Read Some Stewf

My Boss, Erik Spiekermann

For my family and friends who still struggle to understand the esoteric world of typography in which I live, you might get a step closer after watching these two short videos featuring FontShop’s founder: Erik Spiekermann. The first is from a ’80s-era BBC programme (no, Erik doesn’t sport the bow tie anymore) and the second is a clip from 2007’s hit documentary “Helvetica”. Besides being an award-winning graphic and type designer in his own right, Erik is an entertaining spokesperson for the field. He travels constantly, practicing design but also speaking to students and professionals around the world.

A disclaimer on the title: though I often endearingly refer to him as “my boss”, Erik hasn’t been a part of day-to-day operations at FontShop for years. Still, he continues to play an active roll in advising the company he founded. I feel honored to work with people I truly respect and admire. Here we are a couple weeks ago with other FontShop leaders at a meeting in Dwell’s San Francisco office:

Update: The FontShop blog editors, taken in May 2008:

FontStruct: If you can play with blocks, you can make modular typefaces

It’s been a giddy few days of April here at FontShop. Amid answering customer emails and designing type specimens, we’ve been tinkering with our newest invention: FontStruct, an online application that makes it simple for anyone (even you) to create a font. How? FontStructions are built with “bricks” — like legos or the wooden stacking blocks we know from our youth. Yes, even children can make a font with FontStruct. Of course, you won’t spit out the next Garamond or Helvetica with this tool, but with the bricks supplied (squares, round corners, diagonals, circles, stars and other novelties) there are millions of modular typeface possibilities. Below are a few of my first FontStructions. They didn't require much time or a lick of talent. Go play!

Varsity — An athletic slab for jerseys, letterman jackets, giant hillside letters, ball caps, or launching your own line of A&F knockoff merchandise.

Leaflet — A tender little geometric thing, inspired in equal parts by nature and the Bauhaus.

Eerostyle — Derived from the rounded rectangle of mid-century furniture and architectural design, a pioneer of which was Eero Saarinen.

Pebble — AKA ladybug AKA basica.

Brian Eno and Will Wright

Will Wright — creator of my favorite computer game, SimCity — and Brian Eno — collaborator with my favorite artist, David Byrne — talk about randomness and rule-based generation in the worlds of music and gaming. Either of these artists would be interesting on their own. Together, they are magical.

The site that hosts this video, FORA.tv, is everything YouTube is not: intelligent, elegant, informative, with quality, downloadable video rather than low-res web-locked crap.

Claiming My Series of Tubes

claimID is a service that assists web freaks like me — who have profiles and content all over the internets — to claim and organize the pages that are theirs. This way, when someone googles your moniker, they see the stuff you deem most worthy of your good name.

I also hope it will help differentiate me from the gerontologist, Dr. Stephen Coles, who continues to gain PageRank due to that story last month about the dude who lived to 112 despite a diet of sausage and waffles.

Here's my claimID page and a live listing of the links thereon:

Just in case you didn't catch the meaning behind the title of this post, “the internet is a series of tubes”.

Goodbye MySpace. Hello Facebook.

I rarely visit the teenybopper juggernaut known as MySpace. And not because of the kids. I love kids. I rarely visit because it is slow, the advertising is intrusive, and the user-customizable layout and piss-poor UI combine to form a horrific train wreck of gaudy page backgrounds, misalignment, side scrolling, and stinky sock odor. I'm all for personal expression, but thanks to MySpace’s glacial page loading and auto song loading, it takes me three weeks and a headache just to see what's up with my good compeers.

This is why you can usually find me at Flickr and Last.fm.

And now, Facebook, the cleanest, slickest, most usable social network (just ask the 10 million college students who have been using it exclusively for years) is open to all. I cordially invite you to join me over there:

Good day, MySpace. I said, good day!

“Trading 1 Bird Feeder for Rotisserie Chicken and Other Foods”

The marvelous Miss Martha has deemed this week “Birthday Princess Week”. I've received copious presents — certainly more than I am due. The latest of which was this delightful birdfeeder. Unfortunately I was not able to accept the gift yesterday due to my lack of presence on the West side of the Bay.

That was a mistake. Martha warned me that her cat could use the Internets and that if I did not take the feeder right away he would post it on Craigslist as trade for food. I waved off that notion as poppycock. “Cats can't compute!” I said, and informed the lovely lady that I would collect the gift on the morrow.

I was wrong.

A Footnote Shoutout to My Peeps

Keith Schofield’s video for DJ Format brings to life the dream of hip-hop arcade geeks everywhere: a DDR [1] for rappers [2]. Whitebreads Abdominal and D-Sisive use the input mics to bust rhymes and earn “Name Drop Bonus” points and prizes like “BLING!”, “CANDY!”, and “HAMSTERS!” [3].

While you’re at Schofield’s site, check out his vid for Hard ’n Phirm, a hilarious and bizarre parody of the ’70s public TV series for kids called “Zoom”. Thanks to [4] for the link.

Update: Old Zoom Clips!

1. Jenn   2. James and Jordan   3. Alex   4. Joshua

A New Blue Screen of Death

Having just received my freshly repaired PB 15 from Apple, I fired it up to test the new display. All was working swell for a few hours until the screen suddenly dimmed and a pool of blue spread across the LCD like water or an electronic aurora borealis. Wet streams of clear pixels dripped down the center. It was as if the little guy rejected the new screen like a bad organ transplant. I snagged this photo as I watched the spectacle play out over the next 30 seconds. I was simultaneously pissed and fascinated.

Certain the failure was hardware related, I got the box of foam ready to send back to Apple. But upon restart, the display returned to normal function and I haven't seen the phenomenon again.

Was it just a natural reaction? The machine adjusting to a new implant? Maybe you think I’m a big time nerd who assumes his PB lives and breathes. Maybe you’re right.

New Audioscrobbler plugin for OS X

All my Scrobblin’ Mac peeps need to download the new iScrobbler. Besides making the plugin Tiger-friendly it generates some nifty local stats. Find out exactly how much of your life you've spent listening to Loverboy.

You want a piece of my heart?

You better start from start.

You wanna be in the show?

Come on baby, let’s go!

Facial Hair × 5