff. See more.

Special bonus #9: See also this year’s Natural Landscape Photography Awards winners, “a collection of beautiful landscape and nature photos that emphasize realism and authenticity.” (Via PetaPixel.)

2026 Architecture Photography MasterPrize

“The Needle,” Qatar. Photograph by Ahmad Alnaji. Winner in the Hospitality Exterior category.

This contest is a little different, in that it’s winners from the photography program of the Architecture MasterPrize (AMP), “an international awards program now in its eleventh edition that also recognizes architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and product design.”

“Fogo Island Inn,” Newfoundland. Photograph by Alex Fradkin. Winner in the Hospitality Exterior category.

Not at all described as “catnip,” this contest has some of the best architecture photography extant, year after year. The complete list of 2026 winners is on the AMP website. (Via PetaPixel.)

“Handcrafted images of memory and time”

Photographer Lara Porzak “works exclusively with analog techniques,” PetaPixel writes, “including tintypes and gelatin silver printing, using a slow, hands-on process to produce her photographs. She often develops images on site in a mobile darkroom, creating handcrafted prints that explore the relationship between photography, memory, and time.”

“Barn Owl.” Photograph by Lara Porzak.

As many of you know, I love tin- and old-style photography, and these are excellent. Better still, Los Angeles-based Porzak has brought “over 140 of her photographs together in her first monograph, The Chemistry of Memory.”

Have I mentioned that open-sewn bindings are hot right now?

2026 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards

Finally, to close out October’s post, we have . . . a smile or two:

“Are you kidding me?” Photograph by Kevin Lohman.

I inadvertently selected three owl photographs in a row — but left it. Owls are awesome. (We have several that live on my block here in Macon; hearing them hoot and howl at each other — despite being on the urban-suburban boundary — is one of the reasons I treasure them.)

“Two little owls form one,” Al Qudra Desert, Dubai. Photograph by Lynn Emery.

“Each year the competition supports a sustainable conservation organization,” PetaPixel writes. “This year Comedy Wildlife is working with the Born Free Foundation, an international charity rescuing and protecting wild animals from exploitation and conserving threatened species.”

The People’s Choice Award is open now until March 1, 2027. Vote!

• • •

On that last subject: in the United States, Election Day is next Tuesday, November 3rd. Please make your vote heard.
- 1
  Dezeen, too, has “new” written all over it — while the logo is the same, the website has been refreshed, simultaneously making its homepage both less readable and more difficult to tell what’s new. Not all bad news, though: the posts themselves feel more modern and are still filled with interesting stuff. ↩︎
- 2
  Folks will notice that I’ve stopped embedding YouTube videos; my site is prominently labeled, “no information collected,” something embedded videos violate by requiring cookies. YouTube, along with any other sites requiring data collection, will be limited to links only. Thanks for understanding. ↩︎
October 31, 2026
Beautifully Briefed 26.8: The Anti-Drought
It’s finally dried out here in Georgia, after a summer best described as “WTF” — where the “F” stands for flood, because you know it does. (As opposed to England, for instance, which is WTF in the other direction.)

So: some design, typography, and imagery to inform and cheer. And ten special bonuses. You deserve no less.

This Month’s Spine

Vanderbilt University Press. Cover design and art direction by Alissa Faden.

It was my pleasure to feature some titles from Vanderbilt University, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Louisiana — because Stanford and NYU don’t have a lock on my attention. (’Sides, it’s fall catalog season, so there’s lots to choose from.)

Enjoy fourteen great covers from University Press titles in my regular column for Spine Magazine.

Reading reports that its death is greatly exaggerated

As you’ll recall — or not, depending on whether you were able to read the article — The Atlantic worried out loud that reading is in such decline that we may have to think in terms of living in a “post-literate” world. (Because “post-truth” isn’t enough.)

Turns out that there’s a back story to that take; it originated on a Substack titled, “The dawn of the post-literate society, and the end of civilisation,” by someone whose profile I can’t see because I refuse to create an account.¹

So, I owe you an apology: this “moral panic,” as it’s been termed, originates in . . . what amounts to social media.² I’m disappointed in The Atlantic for taking that bait, and in myself for trusting them and then making something of it here.

Time for a reality check.

Which comes courtesy of an article that’s part of It’s Nice That‘s POV series:

It’s Nice That discusses Stack Reading Habits Report.

. . . whose author puts forth just the right perspective, one that folks here can relate to:

“The death of reading sounds uncannily similar to the death of print, which is another issue that’s prone to over-simplification.”
— Steven Watson, It’s Nice That

I still work in print. Many of us do. While it’s become a more specialized area of expertise, it’s still very much viable; whether it’s reached the stage of the horse post-motorcar or the manual transmission post-electric is something else entirely. (More on that latter item below, by the way.)

The author quotes another response to the piece, which I almost completely agree with:

All these pieces — from The Atlantic and elsewhere — about “the end” make this seem like a problem because of how they’re framing it, and who they’re framing it for. Maybe kids aren’t reading the classics, but look at the romantasy moral panic stewing in the background of social media. It’s a whole bunch of mostly men — who, demographically, do not read or buy books at all — declaring it the death of literature even though women and queer people are reading a ton of it. [. . .] It seems as though Americans have decided that the amount and kind of reading they personally do is normal and someone else doing it any more or less or differently than them is a social emergency. We may be seeing the end of certain kinds of reading [. . .] or certain kinds of culture, but that also means that something is replacing it. And good God do we need to replace a lot of it. If only to break up the corporations that dictate how it all currently works.
— Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day

To summarize, I fell for the “intellectual tragedy” represented by “the end of reading as we know it” and said something without thinking it through. I’ll try to do better.

Rare books > AI. Unless…

If you can truly appreciate an old book — and maybe even marvel at how its fragile, yellowing pages contain some of the earliest ways that people tried to make sense of the world around them — then headlines about tech companies that are destroying books to train AI likely torture a tender part of your soul.
— Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica

This article, dated August 12th, reminds us that, “Google patented a non-destructive book-scanning technology in 2009 that AI firms could use to efficiently scan books — if they were willing to slow down and invest in the process.”

It continues, “The biggest fear for people who want to see books preserved through the training process is that AI firms will callously pulp rare books that can never be replaced.” Rare book dealers, it turns out, have started to flag suspicious bulk orders to safeguard the irreplaceable.

Not Google’s patented process . . . but you can probably guess where this is going.

Five days later, the same author reported:

On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an [Apple] Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.

“Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings,” the article continues, “only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically: ‘Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use.‘“

The Internet, in its wisdom, has suggested that it’s all for profit — to “hide history behind a paywall.” How likely is that? After all, we know that Amazon, Anthropic, and Meta are altruistic.

And now, courtesy of the ’Net’s most-trusted source, we have insider details: “when I see a one-of-a-kind, three-hundred-year-old tome taking up six whole inches of shelf space, I immediately start thinking about scale and efficiency.”

Profit, efficiency, whatever — chewing up rare books for AI training is the very definition of “facepalm.”

Special bonus #1: McSweeney’s new book, Obey in Advance, How to Survive and Thrive under Authoritarianism, is available this fall. An early review:

“Democracy is priceless, but fascism sure seems to pay well. If you’re morally bankrupt and looking to sell your soul, Obey in Advance has everything you need for a profitable life of lickspittlery.”
— Kevin Kruse, Professor of History, Princeton University

Naturally, the book arrives at your door pre-scanned by AI.

Special bonus #2: Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment. ”It was an era when the term ‘discovery’ carried actual weight, when you could authentically be one of the first people viewing a piece of content, regardless of its quality or how long it may have existed — an era of equal parts wonder and frustration.”

Four scores and twenty-seven years ago . . . .

The story behind Present & Correct

Dick Bruna book covers, 1970s, from the Zwarte Beertjes publishing house. Image by Present & Correct.

“The perfectly curated stationery shop that’s every graphic designer’s dream” has a new gig: publishing. But first, the origin story, thanks to a Q&A with It’s Nice That.

Tins and boxes for crayons and pencils, mixed eras. Germany, USA & Japan. Image by Present & Correct.

To talk more about this publishing journey and the designers’ joint practice, we spoke to [the owners] about the story of Present & Correct to date, tracing habits of collecting and archiving all the way back to a childhood spent carefully putting away scrapbooks of sugar sachets, napkins, postcards and coasters, a final major project at art school (a paper concept store called . . . Present & Correct), to their joint travels across the world today, foraging for original vintage stationery to curate the shop’s stocks from over 18 different countries.
— Ellis Tree, It’s Nice That

”This habit of archiving and collecting vintage ephemera,” the article continues, ”has informed your first self-published book at P&C Paper Trails: Pre-war tourist maps from Japan featuring fifty incredibly illustrated maps for various attractions around Japan.”

Paper Trails, the first title published by P&C Additions.

“We named it P&C Additions because we hope to make editions of varying sizes (might be a single sheet, might be a book) and they are additional to what we generally do (a stationery shop!). And yes, we want to make more as and when we can. No pressure, just a natural offshoot which will manifest as a published item when we feel the content is strong enough,” the owners report.

The interview is awesome. Give it a moment of your time.

Special bonus #3: The Last Museum’s curators: ““We currently have around five million artworks indexed, and strive to eventually index all museum art in the world.” Not sure about the name, but definitely bookmarked under useful resources. (Via This is Colossal.)

“A Dutch Courtyard” by Pieter de Hooch, via The Last Museum. Chosen because the original absolutely does not hang in my living room, a joke one or two of you will actually get.

August’s new typefaves

Yes, I’ve coined a new word just there — and will continue to deny that it was, in any way, a typo involving the word “typefaces.”

Franglais, by Emigre

Franglais, by Emigre.

”Franglais was designed by John Downer in sporadic bursts of inspiration dating back to 2000,” Emigre writes on their blog. “It was originally conceived as a standalone italic, and expanded to include two upright companions, Roman and Informal, developed in collaboration with Zuzana Licko.

Pretty much everything Emigre puts out is beautiful, but Franglais is just gorgeous.

“Reflecting on the origins of Franglais, Downer describes it as lettering devised for imaginary signage inspired by a hybrid of postwar metal type and vernacular chalk-written menu boards. Elements of ‘ruler writing’ — in which a ruler is used to keep the baseline straight across repeated lines — are evident throughout.”

Special bonus #4: “ShieldFont, as designers Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio write in a recent white paper, was made to offer web publishers ‘a practical opt-out from unauthorized AI training and [to] disrupt what is collected when that choice is ignored.’” Read about it at Ars Technica.

Not sure I’m on board with this approach.

SE Micro, by Gallery Type

SE Micro, by Gallery Type.

“Se Micro is the small-size companion to Se Macro, released by Gallery Type earlier this year,” CreativeBoom writes in this month’s recommendations. “They share the same basic skeleton, but Se Micro works well in small or difficult settings, like tiny text or low-quality printing, perhaps even on screens.

“There’s a nice twist, too. When you blow this typeface up to larger sizes, those practical features become a visual style in their own right. It looks distinctive and quirky rather than just doing its thing of being legible, especially in bolder weights.”

Ink traps may be on-trend, but I still like their treatment in this typeface.

“This is an option for branding work across fashion, culture and design-led products. It comes with 10 weights and three widths. And it’s part of a growing family: Se Macro is also out, as I’ve mentioned, but hold onto your hats for Se Mono and Se Rounded, due out later this year or early 2027.”

Resan, by The Designer’s Foundry

Resan, by The Designer’s Foundry.

“Daniel McQueen from The Designers Foundry has been in touch,” CreativeBoom writes. ”He’s just released Resan, a super family inspired by the transitional types of the 17th and 18th centuries. It’s got warmth. It’s got timeless elegance. But it’s also precise.

“It has a sharp rhythm with generous proportions, giving it decent impact at display sizes. It also lets you change the terminal shapes, shifting the type’s entire feel and mood.”

I especially like Resan’s alternative terminals.

”It’s currently offered in 10 distinct display styles, and if you like what you’ve seen so far, a series of optical weights is in the works.”

Special bonus #5: “Typographic tourism, or the art of hunting for beautiful signs all over the world,” from Wallpaper*. Never mind searching for the hashtag, read the article then just do it for fun!

Architecture and typography in one photograph. Hmmm….

RTFM: Resurgence of The Effing Manual

Okay, sure, that’s not actually what the acronym stands for. But I don’t care. The United States and its cadre of point-one-percenters have chosen to lead the world in an important new area: preserving the true manual transmission.

To be clear, they’re also demanding bans on internal combustion go away, so it’s not all good news. They’re apparently unconvinced by Ferrari’s approach, outlined last month and which still uses combustion engines but with increased efficiency, or Hyundai’s approach, which uses electric motors and simulated shifts (the latter of which is being adopted by BMW, among others).

Two small manufacturers, McLaren and Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA), have both chosen this year’s Monterey/Quail festival of the uber-rich to introduce new cars. Both feature manuals. Porsche was on hand trying to play catch-up.

McLaren’s first manual since the F1

The McLaren McL 6GT.

The original and perhaps most iconic modern hypercar — arguably, the car that launched the term — was the McLaren F1. This month, McLaren introduced something that’s . . . not at all like an F1. It’s a fresh take on 1969’s M6 GT.

It is both retro and modern, hypercar and hyper-cool — an insta-buy if I could afford it. (Doesn’t matter: already sold out.)

References to the [original] M6 GT abound, from the vertical headlights and Kamm tail to the position and shape of every duct, rendered with a simplicity that we used to see in supercars of the ’90s and 2000s but see less today. And inside, McLaren has transformed the shifter into an art piece itself, its metallic linkages attracting natural light from every angle in a sea of black and carbon fiber. They’re clearly proud of it, and they suitably want it to be the focal point in here.
— Adam Ismail, The Drive

Just look at that — nothing less than a celebration.

“McLaren bills this as a ‘new type’ of supercar ‘beyond the core portfolio,’” the article continues. “Based on that, it sounds like manual transmissions aren’t about to become a standard feature of the brand; that, beyond the delineation of ‘Sports, Super, and Ultimate’ models of the past, McLaren is diversifying into more exclusive offerings that, at least in this particular case, pursue a more analog experience counter to the regular lineup.”

Yeah. Do want. But there’s a wrinkle.

GMA’s new . . . McLaren F1

The McLaren F1 was designed by an automotive racing legend named Gordon Murray. He subsequently started GMA, and brought out the amazing T.50, among others. Last year, his Special Vehicles department issued a track-only reimagining of the F1 — and has followed up with a road version, called the S1:

Since it’s less of a concept than the McLaren, some details are available. It features a 4.2-liter, naturally-aspirated Cosworth V12 making 680 horsepower with a rev limit of 12,100 RPM. It exclusively sports a six-speed manual transmission. It is multi-millions of dollars. And it, too, is sold out. The Autopian has more.

Special bonus #6: From the combining-cars-and-print-department (“not a stretch,” he insisted), Road & Track has a new ampersand:

The before-and-after:

Via the subscription-only Brand New.

Porsche adds another 911 manual

If you’ve not heard, one of the brands not doing too well at the moment is Porsche. They went hard into electrification, suffered hard from being part of parent company Volkswagen’s arrogantly inept approach,³ and subsequently run afoul of ~~social media’s~~ society’s hard turn against EVs. It has cost them dearly.

Despite insisting that they were going to do it all along, they’re scrambling to get back to what customers actually want. This month, they introduced a third variant of the venerable 911 available with a stick shift.

It’s not purple, it’s aubergine. (Love the pinstripes.)

Like the others, it features a wooden shift knob, a throwback to the Carrera GT V10 masterpiece from the heady days of the early naughties. Like the others, it puts the cupholder immediately behind the shifter, guaranteeing spills. (Or thirst.) Like the others, it costs twice what it did six years ago — although it’s still “only” a tenth of either of the above.

Like the others, I’d be happy to receive one as a gift.

Unlike the others, it’s US-only, and it’s available this fall. Details, if you’re interested, are available at The Drive or The Autopian.

Special bonus #7: Jaguar has released the first image — a rendering, actually, but still — of the new Type 01’s interior:

As it turns out, they’re not backing down from their vision for a completely-new Jaguar, and I respect them for it. The electric four-door also made its US debut at Monterey, albeit in disguise, and should be out sometime next year. More details and pics at Wallpaper*.

Special bonus #8: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of BMW’s Art Cars, they’ve gathered them all together in Germany.

A sampling of cars under the iconic four-cylinder BMW HQ.

Lots of press has ensued, but in case you’re not familiar, they’re exactly what it sounds like they should be — but so very much more. Decorated by artists from Roy Lichtenstein to Andy Warhol, all twenty are unique, daring, and different. Some were even raced before becoming priceless.

#12, by Esther Mahlangu, on display at BMW Welt Munich.

The above is a South African item, a country that, it turns out, has a special history for BMW. Meanwhile, get the history of all 20 cars at BMW Blog.

Special bonus #9: From the not-a-joke department comes this beautiful — and beautifully green — 1979 Mercedes wagon with 6,088 miles. Long buried by an earthquake (!), has been unearthed and restored:

The very definition of “classic.” The Autopian has the story.

August’s photography round-up

Sam Nicklin / Alessi

Alessi, a “beacon of well-designed homeware,” is celebrated by photographer Sam Nicklin in a new series called Chrome & Colour:

Photograph by Sam Nicklin.

“My main goal was to define the silhouette of each object through colour in the reflections, using negative space and keeping highlights to a minimum to really make them pop,” he tells It’s Nice That. To give the images the feel of the 1970s and 80s, “Sam went truly analogue, using the time-consuming process of holding sheets of coloured paper cut to different shapes and moving them around the objects until the reflection was exactly as he envisaged.”

Photographs by Sam Nicklin.

See more, including behind-the-shots photographs.

Pure Street Photography Awards 2026

This is Colossal caught my attention with these.

Finalist, open category. Photograph by Pierra Hauser.

A category that’s not usually at the Fore(word), but excellence won out.

250 trailblazing women photographers

In the introduction of a new book titled Great Women Photographers, Fiona Rogers writes, “If ‘greatness’ has long been defined by visibility and remembrance, then the continued documentation and celebration of women’s photographic practice is not only relevant but essential.”
— Jackie Andres, This is Colossal

Photograph by Simryn Gill.

Phaidon’s stuff is always great. See more.

Sixteen years of not-so-merry land

From crumbling row houses in the inner city to abandoned houses on the Eastern Shore to temporary homeless camps, “greater” Baltimore demonstrates decay . . . and courage:

Carroll County, Maryland. Photograph by Ben Marcin.

Photographer Ben Marcin documents The Holdouts.

One of 1.2 million

“Astronaut Don Pettit takes photos so good that people have a hard time believing they are real,” PetaPixel writes. Case in point:

Photograph by Don Petit, NASA.

Internet skeptics tried to call him out. But he’d brought notes.

Eclipse #1: 84 seconds

A wingsuit and a total eclipse fly into a frame together:

Photograph by Noah Wetzel for Red Bull.

Genius marketing, nine months in the making. (Longer, arguably, in the case of the eclipse.)

Eclipse #2: the fijord

Photograph by Marc Muench.

Right place, right time — stunning results, part one.

Eclipse #3: the sunset

Photograph by Andrew McCarthy.

Right place, right time — stunning results, part two.

Photograph by Andrew McCarthy.

Special bonus #10: Jason Kottke is moving house, and when he has a moment, posting en-masse. It’s an “old-school, stream-of-consciousness” sort of thing — which, to emphasize, is still awesome. Among the three dozen or so nuggets of greatness:

“Half Dome, Apple Orchard, Yosemite,” trees with snow on branches, April 1933. Photograph by Ansel Adams.

More than 200 Ansel Adams photos, mostly of National Parks, that are free to view & download. Via Open Culture, one of the gems of the open web.
— Jason Kottke, “Empting out browser tabs“

Anything but empty, I’d argue. Enjoy the rest of your summer, folks!
- 1
  Soap box: getting a website, whose contents you own, is so painfully simple that I tend to discount those that rely on other platforms to publish what might otherwise be interesting material/thoughts/content. And in this case, the author is a Times journalist, who should definitely know better. ↩︎
- 2
  It’s been pointed out that blogs are social media, too (the original social media, in fact) — something I don’t necessarily disagree with. From my perspective, writing that is owned, put out there due to belief, and read by folks who trust your opinion, is completely distinct from having your potentially-anonymous “take” promoted to strangers by an algorithmic mechanism that profits from conflict — or, at least, provocation. In my opinion, it’s the latter that defines “social media.” ↩︎
- 3
  Just one example: see Scout. It’s actually sad. ↩︎
August 31, 2026
Beautifully Briefed 25.12: Old and New

To close out 2025, a bunch of disparate items for your edification and enjoyment: the usual categories plus some stuff imported from left-field. Get caffeinated, get comfy, and let’s get to it.

Please note that the photography trip planned for mid-December had to be cancelled at the last minute — circumstances beyond my control — and hasn’t yet been rescheduled. Apologies.

December’s Spine

Stanford University Press. Cover design by Jan Šabach; art director, Michele Wetherbee.

Fourteen great University Press book covers in December’s column, including the genre-bending example above. Check it out.

December 25th: designer holiday cards

Charles and Ray Eames, 1940s. (Image credit: © 2025 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved. Via Wallpaper*.)

“Long live the Christmas card — a ritual that feels increasingly endangered in our digital age. The simple act of putting pen to paper and sending wishes inked in black or blue is, in a word of instant messages, profoundly gratifying,” Wallpaper* writes. “In celebrating this venerable tradition, we found ourselves asking: what sort of Christmas card does an architect send?”

January 1st: Public Domain Day

Image courtesy of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law.

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. [In this post] you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain. After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance.
— Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, Duke Law

The annual list is, in every manner of speaking, a gift to society. (Via Pluralistic.)

Has judging a book by its cover gone too far?

Cover design by David Pearson.

Excellent question from It’s Nice That, discussed in a post with book designers Na Kim and David Pearson. Book covers these days are driven by trends that are all-too-fleeting — what does that mean for what’s contained within? Is “salability” all that matters?

Perhaps the question should be, “Where are we as a society, and is this it, in microcosm?”

Special Bonus #1: 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025, from LitHub:

A reminder that press size and cover quality do not necessarily correlate — as noted in the above item, small presses might be willing to bend the “rules” more readily than the big players.

“Our guiding principles were ‘read a lot, recommend a few’ and ‘seek out a diverse array of authors and publishers,’” they write. “We were especially interested in BIPOC and LGBTQ authors and publishers, who have an even steeper climb to mainstream recognition.” Enjoy.

Special Bonus #2: Bar codes as design objects:

This short piece from type foundry Pangram Pangram includes several book covers.

CreativeBoom: six surprising illustration trends for 2026

A linocut by Emily Robertson.

Contrary to popular belief, illustration — like photography — is not on its deathbed. Despite the temptation for some companies (or budgets) to reach for generative AI, the consensus is that in order to stand out, bringing something unique to the table will be worth the effort. CreativeBoom talked to seven illustration agencies to get an idea what will work in 2026.

Special Bonus #3: A repository of mid-20th-century illustration, for research or just enjoyment: “Illustrator Zara Picken has an incredible searchable archive of mid-century modern illustration from c.1950-1975. It’s a goldmine of graphic, type, color, and texture inspiration.”

Smokey the Bear stamps from 1967.

Zara’s illustrations are in a cut-paper style and awesome; link via SimpleBits Studio Notes #60. (The entire series of Notebook entries is cool when you have a few extra minutes.)

Creative Review‘s movie posters of 2025

Poster by Empire Design.

Begonia was mentioned in October. A couple are by Empire Design, including the above — which is a master class in nested photographs. (“Claustrophobic,” CR says.) Great stuff.

Typefaces, pt. 1: notes for December

Snowee

CreativeBoom‘s new font post for December includes Snowee, which is far and away my favorite: interesting, characterful (heh), and just fun — something lacking amongst the sea of Helvetica wannabes.

It’s caps-only and not great at small sizes, but given a headline or poster or … whatever, it could be a pleasant, different choice. (I love that the O looks like an olive.)

LEGO’s letterforms

Meanwhile, LEGO features in a new project called “A2Z,” an international effort to create letterforms highlighting strength found in limited systems:

LEGO “offered an ideal blend of fixed constraints and room for playful exploration. Each brick’s scale and form could not be altered, but the grid’s size could be individually defined,” This is Colossal writes of this hand-printed awesomeness.

Gotham

From Tobias Frere-Jones, the story of how Gotham came to be:

Tobias Frere-Jones‘ inspiration for Gotham.

“In 2021, Monotype bought Hoefler & Co, and with it several families that I designed. As these families are now further removed from their origin, I want to ensure that their stories are accurately recorded,” Frere-Jones says. (Part of a series, in fact.)

The Garamonds

Lastly (for now), John Gruber’s Daring Fireball is among many who point out that condensed serifs are back in vogue, including — naturally, given the source — Apple Garamond:

It’s TrueType, but now open source.

Gruber also reminds us that Apple’s gone through more processor types than typefaces.

Special Bonus #4: Gruber also has a quick item linking to a brilliant essay arguing that not all Garamonds are created equal — ITC’s version, especially. (Which Apple Garamond was based on, interestingly.)

Special Bonus #5: Who doesn’t love a Pilcrow?

Hoefler & Co’s brief item is worth it for the varied examples alone.

Fonts, pt. 2: the Calibri flame-out

Let’s face it: type rarely generates headlines. But these aren’t “normal” times. Headlines were definitely made when the US State Department decided that its house style rules ditch Calibri, a font chosen to be more readable — more inclusive — and revert to Times New Roman. Because … tradition? Politics? Readability?

Let’s stipulate for the moment that the memo’s drafters saw choices as limited to the defaults available in Microsoft Word. (Because … you saw that coming.)

John Gruber was all over it, and argued thus:

While neither is a good choice, between the two, Times New Roman is clearly better. […] I just think it’s stupid for an institution with the resources of the U.S. State Department to shrug its shoulders at the notion that they should license and install whatever fonts they want on all of their computers. Anyone making excuses that they “can’t” do that should be fired. […]

Calibri does convey a sense of casualness — and more so, modernity — that is not appropriate for the U.S. State Department. And I do not buy the argument that Calibri is somehow more accessible for those with low vision or reading disabilities. People with actual accessibility needs should be catered to, but they need more than a sans serif typeface, and their needs should not primarily motivate the choice for the default typeface.

— John Gruber, Daring Fireball

But he didn’t stop there. He somehow got his hands on the complete memo written by Secretary of State Rubio, and it’s … surprisingly sober. Gruber comments:

It drives me nuts when news sites in possession of a statement or original document do not make the full original text available, even if only in a link at the bottom, and choose only to quote short excerpts.

With regard to today’s news regarding Marco Rubio’s directive re-establishing Times New Roman as the default font for U.S. State Department documents (rescinding the Biden administration’s 2023 change to Calibri), I very much wanted to read the original. The New York Times broke the news, stated that they had obtained the memo, and quoted phrases and words from it, but they did not provide a copy of the original.

The State Department has not made this document publicly available, and to my knowledge, no one else has published it. I have obtained a copy from a source, and have made it available here in plain text format. The only change I’ve made is to replace non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) with regular spaces.

Please do read it yourself, and do so with an open mind.

It seems clear to me that The New York Times did Rubio dirty in their characterization of the directive. The Times story, credited to reporters Michael Crowley and Hamed Aleaziz, ran under the headline “At State Dept., a Typeface Falls Victim in the War Against Woke.”

— John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Engagement sells?

Wallpaper*, a UK publication I generally enjoy (and cite elsewhere in this post), is one of many examples where a chosen narrative framed the piece. However, they did one thing to help: they introduced us to Calibri’s designer:

Lucas de Groot, font designer.

His comments, directly quoted (from HackerNews — sorry — but also via DF):

The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. There were sound reasons for moving away from Times: Calibri performs exceptionally well at small sizes and on standard office monitors, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman tend to appear more distorted. While serif fonts are well-suited to high-resolution displays, such as those found on modern smartphones, on typical office screens the serifs introduce unnecessary visual noise and can be particularly problematic for users with impaired vision, such as older adults.

Professional typography can be achieved with both serif and sans-serif fonts. However, Times New Roman—a typeface older than the current president—presents unique challenges. Originally crafted in Great Britain for newspaper printing, Times was optimised for paper, with each letterform meticulously cut and tested for specific sizes. In the digital era, larger size drawings were repurposed as models, resulting in a typeface that appears too thin and sharp when printed at high quality.

Serif fonts are often perceived as more traditional, but they are also more demanding to use effectively. While a skilled typographer can, in theory, produce excellent results with Times, using it in its default digital form is not considered professional practice.

— Lucan de Groot, LucasFonts

I don’t know whether there’s much needed beyond that takedown. Okay, maybe this:

[Y]ou can still make good typography with system fonts. But choose wisely. And never choose Times New Roman or Arial, as those fonts are favored only by the apathetic and sloppy. Not by typographers. Not by you.

— Matthew Butterick, “Typography in Ten Minutes”

In case all you encountered were the headlines, now you know there was more to the story.

See also: The Scourge of Arial, A Brief History of Times New Roman, and Typefaces for Dyslexia, all from Daring Fireball, and The Guardian‘s fun Calibri: Is this Really the World’s Wokest Font?

While I’m at it: word of the year

Getty stock image, made awesome with brown.

Merriam-Webster announced that “slop” is its 2025 Word of the Year, reflecting how the term has become shorthand for the flood of low-quality AI-generated content that has spread across social media, search results, and the web at large. The dictionary defines slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”

“It’s such an illustrative word,” Merriam-Webster President Greg Barlow told The Associated Press. “It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying, and a little bit ridiculous.”

To select its Word of the Year, Merriam-Webster’s editors review data on which words rose in search volume and usage, then reach consensus on which term best captures the year.

— Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

I’d like to suggest an alternative: “brown.”

Brown is the color you don’t want to be in the U.S. right now, lest you face legalized discrimination, illegal arrest — or worse. Brown is the color of the FUD the “Health Department” employs to prevent use of lifesaving treatments and vaccines. Brown is the substance, or lack thereof, the United States exports worldwide in the place of aid, education, fairness, or leadership. Brown is the color of the ink the Supreme Court uses to write opinions stripping people of their rights. Brown is the color of the flag a supine Congress continues to wave, surrendering its authority. Brown is the color of everything that comes from the stool-sample spectacular otherwise known as the U.S. Executive. And, of course, brown is today’s engagement-driven social media, a fecosystem of algorithms and AI built to exploit people for profit.

Red Scare? Been there, done that. Welcome to the new.

The Brown Scare.

[/soapbox]

Briefly: Jaguar

On multiple occasions, I predicted that JLR might actually succeed at making something interesting out of Jaguar — in the face of, well, the Internet. They’re still working on it:

The actual new Jaguar previewed by the Type 00 concept.

Alas, the world has changed around them; EVs are no longer what they were, and basing a new, ultra-high-end product line exclusively around an EV platform might not work out quite the way they’d hoped.

“Are we seeing the back of Jaguar?” Wallpaper* asks.

Frankly, the pullback from EVs is beyond stupid — ask anyone who owns one — but then, “stupid” is something to be proud of these days. (I know: soapbox. Sorry.)

What’s important regarding Jaguar at this moment in time is, supposedly, the company has pulled so far back that it fired its chief designer, Gerry McGovern.

Or not. There are questions.

Professor Gerry McGovern, OBE, in 2021.

“It’s long been rumoured that McGovern was personally liked by Ratan Tata, who ran JRL’s parent company,” The Drive quotes. “Mr. Tata passed away last year, leaving Autocar India to speculate that ‘key support’ for Mr. McGovern may have waned in the corporate titan’s absence.”

That was on December 2nd. On the 15th, rumors started circulating that the news stories weren’t correct: Jaguar has reportedly stated it’s “untrue” that McGovern was “terminated.”

Time will tell.

Special Bonus #6: How ’bout a mash-up? Cars and type: Volvo has a new corporate font, Centum, designed “with safety in mind.” (Naturally.) Dezeen has the story.

December’s photography round-up

A royal competition

Runner-up, “Between Auroras and Dawn — A South Pole Sunrise After the Longest Night on Earth.” Photograph by Aman Chokshi.

See the winners of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025, ten images that showcase “the best scientific photography worldwide across multiple categories, celebrating the overlap between compelling art and influential science.” (Via PetaPixel.)

Nature’s best science photos of 2025

“Rings of Fire,” lenticular clouds, Villarrica volcano, Chile. Photography by Francisco Negroni.

Nature’s annual picks for favorite science photography reflect a diverse range that’s always worth checking out. While it includes the skydiving image covered briefly last month without appropriate comment, the others delight (especially the sloth). Props, too, for the excellent web design on show here.

International Landscape Photographer of the Year 2025

Three examples among the twenty winning — and astonishing and inspiring — images:

“Morning in Dolomites,” Italy. Photography by Martin Morávek.

“Shiprock,” New Mexico. Photograph by Karol Nienartowicz.

“Starry Night.” Photograph by Joyce Bealer.

The rules of the competition state that all images must be taken by the photographer and AI-generated images of any kind are prohibited. Photographers are required to edit the images themselves as the competition “consider[s] this part of the art of landscape photography.” Nice.

The competition’s website is unfortunately offline as of this writing (Dec 31st), but see more at PetaPixel or This is Colossal.

Northern Lights Photographer of the Year 2025

“Arctic Rain,” Tromso, Norway. Photograph by Vincent Beudez.

“Capture the Atlas has unveiled the winners of its eighth annual Northern Lights Photographer of the Year contest, and the 15 award-winning photos […] are as beautiful as they are inspiring,” PetaPixel writes.

I remember lying on my back on the rocks by the Maine beach where I grew up, watching with wonder at the natural display. It’s a pleasure to revisit, however vicariously.

Otherworldly forest photos

Photograph by Michelle Blancke.

Photograph by Michelle Blancke.

“‘I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that our perceived reality is shaped by our minds and reflecting our inner world,’ says artist Michelle Blancke, whose ethereal photographs of trees, glens, and foliage invite us into a familiar yet uncanny world,” writes This is Colossal. Great stuff.

Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025

“Now Which Direction Is My Nest,” United Kingdom. Photograph by Alison Tuck.

Have yourself a smile.

The “AI-inside” camera

At MacFilos, Andrew has a new piece of kit — an “unexpected trade deal benefit” — that’s capable of making all his images everything he’s ever dreamed of:

AI image generated by Andrew Owen-Price.

“May we all remain capable of laughing and smiling through these turbulent times,” he writes. Yes, please!

Wishing you a safe and happy New Year.

December 31, 2025
Beautifully Briefed 25.10: [Blank] of the Century
In this episode, design whims and wins, fontastic links, a Toyota Century, and the monthly round-up of great photography bracket some thoughts on — what else? — AI, especially as it relates to art. Grab a beverage, brush, or a comfy chair, and let’s dig in.

This Month’s Spine

New York University Press. Cover design by Devon Manney, art director, Rachel Perkins.

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

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

Good Movies as Old Books, Revisited

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

Cover design by Matt Stevens.

Cover design by Matt Stevens.

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

Old-Fashioned Methods, Delightfully Off-Kilter Results

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

Design by Vasilis Marmatakis.

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

Design by Vasilis Marmatakis.

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

New Vintage Classics Series

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

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

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

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

Fascist Posters, Italian Style

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

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

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

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

Fontastic Fall

New for October

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

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

Custom Type is Everywhere, It Seems

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

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

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

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

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

Read the rest at It’s Nice That.

AI All the things

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

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

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

One of my favorite reactions was from Nick Heer:

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Hoefler’s ongoing series, called Apocryphal Inventions.

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

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

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

On a Related Note

This is AI.

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

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

Further Reading

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

Below are several articles on the intersection of AI with life, culture, or art that I found valuable. If you can set aside a few minutes, the information provided could be helpful in the quest to stay informed:
Side Note: I’ve dropped the punctuation in “AI.” Not unlike capitalizing “Internet,” I think we’ve crossed that bridge.

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

The Century Coupé Concept

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

Long hood, imposing “grille” — trend, recycling, or cliché, depending on outlook.

The no-rear-window thing continues to grow in popularity. (For “cocooning.”) Hmph.

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

Century’s logo is a phoenix.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The glass divider is to allow the chauffeured their privacy.

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

Did someone mention grille? (Lit, naturally.)

Leaving the hood long behind.

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

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

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

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

Love the wheels. The grille less so (there have been dictator comparisons), and the lack of rear window not at all.

October’s Photography Round-Up

2x Film

Grays Fisheries, Bradford (UK), left standing during inner city slum clearance. Photograph by Ian Beesley, 1977.

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

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

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

“Rocky Mountains On Wetplate Collodion,” Canada. Photograph by Bill Hao.

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

Color and Pano

“Beholders No. 1.” Photograph by Li Sun.

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

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

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

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

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

Birds and Wildlife

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

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

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

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

Comedy and Dogs

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

“It is tough being a duck.” Photograph by John Speirs.

“Bad Hair Day!” Photograph by Christy Grinton.

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

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

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

Have a great Halloween. If you’re in the US, be sure to vote, Tuesday, Nov. 4th. And, don’t forget to check back for the special Spine post, Nov. 10th. Thank you!
October 31, 2025
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 (it’s aimed at the collaborative market, aka “teams”); it took me a minute to orient myself. (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.)

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 currently has 17 of them.

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, specifically, its subtle evolution within the Bond franchise. (Did you know it was initially created for use on letterhead? Wow.)

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 publicly 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 — along with 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 photograph that placed (2nd):

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 once again closing 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.

August 30, 2025
Beautifully Briefed, 25.7: Hot (and Cold)

Take a break from the summer heat with a Mac delight, two interesting typefaces, a discussion of Bentley’s new concept — and updated flying “B,” with a quick mention of the other double-R — and, of course, some great photography. Better still, we close out with a guaranteed smile.

’Cause we need more smiles these days.

July’s Spine Post

July’s University Press Coverage has already been posted. My personal favorite of the bunch:

Yale University Press. Cover design by Jonathan Pelham; art direction by Rachael Lonsdale; image is an adaptation of Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps.

Darn near perfect. Hat tip to Jonathan Pelham.

Frame of Preference

While we’re on the subject of darn near perfect, Marcin Wichary — he of the now-sold-out Shift Happens fame, not to mention The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan — has gifted the world with another absolute gem:

Frame of Preference (Screenshot)

If you’re a Mac geek, whether a software history buff, or a just grizzled veteran, set aside a few minutes to take this trip down memory lane. There are 150 tasks to complete (!), five extra Easter eggs, great Mac hardware and software, and some of the best web programming extant. Enjoy!

ATC Identity Program Upgraded

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy celebrates its hundredth anniversary this year, and took advantage of the occasion to update its logo and identity system for the next hundred years.

Previous logo (left) and new (right).

The logo is a combination of a mountain peak, the AT symbol, a trail shovel, leaves (“growth and diversity”), and a holding shape (“protected ecosystem”); while overcomplicated in explanation, in practice it’s warm and friendly at first glance yet has depth for folks who know the Trail.

The blur and grain, highlighted against the beautiful scenery the AT is known for.

The new logo against one of grain/blur backgrounds.

The supporting system works well, too, but I’ll leave that to Amy Borg, whose extensive post on the work is excellent. (Via BrandNew.)

Indeed. Donate, too, if you can.

Special Bonus #1: A new Goodreads logo:

I’ll have to guess as to whether it’s actually “good for BookTok.”

July’s Font Finds

Karel, by Typonym

“Inspired by glyphs on a mid-century Prague plaque, Karel synthesises historical discovery with contemporary invention. Developed for brand messaging and retail identity, it includes alternate figures to vary the level of stylisation,” CreativeBoom writes.

Details on some of the glyph choices.

Different versions are available, allowing you to match style with project.

“A constructivist condensed sans, [that,] in every case stands apart from the multitude of neo-grotesque alternatives,” Typonym writes. (Great company name, by the way.)

Penguin Inclusive Sans, with Olivia King

We’ve covered Inclusive Sans before, but to recap, it’s awesome, it’s free, it’s open-source, and as of February, it’s available at Google Fonts for anyone to use. So, guess who has adapted it into something new? (Okay, header spoiler, but still.) No one less than a publishing heavyweight: “A bespoke typeface for Penguin Books, uniting brand heritage, accessibility, and contemporary design to create a versatile typeface for its global publishing house,” creative director Olivia King writes.

Some historical images, worth including just for the penguin reading in the chair — feet up, natch.

“For 90 years, Penguin has been committed to making books for everyone. Its iconic sixpenny paperbacks revolutionised access to stories and knowledge, making reading more inclusive and affordable. Staying true to this spirit of inclusion, Penguin commissioned a custom version of Inclusive Sans — an accessible typeface — to serve as its primary brand font across its global publishing house.”
— Olivia King, Creative Director

Another item included “just ’cause” — mostly for the science fiction illustration.

Included in the character set are glyphs for the Penguin.

“We transitioned Inclusive Sans from a Grotesque to a Humanist foundation, adding playful flicks and flourishes to create a sense of movement and approachability[;] whether used in a refined, understated way or in strong, confident applications, the typeface offers flexibility and distinctiveness.” Marketing speak, sure, but speaking to the applications rather than past them.

Penguin’s footprints as arrows: says something positive, I think.

The entire page is great: well put-together, well illustrated, and approachable. And wander around the site while you’re there — more than “O.K.,” it’s example after example of work the rest of us aspire to. (Via BrandNew.)

July’s Graphic Design Two-Fer

The World Illustration Awards 2025 Shortlist

From the book covers category, Ripples on the Lake by Becca Thorne.

“The Association of Illustrators has unveiled those in the running for this year’s World Illustration Awards, featuring 200 standout projects from over 4,700 entries worldwide. From editorial brilliance to site-specific design, it’s a showcase of illustration at its most imaginative,” CreativeBoom writes. It’s books and editorial to animation and product design — a cornucopia of illustrative goodness. Check it out.

Designer as Influencer

More than slightly NSFW — while actually about work. Read wherever you’re comfortable.

“As social platforms reward visibility, creatives are increasingly expected to make their practice public. Designers are no longer just making work; they are the work. But what started as promotion now risks swallowing design itself,” It’s Nice That writes.

Yet another reason to avoid social media … says the old guy who reads web pages published by actual individuals (and sticks to blogging). Still, very much worth a read.

Special Bonus Two-Fer. #2: From PetaPixel, DuckDuckGo, my search engine of choice, can now filter out AI images from search results. (It’s a simple toggle.) Nice.

#3: Not so nice is WeTransfer’s predicted face-plant, also via PetaPixel.

Bentley EXP15 Concept: Buckle Up

Let’s just get this out of the way: the brutalist automobile is officially a trend.

The new EXP15 with a 1930 Speed Six.

Yes, you’ve seen that shape before — and that time, I asked y’all to hang on see what happens. This time, I’m less confident it will turn out well:

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

The Jaguar is both more compelling and fresh — it’s somehow more, yet with less detail. Interestingly, Jag is trying to reposition itself in the Bentley space (including comparative pricing), preferring to move upmarket rather than compete with the likes of BMW or Mercedes.

It’d be quite the coup for Jaguar to leap in (sorry) and take charge.

Update, 31 July (hours after posting, in fact): Jaguar Land Rover’s CEO has unexpectedly announced that it’s time to step aside. It’s apparently not about expectations, but….

Enough about Jaguar. Some more photographs/renders of the Bentley:

Arguably the best angle, somewhat hiding the EXP15’s SUV-esque size.

The interior is better than the exterior, with some Bentley traditions intact. (Yes, the concept is a three-seater: the passenger seat was eliminated in favor of the pampered purebred.)

The dash is all screens, yes, but not necessarily obviously so — something likely to age better than the iPad-on-dash approach.

Lastly, from the rear:

Wait. I’ve seen that look somewhere else.

Oh, yeah, the Volvo ES90. (Itself riding at SUV height.)

I apologize for not being more positive on this one; I’ve been down on the Volkswagen Group in general for a while, and it makes me sad that, with their flagship brand, nothing in their new concept suggests they’re trying to reverse the trend.

Coverage: “This is What the Future of Bentley Will Look Like,” from Motor1; “The Bentley EXP 15 brings the bling and delves into tomorrow’s luxury automotive experience,” from Wallpaper*; and “Bentley Is Showing Jaguar How To Take A Luxury Brand Into The Future With The New EXP 15 (IPSO Fatso),” from The Autopian. (Apologies also for the three differing headline capitalization styles — blame the sources.)

Also worth reading: The Autopian questions whether the new “Autobrutalist movement” — where I got the term — can be stopped; and Motor1 has not one but two items asking readers to give Jaguar a chance. (Probably unrelated.)

But wait: there’s another reason I’m down on Bentley right now.

The New Bentley Logo: Style over Substance

The five versions of the “winged B” logo, in order: 2025, 2002, 1996, 1931, and 1919.

BMW called light “the new chrome.” Bentley absolutely gagged on it. At least the infamous Flying B is still there — hood ornaments are few-and-far-between these days.

When you’re Bentley, you shouldn’t be chasing trends, you should be leading them. Style over substance is nothing less than a mistake.

Also, because everyone else has one:

The flat version.

This new version was done in-house, the wrong choice on every level; this isn’t a time to save money. Another sad moment: the storied history of a brand like Bentley, running on the equivalent of a flat tire. (Perhaps even the rim. Trailing sparks.)

Dezeen was mostly positive, BrandNew mostly negative. (“[E]verything here feels cheap and overwrought.” Subscription, alas.) The Autopian goes for balance. You can tell where I land.

Special Bonus #4: Range Rover’s new logo, best described as “not trying very hard” or even perhaps “goofy as hell.”

Posted without comment.

Special Bonus #5: In case you’ve never seen it, Paul Rand’s 1966 proposal for a redesign of the now-iconic Ford logo:

The Autopian has a nice piece on this.

July’s Photography Faves

Astronomy Photographer of the Year Shortlist

“Awe-inspiring scenes of the Milky Way, dancing aurorae, and serene galaxies all feature on the shortlist for this year’s ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year,” PetaPixel writes. Indeed:

“Blood Moon Rising Behind the City Skyscrapers,” Shanghai. Photograph by Tianyao Yang.

The competition is run by Royal Observatory Greenwich, supported by ZWO and in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

“The Last Mineral Supermoon of 2024,” Delhi. Photograph by Karthik Easvur.

See the other 28 on the shortlist here. The winners will be announced in September, so stay tuned.

Abstract Fireworks

Every year, photographers across the world flock to fireworks displays, something that’s never interested me — until now:

Photograph by Bryan Szucs.

PetaPixel takes a moment to self-congratulate here, and I think they’ve earned it — although it’s good to note that the original post cites This is Colossal. (And that PetaPixel did a poor job with the cite in that original story, using only Colossal’s photography tag rather than an easily-found, specific link. Shame on them.)

Anyway, photographer Bryan Szucs took the defocusing idea and absolutely ran with it:

Photograph by Bryan Szucs.

Great stuff. See more on ~~his website~~ SmugMug.

Special Bonus #6: Apple filed a fascinating image sensor technology patent last month, which describes a stacked image sensor with vast dynamic range and very low noise. PetaPixel has the story.

Unbuilt Frank Lloyd Wright

Okay, officially these are renders, not photographs. Still:

Trinity Chapel. Image by David Romero.

“Hooked on the Past emerged from the intersection of two personal passions: the history of architecture and the fascinating world of computer-generated imagery,” Romero tells This is Colossal.

Gordon Strong Automobile Objective. Image by David Romero.

Wright was ahead of his time in that he pushed material science to make a concept, shape, or cantilever work (often demonstrated in the maintenance and repair bills); his unbuilt projects demonstrate what could have been, and there’s nowhere better to imagine those than in generated imagery.

Hunftingdon Hardford. Image by David Romero.

See more at this great Colossal post.

High-Octane Dogs

Photograph by Caludio Piccoli.

“Ultimately, it’s not the equipment that creates the magic. It’s the connection with the dog, the timing, the light, and the intention behind every shot. The gear just helps bring that vision to life,” photographer Caludio Piccoli tells PetaPixel.

Photograph by Caludio Piccoli.

I could easily repost every photograph from the story; they’re all great. Just go read it instead.

City Cats of Istanbul

To close out this month, well, the title says it all:

Somehow, they completely fit the location:

Photograph by Marcel Heijnen.

The author (supposedly the one in the mirror):

Photograph by Marcel Heijnen.

See more at This is Colossal or CreativeBoom — and then go enjoy August with a smile on your face.

Photograph by Marcel Heijnen.

July 31, 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.

TechDirt, March 2025.

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

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

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

“Boris Johnson, Liar.” Image by POW.

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

Rupert Murdoch, NYC. Photo by Fionn Guilfoyle.

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

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

From Citation Needed:

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

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

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

Update, 10 April 2025: Nick Heer:

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

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

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

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

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

On Libraries, Type, and Type Libraries

Museums and Libraries

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

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

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

The North Boulder library. Photograph by Bruce Damonte.

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

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

Photograph by Amelia Nash.

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

Type and Typography

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

Some of the typefaces offered at Feckled.

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

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

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

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

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

On A Wild Jaguar

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Wild Photography

Leica Turns 100

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nature and Wildlife Photography Awards

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

Fireworks, Brazil. Photograph by Marcio Esteves Cabral.

Feathers, Sri Lanka. Photograph by Pandula Bandara.

Devghali Beach, India. Photograph by Mantanu Majumder.

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

Ankle Bracelets, United States. Photograph by Charlotte Keast.

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

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

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

Street Cleaners, London. Photograph by Ben Lucas.

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

Declaration of Love. Photograph by Roland Kranitz.

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

2025 Sony Photography Awards

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

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

Naturally, I gravitate towards the architecture category:

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

The Guard, Netherlands. Photograph by Max van Son.

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

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

The Darkest Skies

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

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

Special Bonus #3: Lego F1 action photography!

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

March 31, 2025
Beautifully Briefed 24.12: New Year’s Eve Fireworks
Let’s continue a couple of discussions before closing out 2024, and send you into 2025 with some photographic and typographic goodness.

More AI Book Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s a Sherlocked joke here somewhere….

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

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

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

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

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

The Cat Leaps

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

Some details:

The interior:

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

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

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

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

Wai Shin Li, via Dezeen

But it’s The Autotopian that stands out. They have not one but two excellent articles by Adrian Clarke, an ex-JLR¹ designer, who has several important points to contribute:

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s hope this brutal revamp is […] successful, because there are a lot of jobs depending on it.
— Adrian Clarke, ex-JLR designer

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

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

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

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

The Callum Skye concept. (An island buggy?)

Some Extraordinary Items of “Normalcy”

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

Northern Lights

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

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

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

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

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

Nature

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

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

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

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

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

Frozen Prairie Landscapes

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

Image from Minus Thirty. Photograph by Angela Boehm.

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

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

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

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

Dezeen has more.

Ukraine’s “Fight for Visual Identity”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Custom metal for the book project.

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

Hopefully available at bookstores soon.

“The Arresting Typography of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps”

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

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

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

Wishing you and yours a very happy New Year!
- 1
  That’s Jaguar Land Rover, before it was, um, initialized by owner Tata. ↩︎
December 31, 2024