Giles Hoover

Photography and design for print production

Tag: kottke

  • Beautifully Briefed 25.9: Generous

    Beautifully Briefed 25.9: Generous

    It’s fontastic, illustrative, and full of imagery: your beginning-of-fall design round-up here on Foreword. (And A.I., because it’s everywhere.) Enjoy.

    This month on Spine

    A fun and interesting University Press Coverage post on Spine when you have a moment, including this title from the University of Nebraska:

    That was not a simple photograph to set up. Awesome.

    Generative Book Cover Design

    How 2 Shout Media presents a how-to: 20 cover design prompts for ChatGPT. “Creating the perfect book cover starts with the right vision — and that’s where ChatGPT transforms from a writing assistant into your creative design partner.” (Emphasis theirs.)

    There are, for instance, specifics on “the anatomy of an effective prompt” and how to customize the provided templates; they even provide bonus templates to save and reuse, including one to quickly iterate on previous output.

    The article contains some good advice, honestly, but the most relevant suggestion — to “[t]hink of ChatGPT as [a] creative director who provides vision and direction rather than final artwork” — is buried at the bottom of a fairly long page. I’m willing to get there are more than a few (especially in the self-publishing space) who read this as the definitive how-to . . . possibly without judging the output versus what a professional can create.

    This cover sample is far and away the best of the eight illustrated options:

    The prompt: “Design a literary fiction cover for ‘[Title]’ using a single continuous brushstroke that forms both an abstract landscape and a human profile when viewed differently—an optical illusion revealing loneliness and connection. Executed in indigo ink wash on cream paper texture. The brushstroke starts thick and confident, becoming increasingly fragmented and uncertain. Minimal color palette: indigo, cream, with one tiny spot of cadmium red as a focal point (perhaps a bird or flower). Title integrated into the negative space using a classic Garamond variant, appearing to be part of the original artwork. Author name in small, understated caps at bottom. Overall feeling: wistful, sophisticated, gallery-worthy.”

    Take a moment to compare the output with the prompt, and you’ll see the generated output ignores several of the items, but overall, is kinda — sorta — close.

    The other examples not so much. But I’m not going to spoil the whole thing: Go and see for yourself.

    For now, I’d suggest that book design professionals — those that make a living from the art and science that is publishing excellence — are safe. Other professionals in the industry recognize what talent is and how valuable it is, and the designers themselves can take advantage of the power that some of these models offer to help brainstorm.

    That said, today’s A.I. models are gaining quality at a rapid rate. In 5–10 years, at most, publishers (and authors self-publishing) that might not recognize that they’re best served by professionals — or those who don’t have the budget, despite the recognition — will have access to what might very well be “good enough.”

    From Your Intelligence to Artificial Intelligence

    So, where do the A.I. engines get their training material? From you and yours, of course; to quote a source we’ll get to in a moment, “[i]n writing this […] I am acutely aware it will become part of a training data set.” Some sites, such as Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, have seen an exponential upswing in traffic — all from the so-called “bots,” programs sweeping internet content into the never-satisfied regurgitation chamber that is today’s ChatGPT, Claude, and others.1One of the reasons my photography, as presented both here on Foreword and in the galleries, is both relatively lo-res and watermarked is to preserve a sense of ownership; likewise, one of the (many) reasons I no longer participate in social media is due to posts specifically being used to train A.I. — Instagram/Meta, for instance.

    Ars Technica and Pixel Envy both highlight a new program, modeled on Really Simple Syndication (RSS), designed to “block bots that don’t fairly compensate creators for content.”

    To quote Doug Leeds, the founder, “A.I. companies know that they need a constant stream of fresh content to keep their tools relevant and to continually innovate.” The “Really Simple Licensing” (RSL) standard evolves robots.txt instructions by adding an automated licensing layer that’s designed to block bots that don’t fairly compensate creators for content.

    Free for any publisher to use starting today, the RSL standard is an open, decentralized protocol that makes clear to AI crawlers and agents the terms for licensing, usage, and compensation of any content used to train A.I[.]
    The new standard supports “a range of licensing, usage, and royalty models, including free, attribution, subscription, pay-per-crawl (publishers get compensated every time an AI application crawls their content), and pay-per-inference (publishers get compensated every time an AI application uses their content to generate a response).”

    — RSL Press Release

    But — and it’s a big “but” — RSL is only one response to the problem. Another is to wall content off entirely, breaking one of the most valuable qualities of the internet itself: its openness.

    We’re watching the construction of a fundamentally different internet, one where access is controlled by gatekeepers and paywalls rather than governed by open protocols and user choice. And we’re doing it in the name of stopping AI companies, even though the real result will be to concentrate even more power in the hands of those same large tech companies while making the internet less useful for everyone else.

    — Mike Mesnick, TechDirt

    Here’s where Pixel Envy agrees:

    A.I. organizations have not created a bottom-up rebellious exploration of the limits of intellectual property law. They are big businesses with deep pockets exploiting decades of news, blogging, photography, video, and art. Nobody, as near as makes no difference, expected something they published online would one day feed the machines that now produce personalized Facebook slop.

    — Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

    “One thing that might help, not suggested by Masnick, is improving the controls available to publishers,” Heer writes, going on to discuss the new RSL standard proposal and what it might do to help. But, in the end, he’s not optimistic:

    I simply do not know how much control I reclaim now will be relevant in the future, and I am sure the same is true of any real media organization. I write here for you, not for the benefit of building the machines producing a firehose of spam, scams, and slop. The artificial intelligence companies have already violated the expectations of even a public web. Regardless of the benefits they have created — and I do believe there are benefits to these technologies — they have behaved unethically. Defensive action is the only control a publisher can assume right now.

    — Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

    Yeah.

    Special bonus #1: From the you’ve-trained-it-so-enjoy-A.I.-for-fun department,Kottke introduces us to generativ.design. “I wore out the “randomize” button on each of these,” he writes. (Via the new-to-me sidebar.)

    Prefab Design

    Meet fabricá, a new hair care company, whose identity ticks all the boxes: it’s trendy, eco-friendly, and well put-together:

    But there’s a catch: fabricá doesn’t exist — at least not yet. It’s a fully-formed identity, available now at Brands Like These, a new prefab identity outfit from Lyon&Lyon.

    Now I’ll admit: at first, this seemed like a Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe thing,2Yes, I grew up listening to Car Talk. something that we all had a chuckle over before allowing it to shuffle into the background, readily available for use as a pithy line whenever we needed it: “Ha, we got Lyin’ and Lyin’ selling your precious startup canned … stuff.”

    Unfortunately, it’s not a joke.

    When Elizabeth Goodspeed, of It’s Nice That, got thinking about it, she had lots to say. “In a good design engagement, the back-and-forth between company and designer pushes the company itself to sharpen what it is; the ‘friction’ people complain about is also the juice that makes the work exciting.” (I find this true in editorial and publishing work, certainly.) But there’s a warning, too:

    If this cart-before-horse approach takes hold, it won’t just change how companies buy branding, but how designers make it. The skills a designer needs shift from listening and refining to cranking out polished shells that could plausibly fit anything. […] Even if sites like BLT only sell a brand once, the more ambiguous the design, the more it risks echoing a dozen others (and collapsing under trend fatigue).

    These models also threaten to hollow out the middle of the industry. We’ve seen this pattern before: bookstores went from indie shops and regional chains to Amazon or your local holdout; music from affordable CDs to either $50 LPs or all-you-can-stream. Branding may be headed for the same split – prefab kits at the low end, ultra-expensive bespoke at the high end, and little in between. And if prefab becomes the norm, it’s hard not to imagine the next step: why should these kits even be designed by humans? Once clients are trained to buy a look off the shelf, there’s little stopping A.I. from flooding the market with pre-packaged “brands” generated at scale.

    — Elizabeth Goodspeed, It’s Nice That

    This feels like an accurate prediction. Read the rest. (See also: her item on copyright, covered in February.)

    Okay, we’ve dealt with the heavy stuff. Let’s enjoy the rest.

    The New Type in Town

    Several articles to point to if you’re interested in expanding your font collection — including 50 predictions for what’ll be popular 2026. Nice.

    Steven Heller’s Font of the Month

    Over at I Love Typography, industry veteran and designer extraordinaire Steven Heller’s monthly column exalts Ritualist.

    CreativeBoom’s Best o’ September

    They have several, but my favorite is not dissimilar to the above, a new face called Urbolyt, a variable “that represents a clash between geometric rigor and organic forms.”

    Zelow Studio’s Nature

    Pixel Surplus brings us a new — and free! — variable grotesk typeface called Nature, available in a variety of styles.

    CreativeBoom’s 50 for 2026

    The vast majority of these are, basically, Helvetica; like Nature, the simple sans serifs are what’s in right now. (Sigh.) However, there are some gems on the list, and I’d like to take a moment to highlight an absolute favorite: Freight.

    Freight is a collection of integrated typefaces ready to add unique style to any design project. What Joshua Darden started as a serif family inspired by the warmth and pragmatism found in 18th-century Dutch typefaces became The Freight Collection and now ranges across multiple weights, widths, and optical sizes — from Big to Display, Text, Micro, Macro, Sans, Neo, and Round — all of which include companion italics. That’s 192 fonts that have the ability to be bold and daring just as easily as they can be quiet and unassuming.

    — freightcollection.com

    I’ve used Freight in a variety of book projects and the breadth of options available always satisfies. It’s referred to as a superfamily: from the standard Text and beyond-excellent Neo (a sans with style), there’s an option for going Big and even two — Micro and Macro — best used at small sizes (readable footnotes!).

    I cannot recommend more highly. Indeed, I could only take one font family with me to a desert island, I’d take Freight.

    Illustrations Open Doors
    Illustration Awards 2025

    CreativeBoom: “From playful packaging to poignant explorations of identity, the World Illustration Awards 2025 showcase the breadth of contemporary illustration. With over 4,700 entries from 85 countries, this year’s winners reveal how artists are shaping how we see, think and connect.”

    One of the overall winners is this great poster:

    Léane Ruggli – RTD’s Cocktail Campaign

    Book covers (adult and children’s):

    Jennifer Dionisio – The Talented Mr Ripley
    Jenya Polosina – The Country of the Blind
    Camila Carrossine – The Girl, the Ghost and the Beetroot Forest

    Site Specific:

    Ren Kyles – Pride mural in Wilsonville, Oregon

    The awards underline “how illustration continues to thrive as a medium of both beauty and urgency”: from packaging that delights to books that challenge taboos, the winning works reveal the versatility of illustrators working today.

    See the whole list of winners and commended artists at the WIA 2025 Online Showcase, including interviews and insights into their creative process.

    Illustration for Branding

    Another CreativeBoom article suggests that, “[f]rom murals to motion, illustration is starting to reassert itself in advertising,” because “illustration still offers unique advantages. Distinctiveness is the obvious one because, in a sea of photography-led campaigns, an illustrated execution can […] cut through precisely because they are unexpected.”

    As this great TfL poster exemplifies:

    “A Riot of Color and Joy”

    Yet another example of illustration done well, this time from — wait for it — 1956:

    A Saab 93 full-car cutaway.

    I still miss Saab. See more at The Autopian.

    Special Bonus #2: These minimalist cat illustrations define brilliant:

    Illustration by ShouXin.
    September’s Photography Highlights
    International Pet Photography Awards

    While we’re on the subject of cats — and dogs, whose entries far outstripped those for cats (and horses, rabbits, pigs, and all the other things folks keep for pets) — this year’s pet photography contest has some pretty spectacular results:

    Photograph by Mirka Koot.
    Photograph by Shandess Griffin.
    Photograph by Janneke De Graaf.

    Getting my dog to stand still long enough for a photograph is nigh-on impossible; some of the accomplishments shown in these winning photographs are fantastic. Kudos.

    Special bonus #3: Cats, book matched.

    Audubon Photography Awards

    The 15 winning entries for 2025 have been announced, including this one:

    “Burrowing Owl.” Photograph by Jean Hall.

    See more at PetaPixel or This is Colossal; explore galleries of this year’s winners and honorable mentions, or grab a copy of the Fall 2025 Audubon Magazine.

    Astronomy Photographer of the Year

    This is Colossal: “The universe’s workings may always remain a mystery. So it’s no surprise that when peering up at the night sky, whether it’s homing in on distant stellar clusters or simply watching the moon rise, photography helps us appreciate its enigmatic beauty.”

    “ISS Lunar Flyby.” Photograph by Tom Williams.
    “Saturnrise.” Photograph by Tom Williams.

    I didn’t realize until after I’d selected them that these were both from the same photographer, but unlike some that are just (amazing) night sky, these have an almost-science-fiction quality.

    ’Course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg: “The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 17 contest showcases the best astronomical and night sky images of the year, captured by exceptional photographers worldwide,” writes PetaPixel.

    Two more that aren’t quite what you expect:

    “Encounter Across Light-Years.” Photograph by Yurui Gong and Xizhen Ruan.
    “Fourth Dimension.” Photograph by Leonardo Di Maggio.

    See the more winners, from here and beyond, at PetaPixel or This is Colossal.

    Special bonus #4: While we’re on the subject of Earth and sky, PetaPixel profiles Italian photographer Gianluca Rubinacci:

    Photograph by Gianluca Rubinacci.

    Special bonus #5: The UK’s Weather Photographer of the Year 2025 Competition list of finalists has been announced, including this one:

    Photograph by Lukáš Gallo.

    See all of ’em — and vote (until October 16th) — here.

    Natural Landscape Photography Awards

    This one’s a little different, in that there can be no generative AI, no compositing of different photographs, and RAW files are checked by judges to ensure authenticity. (Refreshing, honestly.) “The competition is designed to promote photographers looking to work within the constraints of the natural landscape and traditional bounds of photography.”

    From the Project of the Year, Sápmi (Lapland). Photograph by Hanneke Van Camp.

    See more at Petapixel, or to see all of the contestants head to the Natural Landscape Photography Awards website.

    “Cyberpunk” and “Gotham” vs. “Otherworldly” and “Forgotten”

    To close out this month, I’d like to mention a couple more book projects. Let’s start with Ben Moore, whose new photo book is titled Above & Across London. As the name suggests, he found high-up vantage spots: “I’ve always loved the look of a cool, urban, cyber-futuristic world, and at times I catch glimpses of that in London,” he writes.

    Photograph by Ben Moore.

    Meanwhile, photographer Bryan Sansivero feels a strong pull to document and explore forgotten dwellings; his new book, America the Abandoned, explores deserted homes around the country in 200 striking images — including this one:

    “The Grand Room.” Photograph by Bryan Sansivero.

    Have a great October, everyone.

    • 1
      One of the reasons my photography, as presented both here on Foreword and in the galleries, is both relatively lo-res and watermarked is to preserve a sense of ownership; likewise, one of the (many) reasons I no longer participate in social media is due to posts specifically being used to train A.I. — Instagram/Meta, for instance. ↩︎
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  • Beautifully Briefed 25.3: March Madness

    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.)

  • Beautifully Briefed 25.2: Late Winter Stew

    Beautifully Briefed 25.2: Late Winter Stew

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

    It’s Nice That on Copyright and Reuse

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

    She’s done it herself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Okay, on to the fun stuff.

    An author on her own book design

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Fantastic Mr. Font (and other big Dahls)

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

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

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

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

    Read the full, well-illustrated story.

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

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

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

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

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

    The italics, especially.
    Inclusive Sans

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

    Love the retro style of the supporting images.

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

    Available in a variable weight, too.
    Gorton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Some Great Photography

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

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

    Great stuff. See more at PetaPixel.

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

    The Pale Blue Dot. (2020 remastered edition.)

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

    Photograph by Jérôme Gence.

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

    Photograph by Ulla Lohmann.

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

    Photograph by Ana María Arévalo Gosen.

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

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

    Photograph by Eric Kogan.

    All NYC this time. Check ’em out.

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

    So why is in the photography section, you ask?

    Photograph by Giles Hoover.

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

    Photograph by Giles Hoover.
    Sigma: a new BFF?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    See you in the spring!

  • Beautifully Briefed 24.12: New Year’s Eve Fireworks

    Beautifully Briefed 24.12: New Year’s Eve Fireworks

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

    More AI Book Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There’s a Sherlocked joke here somewhere….

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

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

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

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

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

    The Cat Leaps

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

    Some details:

    The interior:

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

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

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

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

    Wai Shin Li, via Dezeen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    — Adrian Clarke, ex-JLR designer

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Northern Lights

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

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

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

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

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

    Nature

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

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

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

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

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

    Frozen Prairie Landscapes

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

    Image from Minus Thirty. Photograph by Angela Boehm.

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

    — Angela Boehm, Minus Thirty

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

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

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

    Dezeen has more.

    Ukraine’s “Fight for Visual Identity”

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Custom metal for the book project.

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

    Hopefully available at bookstores soon.

    “The Arresting Typography of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps”

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

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

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

    Wishing you and yours a very happy New Year!

  • Beautifully Briefed 24.10: Content with Worthwhile Content

    Beautifully Briefed 24.10: Content with Worthwhile Content

    “Content,” that is, the feeling of satisfaction — contentedness — is a word I’d much rather use than “content,” that which is required of folks who produce material for their website/YouTube channel/social media feed/whatever. It’s a shame the world favors the latter over the former.

    Or does it? We’ll get to that — right in the midst of the other content that caught my eye in October, 2024.

    Adobe Content Credentials, Continued

    Adobe’s positive messaging continues, saying “[it is] dedicated to responsibly developing tools that empower creators to express themselves and tell their stories while helping address their concerns.” It even carried out a study to get some feedback from creatives on generative AI and one of the standout insights was rising concerns over unauthorised sharing of their work or misattribution with 91% of creators seeking a reliable method to attach attribution to their work.

    Bring on Adobe Content Authenticity. It’s a “powerful new web application that helps creators protect and get recognition for their work.”

    A screenshot of Adobe Content Authenticity website.

    In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, creators are understandably concerned about safeguarding and gaining attribution for their work and having more control over how it’s used. That’s why we’re excited to introduce Adobe Content Authenticity, a new, free web app that allows creators to easily attach Content Credentials to their digital work — helping you protect your work, show attribution and better connect with your audiences online.

    —Andy Parson, Senior Director, Content Authenticity Initiative, Adobe

    For now, it’s limited to a beta Chrome extension, with a wider beta opening to the general public in spring 2025. (I don’t use Chrome, but have signed up to the waitlist, and will update Foreword readers when I hear back.) Content Credentials are already available in Photoshop and Lightroom — provided you’re using the latest versions, which may require the latest OS.

    Three on Book Design
    PBS on del Rey

    I’d known the publishing house since . . . well, as long as I can remember. What I’d not known is the story behind the publishing house:

    Set aside thirteen minutes when you can — absolutely worth it.

    Multi-Panel Book Covers

    I agree with Jason Kottke: “Bento Books” is the term. A great example:

    Book design by Oliver Munday.

    Here’s the impetus discussing this latest book design trend, with many more examples.

    It’s Nice That: Book Design in Brazil
    Book design by Bloco Gráfico.

    Any foreigner entering a bookshop in São Paulo is likely to be impressed by the quality of the books on display. For a country with relatively few readers, few high quality printers and binders, and a very limited assortment of paper, the Brazilian publishing market shows remarkable graphic ingenuity[.]

    — Elaine Ramos, It’s Nice That

    Never mind the country, the great book design caught my attention: from The Great Gatsby, above, to the J.M. Coetzee series, Orwell’s 1984, even Melville — amongst others. A great read.

    Special Bonus #1: Life outside the internet . . . and physical books, please:

    “The whole internet social complex … and the way people use their computers to conduct life is doomed sooner than later,” said Justin Murphy, the founder of the media and education company Other Life. “The smartest people, the people who are the most cutting-edge, will increasingly live their lives outside of computers.”

    Whether or not that’s true — or even a potential — isn’t as relevant as an actual trend: physical book sales are up:

    Print, too, is on the rise, from books to magazines to newspapers. Print book sales had a pop with the pandemic in 2020, and have continued to maintain sales of more than 750 million units sold each year. Meanwhile, even though they’re cheaper, sales for ebooks are down slightly, which may be owed to the fact that younger readers, much like older generations, overwhelmingly prefer printed formats.

    — Zoë Bernard, Vox

    Flip phones, vinyl LPs, and . . . books: Read the whole article.

    See also: The Guardian: Bookstores are Suddenly Cool.

    50 Fonts for 2025

    CreativeBoom is out with their annual post on future type, “50 fonts that will be popular with creatives [next year].” Some of my favorites (links in captions):

    Editorial New, by Pangram Pangram.
    Nave, by Jamie Clark Type. (Bonus points for the great illustration.)
    Right Grotesk, especially the Casual flavor, by Pangram Pangram.
    Canvas Inline, designed by Ryan Martinson from Yellow Design Studio. Available through Adobe Fonts.
    Ssonder, from Type of Feeling. (Easily the most on-trend of my highlighted items.)

    An honorable mention goes to Gamuth Sans, from Production Type. See CreativeBoom’s 2025 popular fonts list here. (Note: some are available through Google Fonts, and thus free-to-use. Nice.)

    See also: Two more from CreativeBoom on the 2025 type scene: font trends and independent foundries.

    Photography that causes content
    Forest Fireflies

    From This is Colossal, we have Kazuaki Koseki, who describes himebotaru — fireflies — as “artists who paint light on the forest.”

    From the series “Summer Faeries” by Kazuaki Koseki.

    Artistry, all right. See more.

    Epson International Pano Awards

    The 2024 Pano Awards have been announced, with a wealth of great wide-angle shots for your viewing pleasure. Two of my favorites:

    “Storm Dump,” by Tom Putt. Taken near Wyndham, Western Australia.
    “Uprooted,” by Nickolas Warner. Taken in Moab, Utah.

    Epson’s rules are a little looser than some, but don’t diminish the sheer creativity displayed by the entrants. See coverage from PetaPixel or This is Colossal, or go to the source for the full list.

    Siena Creative Photo Awards 2024

    Just one favorite to highlight here, but what a favorite it is:

    “Storm on the Elbe,” by Anna Wacker. 1st Prize, Architecture.

    See some amazing sleeping bears — and much more — at the PetaPixel post or the full list at the Siena contest website.

    Architecture MasterPrize

    Few contests are more up my alley than this one, which inspires me to get back out there sooner rather than later:

    Kaktus Tower, Copenhagen, by Shoayb Khattab. See more from this series.
    “Fragments,” taken at the Nhow Hotel, Amsterdam, by Max van Son. See larger.

    Awesome. Meanwhile, the below caught my attention not due to the striking photograph, but the striking content — which, indeed, caused contentedness. Such a huge change to anyone who might recognize this former hulk, now beautifully refurbished and in a new park setting:

    “Michigan Central Station,” Detroit, by Jason Keen. See the full series here.

    See the post from PetaPixel or the full list of 2024 winners at the Architecture Masterprize 2024 website.

    Special Bonus #2: To close us out on this Halloween, the moon:

    Photograph by Darya Kawa Mirza. See more.
  • Beautifully Briefed 24.9: Falling Up

    Beautifully Briefed 24.9: Falling Up

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

    Books and Values

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

    Illustration by Pierre Buttin. © New Yorker.

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

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

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

    The central question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

    — Nick Heer, Pixel Envy

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

    Exactly.

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

    Book Design: Kafka
    Cover design by Peter Mendelsund.

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

    Cover design by Peter Mendelsund.

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

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

    Illustration by Victor Juhasz. © Rolling Stone.
    Colossally New

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

    The new look of This is Colossal, September 2024.

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

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

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

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

    SM[all] Majesté
    Photograph by DS Automobiles.

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

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

    Photograph by DS Automobiles.
    Photograph by DS Automobiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Tahiti Waves

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

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

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

    “Deadly Bite.” Photograph by Ian Ford.

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

    2024 Astronomy Photographer of the Year

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

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

    See all the winners at Royal Museums Greenwich.

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

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

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

    Some of my favorites:

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

    Via PetaPixel.

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

    • 1
      “Get inside the mind of Peter Mendelsund, the pianist who went from Tchaikovsky to Tolstoy and became one of the best book cover designers working today, with editor Zac Petit’s interview in PRINT’s 75th Anniversary Issue,” with the link at the source article. ↩︎
  • Beautifully Briefed 24.6: Summer of Win (Mostly)

    Beautifully Briefed 24.6: Summer of Win (Mostly)

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

    GET LECTURED (ON ARCHITECTURE)

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

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

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

    Architecture Photographs by Hélène Binet

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

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

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

    “Staircases in Sperlonga, Latina, Italy.”

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

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

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

    2024 Audubon Photography Winners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Jacket design by Robin Bilardello.

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

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

    Fantastic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Beautifully Briefed 24.5: On Into Summer

    Beautifully Briefed 24.5: On Into Summer

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

    SteerMouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A Couple Library of Congress Photographs

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

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

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

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

    Kirkus: 20 Books that Should Be Bestsellers

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

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

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

    …with its box o’ quotes on Amazon:

    Nice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Cover design by Charlotte Gill.

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