Tag: pixel envy

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Beautifully Briefed, 25.11: More than Turkey Here

This month, the usual fontastic newness and photographic excellence. and I veer into nostalgia — maybe, perhaps, soapboxing — for the web’s “old days.” Also, for those in the U.S., I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Pack up your leftovers and settle in.

University Press Coverage on Spine

This month’s column has some good stuff — On Gaslighting has been a favorite for a minute, and Post-Weird is pretty much guaranteed to make an appearance in January — but I thought I’d give the first of two shout-outs to the University of Georgia:

Cover design by Erin Kirk.

Check out my regular column at Spine. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the other UGA mention below.

50, Mega: It’s all Auld Neue
CreativeBoom: 50 Fonts for 2025
Hatton by Pengram Pengram.

In their annual feature (previously), CreativeBoom lists fifty fonts that “will be popular with designers in 2025.” Most are paid, a few are free, and several are awesome.

Neue Machina by Pengram Pengram.

It’s sometimes hard to see — yes, a new website is on the radar — but there are links in the captions if you’re interested. (Just to the website; I don’t do affiliate links, full stop.)

RST Thermal by Reset.

See the whole list.

Megazoid
DJR’s mega effort. The website is cool, too.

Described by Kottke as having “Radio Shack vibes,” David Jonathan Ross — DJR — brings us this retro-futuristic fantastic-ness, to coin a term.

Auld English
A “playful experiment” that is, in fact, quite a bit more.

In addition to the “Mock Tutor” long-s character (optional), it’ll even (temporarily) change your spelling to proper English, none of this American stuff. Oh, and it looks properly auld school. Free for personal use, with licensing for professional use.

Special Bonus #1: 90 years of Penguin type, brought to you by CreativeBoom.

I must be getting old, Part One: Griping
Needy Software
A detail of the advertisement in the print edition (!) of The Onion.

The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.

— About Us page, theonion.com

“It is an incredibly competitive market for Creative Software. Adobe knows the best way to stay relevant in a space with so many options is to provide their customers with incremental adjustments and AI-powered conveniences to improve their birthday invitations on a monthly basis, all at a fluctuating yearly price point,” The Onion tells PetaPixel in an email. “This is the kind of ingenuity and integrity we are proud to advertise in America’s Finest News Source.”

Meanwhile, Pixel Envy points us to a post by Nakita Prokopov — no, I’ve never heard of him either — with an incredibly salient point: that software has gone from something we need … to something that needs us.

The company needs to announce a new feature and makes a popup window about it. Read this again: The company. Needs. It’s not even about the user. Never has been.

Both of those are worth a read — but it’s the notation after the quote that makes the Pixel Envy post special: mention of Photoshop’s “Quiet Mode.”

Wait. What?

That’s right: Adobe actually recognizes that it’s gone so overboard with it’s notifications, blue dots, pop-ups, and helpful “feature introductions” that it’s invented a preference setting to reduce — not eliminate, ’cause — interruptions to your workflow.

Now all they need to do is bring it to InDesign, Lightroom, Illustrator, ….

Cracker Barrel: Falsehoods, Cheesy Falsehoods, and Statistics

CreativeBoom usually works for me: more content than not, if you know what I mean. (The article on typography and Penguin linked above, for instance.) Alas, their recent article on Cracker Barrel — “The Cracker Barrel rebrand: a $100M masterclass in brand value” — so widely missed the mark that it’s shameful.

All because the author is speaking to a fixed narrative instead of the facts.

“When Cracker Barrel’s shiny new look caused its stock to drop by almost $200 million, the internet laughed. But buried in the chaos was a golden lesson: what happens when you forget that brand isn’t just visuals—it’s value, emotion, and culture, all rolled into one,” writes Cat How, a founder and executive creative director of How&How branding agency and, apparently, her real name. (“A former journalist and design critic, she leads climate and mentorship initiatives including GetSet and GetEven, and […] an Ambassador for UN Women,” her bio reads.)

The thing is: her journalism is at issue here. But what gives me, basically a nobody, the right to say that? Well, thank Brand New.

That website is subscription, so I’ll have to summarize their brief post. No, to heck with that, I’ll quote it in its entirety:

Cyabra, which offers an AI platform that shields companies and governments by uncovering fake profiles, harmful narratives, GenAI content, deepfakes, and other digital misinformation, analyzed the Cracker Barrel backlash and found that 21% of profiles discussing its logo change were fake accounts orchestrating a coordinated disinformation campaign that, in turn, triggered thousands of direct engagements from real profiles, which is when things start to snowball. This, apparently, is a full-fledged business known as Rage Farms, deploying bots to purposely harm brands. 

— Armin Vit, Brand New

Those twenty-one percent of profiles discussing Cracker Barrel’s logo change were identified “as fake accounts orchestrating a coordinated disinformation campaign, whose […] content reached over 4.4 million potential views and thousands of authentic profiles’ engagements, [and that] manufactured outrage correlated with a 10.5% stock price drop,” and, viola, $100M in market value, Cyabra writes.

“Disinformation-as-a-Service” has become a profitable, global criminal enterprise: low-cost, high-impact bot networks hired to attack and destroy businesses and individuals … like you. And the social media platforms that could stop them won’t, because chaos is profitable. Propelled by AI, these strikes are targeting brands big and small. And the financial consequences are real — sliding stock prices, damaged brand equity, ruined careers.

— Mark Schaefer, businessgrow.com

That second quote, a follow-up to Cyabra’s post, is worth reading.

Now, to be clear: without complete information, Cat How’s post at CreativeBoom seems legit. But with that information, published almost a week before, it’s exactly what those fake profiles were after: justifying something when it shouldn’t be — and damaging reputations, including Cat How’s.

“One wonders how often this occurs,” he said … without a trace of snark.

Special Bonus #2: Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era. “This is likely not the first story you have read about a freelancer managing to land bylines in prestigious publications thanks to dependency on A.I. tools,” Pixel Envy‘s Nick Heer writes, “but it is one told very well.”

Special Bonus #3: Things do not necessarily need to be an outright fake to contribute to the problem. Many of you might have seen this image:

Accomplished, complicated, and … not quite what it seems.

PetaPixel speaks glowingly of the process, the coordination, and laps up the marketing. But: it’s a composite. Interesting parts made with a good deal of effort — but made into something implied to be awesome when, in fact, it’s Photoshop.

I must be getting old, Part Two: Those Were the Days

Elizabeth Spiers, “Requiem for Early Blogging”:

The growth of social media in particular has wiped out a particular kind of blogging that I sometimes miss: a text-based dialogue between bloggers that required more thought and care than dashing off 180 or 240 characters and calling it a day. In order to participate in the dialogue, you had to invest some effort in what media professionals now call “building an audience” and you couldn’t do that simply by shitposting or responding in facile ways to real arguments.

There’s a part of me that hopes that the most toxic social media platforms will quietly implode because they’re not conducive to it, but that is wishcasting; as long as there are capitalist incentives behind them, they probably won’t. I still look for people with early blogger energy, though — people willing to make an effort to understand the world and engage in a way that isn’t a performance, or trolling, or outright grifting. Enough of them, collectively, can be agents of change.

— Elizabeth Spiers

A progressive columnist, Spiers makes the argument that it is possible to work against the rage that so dominates at the moment; if you’ve not heard of her, she says, “Whether I like it or not, the first line of my obituary will probably be that I was the founding editor of Gawker.com.”

As a reminder, I don’t participate in social media. What I have to say is said here, on the record, under my own name, with all the consequences that entails. (Especially this month.) I’m old school enough — I’ve been blogging since the ’90s — to expect want any responses to be posted in a similar venue: a conversation between people rather than a fight between usernames.

Special Bonus #4: Doc Searls, old school emeritus, suggests that it is, in fact, appropriate to capitalize: Internet and Web, even if there’s a “the” involved. On the other hand, Dave Winer, arguably the most emeritus of the old school, doesn’t. Section 7.85 of the Chicago Manual of Style says no — but Doc’s argument is a strong one.

While We’re On the Subject of Social Media…

Short-form video platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are now a major part of daily life for many people. Our synthesis of 71 studies revealed that greater engagement with these platforms is associated with poorer cognitive and mental health in both youths and adults.

— 2025 American Psychological Association study

One fix? Art. According to The Guardian:

The research clearly shows the stress-reducing properties of viewing original art and its ability to simultaneously excite, engage and arouse us. Stress hormones and inflammatory markers […] are linked to a wide range of health problems, from heart disease and diabetes to anxiety and depression. The fact that viewing original art lowered these markers suggests that cultural experiences may play a real role in protecting both mind and body.

— Dr Tony Woods, researcher, King’s College London

“It’s always a good time to look at art,” Kottke writes, pointing to Korean artist Lee Hyun-Joung’s work, Poetic Texture:

Artwork by Lee Hyun-Joung.

We all need museum breaks — make time whenever you can. Even if it’s from home.

Special Bonus #5: I would argue that the average reader of this blog would suggest books, too; check out LitHub‘s interviews with National Book Awards Finalists for some worthwhile titles.

November’s Photography Round-Up
UGA: Rural Churches

For a while, I had it on my list to do a photographic tour of rural and abandoned churches across Georgia. There are a ton, and some of them are quite photogenic.

This one in Talbotton,1I took the opportunity to remaster these photographs to both correct an unnoticed error and for better consistency between the photographs taken in 2022 and those in 2025. for instance:

Historic Zion Episcopal Church, Circa 1848, Talbotton, Georgia
Zion Episcopal Church (Detail #3), Talbotton, Georgia

Alas, that project faded in importance, partially because I learned of the first volume of … you guessed it, Historic Rural Churches of Georgia, from UGA Press.

Now there’s a second volume — and a bundle — available. Check ’em out.

Oregon’s Trail of Tears, Photographed

While we’re on the subject of interesting photography projects, this one is worth notice: retracing one of America’s (all-too-many) Trail of Tears:

Photography by Nolan Streitberger.

By any measure, photographer Nolan Streitberger has built a practice that bridges art, history, and the profoundly personal. His work, particularly his acclaimed project Oregon’s Trail of Tears, transforms beautiful photography into both historical document and dialogue, a means of reclaiming memory and giving voice to stories long overlooked.

— Kate Garibaldi, PetaPixel

Done manually, using a wet-plate, Eastman No. 33A large-format camera from 1935, he’s done something extraordinary. Take a moment and explore this great work.

Where George Orwell Wrote 1984

Another large-format discovery:

Jura Stream, Scotland. Photograph by Craig Easton.

“Easton’s interior photographs of household items perfectly capture the simplicity of Orwell’s life[.] Collectively, they create an atmospheric vision of Orwell’s time on the island and the mood, desire and hope he experienced,” PetaPixel writes.

Table Still Life, Scotland. Photograph by Craig Easton.

Get the story.

Close-Up Photographer of the Year Shortlist, 2025
Fatal Jump. Photograph by Bence Mate.

Some great stuff to peruse — admittedly, most long-list than shortlist — in multiple categories of natural subjects at the website. The winners will be announced in January.

Farewell to Autumn. Photograph by Catherine Illsley.

Via This is Colossal.

Nature Photographer of the Year, 2025
Overall Winner: Sundance. Photograph by Åsmund Keilen.

Another in the “annual treat” category, this European contest features some incredibly accomplished work.

Chamois. Photograph by Jakubowski Radomir.

See a round-up at PetaPixel or visit the contest’s website.

British Photography Awards, 2025

Standard photography contest, perhaps, but I swear there’s a bit of that uniquely British humor showing.

Bar Hair Day. Photograph by Jayne Bond.

If you’ve ever been close up to a pelican, you’ll know that they’re neither small nor particularly friendly; this great shot ably demonstrates both.

While we’re on the subject of neither small nor particulately (sic) friendly:

Shadows of Industry. Photograph by Harvey Tomlinson.

Imagine living there. No, don’t: go enjoy the other winners instead. (Via PetaPixel.)

Royal Photographic Society Awards, 2025

The Royal Photographic Society Awards began 147 years ago — the world’s oldest — celebrating photography as an art form.

This shot, for instance, taken without a camera:

Full Moon, Hawthorn. Artwork by Susan Derges.

The RPS notes that Derges’ photographic work explores humanity’s relationship to the natural world, often by bringing natural phenomena to life in the photographic medium in new and exciting ways. For example, Derges has exposed the physical movement of rivers and oceans onto photosensitive materials at night using moonlight, carefully composing plants and other natural matter in front of photosensitive paper, and then exposing it to light, and exposing photosensitive materials to sound waves, letting the frequencies create the final prints.

— Jeremy Gray, PetaPixel

Plenty of other deserving artists, as well, but they use cameras:

Artic Heroes, Ittoqqortoomiit Storm. Photograph by Ragnar Axelsson.

See the website for all the honorees. (Via PetaPixel.)

Best Nature Photography, 2026 Showcase

No, you read that right: the first winners of next year, from the North American Nature Photography Association:

Cormorant Diving. Photograph by Kevin Lohman.

Most of these contain detail best seen at larger sizes. (See the website.) Well, okay, except maybe this one, which is cute at any size:

Fox Kit with Helper. Photograph by Marcia Walters.
Thank You for Visiting

That’s it from here for November. I still owe you coverage of AIGA’s 50 Books|50 Covers (update: posted); weather permitting, there will be a new photography gallery mid-month; there will, of course, another Beautifully Briefed at the turn of 2026; and, don’t forget my annual Favorite Book Covers post mid-January. Please have a happy and healthy holiday season.

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    I took the opportunity to remaster these photographs to both correct an unnoticed error and for better consistency between the photographs taken in 2022 and those in 2025.
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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.

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    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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    Yes, I grew up listening to Car Talk.
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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!

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

“The Bleak Cycle”

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

The Bleak Cycle

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

David Roth, Defector

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

Pinned.

Kottke is Back!

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

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

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

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

Stop Stealing [Free] Sheep

No, not that — the type book:

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

9th Annual Landscape Photography Awards

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

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

Wow. I couldn’t not highlight that photograph.

Many more at the source. (Via DPReview.)

Oldest Logos Still in Use

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

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

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

That’s it for this year

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

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

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Beautifully Briefed, Early March 2022: Monograph Impresses, Monotype Trends, and Media Waste

Three diverse items in this round-up, from illustration to typography to whether or not ad-blockers are actually environmentally-friendly — along with a response that reminds us to look at the bigger picture.

Malika Favre (Expanded Edition)

CreativeBoom:

French illustrator and graphic designer Malika Favre has been impressing audiences for years with her minimalist work for publications such as The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Now over a decade’s worth of her work has been released in a new monograph from Counter-Print, which contains a suitably stripped-back aesthetic.

Her style is distinctive; I’ve liked her New Yorker covers especially:

Malika Favre (Expanded Edition) in English

The book includes the illustrator’s own cover, and she had a big hand in designing the layout, too. CreativeBoom’s article is excellent — check it out.

Monotype’s 2022 Trends

It’s Nice That points us to the recently-released 2022 Type Trends Report from Monotype:

Monotype’s 2022 Type Trends Report cover

Throughout yet another “unprecedented year,” it’s safe to say that the macro trends influencing the type design community are nearly too long to list. Several socioeconomic, political, and cultural events continue to shape the way we approach creative work and how connect to each other online and offline.

Biodiversity’s relationship to type, varying type styles in a single logo, and thin serifs — the one I’m likely to use somewhere — are in this year.

New York’s Park Lane Hotel

The above example, from New York’s Park Lane Hotel, is but one they cite (see that whole, very lovely project at Brand New). Check out the whole report, and get trendy.

Perhaps we can convince Apple to go back to its also-lovely Garamond…?

Media, Trackers, Blockers, and the Environment: There’s a Problem

Did it ever occur that using an ad blocker in your browser is actually an environmentally-friendly move? No, I hadn’t put it together, either.1More from MIT on ecological impacts of cloud computing here.

70% junk. Surprise and shock (not really).

[U]p to 70% of the electricity consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) caused by visiting a French media site is triggered by advertisements and stats. Therefore, using an ad blocker even becomes an ecological gesture. But we also suggest actions web editors could take to reduce this impact.

An interesting study, certainly, with information that many of us already use and some suggestions for action in case we don’t. But…:

Another of Monotype’s 2022 Type Trends, appropriated for use here

Nick Heer:

I have qualms with this. The idea of a “carbon footprint” was invented by British Petroleum to direct focus away from environmental policies that would impact its business, instead blaming individuals for not recycling correctly or biking to work more. A “carbon footprint” is also a simplistic view of how anything contributes to global warming, and that it seems to be used here as a synonym for bandwidth and CPU consumption.

I’m not sure whether I’ve called out the excellent Pixel Envy2A sort-of Daring Fireball with Canadian roots, but this is an example of why I should.

That is where I think this well-intentioned study falters. Even so, it is absurd that up to 70% of a media website’s CPU and bandwidth consumption is dedicated to web bullshit. Remember: the whole point of web bullshit is that it is not just the ads, it is about an entire network of self justifying privacy hostile infrastructure constructed around them.

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    More from MIT on ecological impacts of cloud computing here.
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    A sort-of Daring Fireball with Canadian roots