March 2012
32 posts
“Honesty in form is one of the major tenets of modernism. In other words, a design should accomplish a narrowly defined function in the simplest manner possible. This belief is extolled in many design disciplines, including typography. In 1931, Eric Gill wrote:
“The world is not yet clothed in garments which befit it; in architecture, furniture, clothes, we are still wearing things which have no relation to the spirit which moves our life…. The majority still think Gothic architecture to be appropriate to churches, tho’ Gothic architecture is simply a method of building appropriate to stone and is not really more Christian than Hindu. We still make tables and chairs, even when we make them by machinery, with the same ornamental turnings & cornices & so forth as when furniture-making was the job of a responsible handicraftsman.” — An Essay on Typography, p. 6.
This attitude was influential. Designs such as Univers and Helvetica became, in the field of typography, a paragon of modernism — letterforms for a mechanized and commercialized society. It makes sense: Designers love the notion of a fixed form for a fixed purpose. There’s an honesty and simplicity to it that we find appealing and comforting. But this is an aspiration, not reality. Often, old forms that dealt with an old purpose are reused for a new and unintended purpose. For me, this is the story of Copperplate Gothic.” —Fonts: The making of Garçon Grotesque | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog
“The world is not yet clothed in garments which befit it; in architecture, furniture, clothes, we are still wearing things which have no relation to the spirit which moves our life…. The majority still think Gothic architecture to be appropriate to churches, tho’ Gothic architecture is simply a method of building appropriate to stone and is not really more Christian than Hindu. We still make tables and chairs, even when we make them by machinery, with the same ornamental turnings & cornices & so forth as when furniture-making was the job of a responsible handicraftsman.” — An Essay on Typography, p. 6.
This attitude was influential. Designs such as Univers and Helvetica became, in the field of typography, a paragon of modernism — letterforms for a mechanized and commercialized society. It makes sense: Designers love the notion of a fixed form for a fixed purpose. There’s an honesty and simplicity to it that we find appealing and comforting. But this is an aspiration, not reality. Often, old forms that dealt with an old purpose are reused for a new and unintended purpose. For me, this is the story of Copperplate Gothic.” —Fonts: The making of Garçon Grotesque | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog
February 2012
29 posts
“The night before I was scheduled to return to work after summer vacation I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling trying to quiet my thoughts and reset my body into work mode. Unfortunately I was unsuccessful. My quest led me to the couch where I began to mindlessly flip through channels searching for something to bore me to sleep. I landed on a late night talk show where the infamous Snooki of The Jersey Shore fame happened to be the guest. As I went to change the channel I paused when I heard her reason for being asked onto the show; she was there to promote her book. This interview I had to hear. Throughout the course of the interview she quoted lines from her book; however, what disturbed me the most was a phrase she mentioned that has been haunting me ever since that sleepless night. “Oh, it’s totally true,” she giggled while carelessly flipping her hair over a glittery shoulder. “The ocean is salty because of whale sperm.” The interviewer raised her eyebrows as Snooki continued on, doing her part to educate the American public. “I’m telling you it’s true, just ‘Google it’.” Despite Snooki’s glaringly inaccurate scientific claim, I was far more rattled by her assurance that this ridiculous statement had to be correct because she found it online, so therefore it must be true.”
—by Margaux DelGuidice, In the Library with the Lead Pipe » Snooki, Whale Sperm, and Google: The Unfortunate Extinction Of Librarians When They Are Needed Most
“The Great Barrier Reef, just off the Australia’s Queensland coast, is the largest structure in the world that’s composed of living organisms. (You can see it from space!) It’s a lush — and, visually, pretty magical — ecosystem, one that begs to be both explored and visualized. Scientists are doing both … with the help of an underwater incarnation of Google’s Streetview. Researchers at the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute are teaming up with Google and the Catlin Coorporation to conduct a comprehensive study on the effects of climate change on the health of the coral polyps that compose the 1,600-mile-long reef. To conduct the study, the researchers have developed an underwater camera — the maritime version of Google’s Streetview Car — which is able to take 360-degree panoramic shots of its surroundings as it propels its way through the sea.”
—Mapping the Great Barrier Reef (Using Google Street View) - Megan Garber - Technology - The Atlantic
“You know the maps that show the criss-crossing lines of global air routes? Well, if you could make a map of Twitter, with arched lines tracing the connections among the places that tweeters and their followers live, it would look quite similar — and not just in that it would be a map of connections all around the world, but much more of a direct resemblance: Air routes are a pretty good predictor of relationships on Twitter. This is the conclusion of a new study from three Canadian researchers, who compared Twitter connections and airline routes. Though local connections make up a good bulk of Twitter ties (39 percent), the frequency of airline connections between two places is a good proxy for ties that go outside of one’s hometown. This means “the strength of prior ties between places matters more than the simple distance between them.” Of course, this isn’t only because the constant flights provide more opportunities for connection between residents of two distant places; the airline connections are themselves like the Twitter connections — a manifestation of an existing relationship between two places. In this sense, it’s no more surprising that New York and London are well connected on Twitter than it is that they are well connected by air travel.”
—Airline Routes Are a Pretty Good Predictor of Twitter Connections - Rebecca J. Rosen - Technology - The Atlantic
“Print purists needn’t retreat with horror to their laden shelves. Multimedia enhancement will still affect only a tiny proportion of new titles. Children’s books were first to get this bells-and-whistles treatment, but adult fiction has proven a harder sell. Few readers have been willing to pay more for extras at the back. While ordinary e-books continue to eat into print sales, a British experiment with adding author videos and other material to best-selling novels, called Enhanced Editions, was quietly abandoned last year. Yet for certain kinds of book, such as biographies, cookbooks, literary classics and newer forms of interactive fiction, enhancement can add rich and startling new layers. Penguin’s forthcoming biography of Malcolm X, for instance, features rare archival footage and an interactive map of Harlem. The life of “Muhammad Ali” now comes with audio clips of him rapping about his prowess. Richard Dawkins’s “The Magic of Reality” (voted best app at the 2012 Digital Book World) and E.O. Wilson’s “Life on Earth”, are cunning fusions of documentary and textbook, with molecules and stories spinning at a finger’s touch.”
—Enhanced e-books: Truly moving literature | The Economist
“My point is that it’s important, both ethically and strategically, for advocates of the right to read to understand that creators should have the option and the right to make a living from their creations, and that our advocacy, right now, at this moment in history, is crucial to ensure that right. It’s also the reader’s right to support creators, which they can do either directly (buy my book!) or indirectly (fund libraries, and they will buy my book). Some of us in society will “buy” books, by way of funding libraries, that we never read ourselves or that we choose to purchase on our own, but we understand that the town pump benefits everyone — a take on the world that is less popular in certain circles, but only underscores our value to society.”
—Free Range Librarian › K.G. Schneider’s blog on librarianship, writing, and everything else
“Successful governments can’t work this way. To make good decisions, they need good, impartial information, not yes men.”
—Ford’s treatment of TTC chief sends a terrible message - The Globe and Mail
“Were it simply made in one place, a $110-million hit to the CBC would eliminate French radio or half of English radio services or remove more than a day’s worth of television programming from CBC-TV every week, said Karen Wirsig, communications co-ordinator at the Canadian Media Guild, the CBC’s main union. While it is unlikely the CBC will target an entire service in that way, a $110-million cut would force the broadcaster to make visible changes to programming. In the 2000s, with both cuts and inflation eating away at its budget, the CBC streamlined its administration and sold off real estate; to deal with $170-million in lost ad revenue during the 2009 and 2010 recession, it made cuts across the board, eliminating 800 jobs and paying out $40-million in severance. Now, though, the cuts are expected to be vertical – in lower priority areas – rather than horizontal – or across all services. Lacroix calls this a “Sophie’s Choice” for the broadcaster.”
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This time, the CBC cuts will be noticeable - The Globe and Mail
Is this what the Conservative Party meant when they promised to keep the CBC’s federal funding stable?
“The conceit that one must choose facts or beauty—even if it’s beauty in the name of “Truth” or a true “idea”—is preposterous. A good writer—with the help of a fact-checker and an editor, perhaps—should be able to marry the two, and a writer who refuses to even try is, simply, a hack.”
—The Book Bench: The Art of Fact-Checking : The New Yorker
