Through Lines 114

Music is a lot like design is many regards. A song is a million little decisions — layering multiple influences and ideas into what’s often an emotionally connected product of several individuals. It’s also just fun to look behind the curtain at bands in the studio where you often discover they’re making it up as they go too.

• “The Renaissance was a period of intense crisscrossing during which artists like Brunelleschi worked as engineers and vice versa. Known as “Renaissance Men,” others, like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Leon Battista Alberti, effortlessly bridged painting, architecture, music, anatomy, engineering, astronomy, and more, resulting in a dynamic outpouring of intellectual, artistic, and literary activity.” The Nexus is going to be required reading.
• It’s that time of the year for the annual 2022 Logo Trends Report from Logo Lounge.
• Kirby 3.7 was released this week with a bevy of useful new features, functionality and bug fixes. The new stats section in particular was fun to play around with and even got me to build some custom page functions to pull stats for this site.
• “For me the festering issue is how our collective imaginary has been captured by a small group of techno-capitalists. We yearn for driverless cars, yet fail to imagine what a world without cars might look like. We starve our artists while we build machines to create art.” Daniel Angus lays it out plainly.
• I rediscovered The Joy of Lasercutting after Alda Escareño reached out to invite me to visit her at the amazing technology and fabrication lab at my old alma matter in Toronto where she teaches. Now I need a project to work on with her there.
• Thibaut Sailly’s intriguing process for generating effective and comprehensive color palettes and variations is one to file for future reference. Toque tip to Greg.
• Today's Design is Shaped by Likes. This is not news if you’re paying attention.
• Confessions of a Burnt Out Overachiever. This sounds all too familiar, and while I’ve learned many of these lessons in the past, a reminder is very not welcome.
• A few helpful lessons and reminders for how to survive these traumatic times.

Notable Type Releases

• HEX Project’s reinterpretation (reimagining?) of Franklin hit version 0.2 this week with improved character support, initial kerning, alternate characters and a special variable font for ‘Tyght’ spacing. I’ve been waiting for this one…
• Campaign Serif, like just about anything from Mark Caneso is full of confidence and flair. Much curvy. Me like.
• Order’s new Etude stencil typeface transforms music notation and the style of broad nib pen lettering into an elegant package. Best used large for optimal readability.
• Lewis McGuffie’s Grafiks is a friendly, impressionistic take on 20th century Estonian grotesk lettering with irregular strokes and sign painterly character.
• Not your average monospace font, CoFo Rax also hit version 0.2 on Future Fonts.
• Hannes van Doren’s new Tapir has siphoned up all the quirk and unusual character this week — also, be sure to scope some of the beautiful ligatures included.
• Pouf! So soft. So marshmello-y. So fun.