font specimen

Previously we’ve studied the penmanship of Trump through a typeface called what else but Tiny Hand and rather shied away from this slightly Disneyesque crisp style since it was sort of endearing—that is, until one considers his signature below, which has this sonic quality of a demon screech from some alternate timeline, but with his latest rash of missives, any graphologically (which is a pseudoscience) redemptive qualities have been quite squandered, so we are enjoying this Quid Pro Quo Sans sourced from a variety of exemplars. As an added public service the font will auto-correct a range of particularly Trumpian substitutions and at the link one can experiment with crafting one’s messages on official letterhead.

u-bahn

Via the always resourceful Kottke, we are directed to a speciality site called Metrobits curating the branding, routes, technology and fare-schemes of public transit systems from major cities around the world. In addition to the expertly annotated legend and key to the icons, there’s also an extensive gallery of metro stations (see also) that are sacred celebrations of public infrastructure.

check digit

Whereas the title refers to a form of error detection, quality control through redundancy—the integrity of a numbering convention validated by a formulaic self-consistency, we were pleased to be elucidated in the origin of typeface E-13B, whose repertoire of characters, developed by Stanford Laboratories and General Electric in the late 1950s as a way to automate cheque-clearing, was the expression of a system developed for magnetic ink character recognition (MICR, a precursor to optical character recognition though in theory predating this earlier iteration that the technology was already acclimatized for).
E being the fifth font considered, B for the Beta-version, thirteen represented the size of the grid (see also, CMC-7 is the name for the parallel system utilised in parts of Europe and South America) for numerals and control characters: ⑆ transit, ⑈ on-us, ⑇ amount and ⑉ as a dash to break up long strings of numbers for human legibility. By measuring the resistance or conductivity at predetermined positions across the footer of the cheque, accuracy improved over other scanning techniques and human transcription. Little human intervention is needed, accounting for a fraction of a percent given the volume, though redundancies are still built in that requires a double-check and self-assessment.

greta grotesk regular

Inspired by her now iconic signature hand-lettered protest placards, an up and coming foundry, we learn via Kottke, has issued a free typeface based on the script of climate champion Greta Thunberg (previously), suitable for making one’s own posters. In typography, a grotesque refers to the family of serif fonts with irregular qualities that were particularly favoured by sign-painters for their ability to stand out.

anatomy of a typeface

Via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals we learn from graphic artist Nate Piekos’ Better Letterer corner (see also) that traditionally in comic book captioning the “I” with crossbars is used exclusively for the personal pronoun whereas the single stroke “I” is used in all other contexts.

offset und verlag

Via Present /&/ Correct, we are acquainted with yet another publishing trade magazine this time in the form of the bimonthly then annual anthology editions of Graphis Press, originally founded in Zürich in 1944 and moving to New York headquarters in 1986. Featuring innovations in typography, formatting, layout, presentation, branding, logos and letterhead, past contributors include Milton Glaser, Saul Bass, Victor Vasarely and Herb Lubalin. Much more to explore at the links above.

pardon our progress

Via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals, we are invited to reflect on the bold but humble typography of Tokyo metro worker Shuetsu Sato (佐藤修悦), a practise and an art form that he cultivated in order to better perform his job of helping commuters safely and swiftly navigate through a maze of shifting corridors and detours that result from the continuous construction projects on the stations and subway lines.
Equipped with some rolls of colourful duct tape and an X-Acto knife, Sato san has transformed the matter of broadcasting diversions and disruptions into something brilliantly captivating, albeit temporary, with his neat and helpful guides. Much more to explore and an entire gallery of Sato san’s improvised signage at the links above.

contiguous

From Boing Boing, we’re rather saddled with the font face Ugly Gerry, letter-forms selected from gerrymandered voting precincts that conspicuously and shamelessly illustrates the kerning and ink-traps of disenfranchisement that keeps incumbents in power and marginalises challengers through cracking and packing.

7x7

the farmer and the cowhand can be friends: a racy revival of Oklahoma! as a heuristic tool for exploring identity

eggcorn: celebrating malapropisms (see also) and mixing of idioms

horologium floræ: botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus noted the opening and closing times of different species of flowers and proposed that one could reliably tell time by their routine

do not pass go: the downfall of Atlantic City (previously) reflects the psychopathic Schadenfreude of Trump’s evangelic of opportunism

skin deep: facial recognition payment systems will start applying beauty-filters so users don’t feel self-conscious

brick-and-mortar: anchor retailors offer to help US government scrutinise their online arch-rivals

toypography: 1990s play things turned into letters of the alphabet—see also

7x7

general strike: Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger calls for a boycott of social media as a Declaration of Digital Independence, via Slashdot

imts: an exploration of mobile telephony (see also) from the 1940s onward

move fast, bank things: a helpful primer on a social media giant’s currency roll-out

a different kind of energy: US presidential contender Marianne Williamson

hang a yield sign in your rear window to prevent cars from passing: driverless vehicles are highly susceptible to spoofing

soffa sans: IKEA releases a new font in response to people testing the limits of their Vallentuna sectional planning tool

one of these things is not like the others: nepotism is not easy on the eyes

yolo

Much like Emperor Claudius believed he vastly improved Latin orthography with his contribution of three new letters (namely Ⅎ for the w-sound, Ↄ for the ps and bs plosives and a Ⱶ, a half of an haitch that is of disputed meaning), seventh century Chinese Empress Wu Zetian imposed somewhere between a dozen and thirty new characters as a demonstration of her power and influence.
In both cases, use of the new characters was mandated but quickly were abandoned and reverted to their old style of writing (see also) after their reigns ended, though unlike with the Romans, a few of the so called Zeitan characters have been incorporated into modern usage. For example, the Empress wanted the term xīng, star to be rendered as 〇 instead of 星, with the former ideogram now representing the number zero, and Wu thought the perfectly cromulent way of expessing a person (rén, 人) should be articulated 𤯔, that is the ideogram for life capped with numeral one to convey the aphorism that everyone only lives once, adopted for contemporary parlance

notae tironianae

Absent any comprehensive and systematic stenographical short-cuts except for what could be improvised and some legal jargon that were purposefully opaque to stave off the non-credentialed, the catalogue of glyphs, growing to some five thousand symbols, created by Marcus Tullius Tiro (*94 – †4BC) was a highly useful innovation.
An enslaved clerk who was later freed to continue working as the Roman orator and statesman Cicero’s, his former master, personal secretary, Tiro was able—through his notes—to facilitate the dictation and capture the thoughts of the philosopher and statesman, and the method was quickly disseminated. Taught in medieval monasteries, the extended character set grew to some thirteen thousand shorthand symbols that made for an abbreviated syllabary, which could be further modified and combined to compress whole sentences and still retain the words verbatim. Falling out of favour with the proliferation of the printing press, a few Tironian notes are still in use today—notably the ⁊ (the glyph for et, and) is used extensively on signage in Scotland and Ireland where the sign is called the agusan and agus respectively.

i've got two chickens to paralyse

Although the typographical inconsistencies would have personally driven me to distraction before I could manage to encode anything, we admit that were impressed with the counter-measures that a song lyrics repository employed to catch cheats who might copy their stenography work and publish it as their own.  Subtly (or not so subtly to those sensitive to such things) naturally scattered through the verses, the transcript alternated between a typographic, curly style (’) and a typewriter style (') according to a protocol that resulted in, converted to the dots and dashes of Morse Code, the message “Red Handed.” This method of copywriter protection is in keeping with the cleverest trap streets and mountweazels but no party is can really claim legal rights as librettists and brings into question what service that they were providing in the first place.

↖ boulder brook trail

Via the always brilliant Kottke, we are introduced to a family of typefaces from the Design Outside studio inspired by the US National Park Service signs (see also here and here)—the sort of classic guide posts and way-pointers that are carved with a router bit, very evocative of the sense of space and time to wonder and wander. Much more to explore at the links above.

our polite society

As a vehicle to explore globalism versus localism and identity—plus dominance and obsolescence, a resident of the factory town of Åtvidaberg partnered with the above design studio in a visual research project on the office equipment manufacturer FACIT AB and its legacy through its ephemera. Founded in 1922, the Swedish corporation produced typewriters, office furnishings and mechanical calculators through the 1970s, losing its relevance to Japanese-produced electronic models. In business theory, the failure if the company to adapt and embrace a technological shift is called the Facitfällen—the Facit Trap, especially when there is no funding- or skill-gap.

emblematic

Through acknowledging the obsolesce of these artefacts, designer Takuma Yamazaki has created an elegant hanko (判子) that impresses a scannable QR code which can contain and redirect toward the public and private autobiographies of the bearer, nicely spanning the continuum between the past, present and the increasingly connected future.
These seals, also called inkan (印鑑) are used to stamp important documents in lieu of a signature, but modern technology and advances in printing have antiquated much of the security features than these personal devices offered—opening up individuals to fraud and a sort of identity-theft. Hanko, especially government and corporate ones that wield authority, are often kept under lock and key to avoid the potential for counterfeiting—a funny contradiction since this prototype digital cartouche embosses what’s meant to share and inform. More to explore at the link above.

8x8

colossus: a robot firefighter worked alongside five hundred heroic first responders to help save Notre Dame

hyperacusis: a look at the rather long history of building acoustics and being driven to distraction

ben day dots: the studio behind the fantastic title sequence of Into the Spider-Verse

poe’s law: an internet adage that it’s become tougher and tougher to distinguish extreme views from parodies thereof

stumped: a look at the observation posts of World War I disguised as trees

the secret-sharer: tech companies contract armies of people to tweak and improve digital assistants

mush, mush: a team of Boston Dynamics Spot Minis working in tandem haul away a big truck

a vast symphony set in stone: tourists and scholars reflect on the cathedrals’ historic (and landmark) role and what it means to them  

߷

Developed to increase literacy and bring about cultural cohesion among the Manding language speakers of West Africa, Guinean author Souleymane Kante (ߛߏߎߟߋߦߑߡߊߣߋ ߞߊ߲ߕߋ), the N’ko script (ߒߞߏ‎, I say in all the family dialects) was finalised on this day in 1949 and disseminated throughout Guinea, the Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire.
While it bears some similarities to Arabic writing in that it reads from right to left and letters are connected with ligatures, Kante (*1922 - †1987) crafted the script to communicate the special features of the common language and is today regarded as one of the best integrated and most successful of the modern syllabaries, with native writers and readers also digital natives, adapted for computer use since the early 1990s. The title is the N’ko punctuation mark called gbakurunen, the three stones that balance a cooking pot over a flame, and indicates the end to a section of text and separate subchapters, like an asterism (⁂).

serif and shoulder

The always excellent Everlasting Blört refers us to a handy interactive guide that teaches the terminology of the elements of typography, what each of the strokes and embellishments of a letter-press are called. Explore more of the anatomy of a font at the links above.

schatzanweisung

Having matriculated with the Bauhaus in 1921 and demonstrating considerable typographic talent, Herman Bayer (*1900 - †1985—previously here and here) while attending school in Weimar, we learn from Coudal Partners’ Quick Links, was commissioned in 1923 by the state of Thüringen to create Notgeld—emergency currency for a nation that after suffering defeat in the Great War—to address run-away, hyperinflation. Paper money went into circulation as soon as it was printed as it became practically worthless immediately.