Mark Greif’s postmortem of hipsterdom What Was the Hipster, feels a bit premature, but he absolutely skewers the subculture:
Hipsterdom at its darkest, however, is something like bohemia without the revolutionary core.
Author Archives: admin
“The alphabet remains”
Hermann Zapf, circa 1967:
Autocomposition, and computerized composition are already with us. Designing types and letters for the new technology will increasingly involve mathematics and the laws of electronics…. Tradition and progress must be logically united. Does the new technology mean the serious lettering artist will be dispensable? No. The alphabet remains. But we will have new tasks to learn. But in learning them, we must take time to observe the world around us, and remember above all the artist’s challenge: to ensure, despite technology and mass production, that beauty is never lost.
The Art of Hermann Zapf from Johnny Dib on Vimeo.
Another skill to omit from résumés
Ryan W is done building Facebook apps:
Clients don’t care that it was Facebook (not you) who broke the feature that was working yesterday, and they don’t care that what you said you could do two months ago can no longer be done because Facebook decided to change the platform (again).
I built a (very simple) Facebook app for a client back in March, and it left exactly the same bitter taste in my mouth.
“…and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.”
Malcolm Gladwell’s article in The New Yorker on high-risk, strong-tie social networks vs. low-risk, weak-tie ones is a must-read for everyone who thinks that Web 2.0 will redefine political activism.
Redesigned Moscow Metro map by Art. Lebedev
The inimitable Art. Lebedev Studios have done a beautiful job of redesigning the Moscow Metro map:
Who’s more popular, The Rani or Borusa?
This visualization of Doctor Who villains since 1963 will tell you:
Move over, U+20A8
India unveils a new symbol for the Rupee.
Dan Ariely on online dating
Interesting interview with the economist Dan Ariely on why online dating is so unsatisfying:
Online dating is becoming the poster child for a class of problems that software / the web is really, really bad at solving.
No clue about type design
Bruno Maag doesn’t pull his punches in this interview about Aktiv, his Helvetica-killer:
…Max Miedinger [Helvetica’s designer] didn’t have a clue about type design. He was the salesman at [foundry] Haas’sche Schriftgießerei for Christ’s sake.
Ouch.
Giant toy robots and donuts
Eric Joyner paints retro-looking toy robots and donuts exclusively, like Too Many Choices II from 2008:
