Through Lines 279

I hope I never tire of watching machines we've built to make things for the simple reason that they’re endlessly fascinating and their precise rhythmic movements embody a particular soothing beauty. We’re inexplicably reliant on machines like this and yet most of us know so little about their existence.

Art & Design

Type of Note

  • Nick Sherman’s Shop Sans puts a new spin on an old problem. In this case, how to set type on a curve in an optimized way using the magic of variable type axes. An instant license for me.
  • Montreuil starts off in a conventional (by OH No standards) place but then veers into unconventional experimental territory with the Play styles. This is actually exactly something I’ve been looking for.
  • DJR’s latest Font of the Month, Gimlet Sans Mono (beta), expands an already robust family. This one is, as David notes, extremely beta which is at least part of the fun of his novel experiments.
  • Rotina by Erik Marinovich and Lucas Sharp uses playful novelty to turn a Neo-grotesque into an expressive humanist workhorse family with more than enough personality to shake two sticks at.
  • Questline’s flared serifs and carefully refined construction is grounded in historical medieval traditions and paired with modern proportions to produce a distinctive and unique voice and full of modern typographic features.

Technology

  • Byte — A Visual Archive brings together every page of every issue of Byte magazine through a novel interface. There’s a lot of little gems in there.
  • Fortune Favors the Buggy? There’s few software companies I think of as fondly of as Rogue Amoeba whose software I’ve used for many years. I’m glad they’re still around and still making great tools.
  • We put so much trust in technology yet most of the companies that make the tech (there are exceptions) we rely on day-in and day-out should not be held in high regard. As Robin Sloan notes, these companies don’t care about anything in particular, other than growth  —  the colonization and consolidation of human attention. Their commitments change as often as you change your socks.
  • Is anyone surprised anymore when reports come out about how much of a garbage company Meta actually is? Maybe it always was but it definitely is one no one should trust to do right.
  • Flash is long dead. Or is it?

Humanities

  • Never criminalize pride in craft. Jeff Veen is absolutely correct that small acts build great cultures. This is something that I dare hope anyone who’s worked with me has seen in how I approach the collaborative work I do.
  • Veen’s thoughts dovetail nicely with Naz's which rightly points to people as being what ground us in our work. Surround yourself with good ones that challenge you to think differently, learn, grow — and that make you laugh, smile, and feel like you belong. Cherish them.
  • Not all work is done by the ego in terms of its reality principles. There is work done by the imagination in terms of its reality, where joy and fantasy also take part… Mandy Brown proposes a different approach to how we think about work. An Imaginative Activity.
  • Probably more than you ever wanted to know about Taskmaster. Be warned: season 20 spoilers.

Music & Film

One More Thing

  • Grab a piece of paper or your nearest notebook and a pen or pencil. Then, let your mind wander. List out 27 things you want to do — in work and life. Little things. Big things. Serious things and dumb things. The things that will bring you joy and peace, no matter how ridiculous. Ignore your internal critic. You’ll know what to do next. If you’re feeling at the crossroads, Rob Schwartz has you covered.

Things feel like they’ve running at an accelerated pace the last couple weeks and I think there’s still another week of that to go at least before a little break for Thanksgiving. If nothing else, my poor eyes will be thankful for a break from having to look at glowing rectangles as much as I have recently. Continued experiments with Context Window have kept me sane. I received a small batch of books from a different production partner this week and a third is due to land tomorrow. I also unearthed what might be the first real draft of the book from back in 2023 this week. I seem to have lost the digital file but found a printed copy. Pays to work analog sometimes I guess.