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
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.1Soap 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.
So, I owe you an apology: this “moral panic,” as it’s been termed, originates in . . . what amounts to social media.2It’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.” 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:
. . . 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.
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.”
The story behind 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.
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.”
“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.)
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 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.
“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.
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.”
“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
“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.”
”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!
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 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
“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:
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,3Just one example: see Scout. It’s actually sad. 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.
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.
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.
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:
“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.”
See more, including behind-the-shots photographs.
Pure Street Photography Awards 2026
This is Colossal caught my attention with these.
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
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:
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:
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:
Genius marketing, nine months in the making. (Longer, arguably, in the case of the eclipse.)
Eclipse #2: the fijord
Right place, right time — stunning results, part one.
Eclipse #3: the sunset
Right place, right time — stunning results, part two.
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:
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!
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- 2It’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.” ↩︎
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