Through Lines 177

Roger Waters’ Dark Side of the Moon Redux is out now. It’s strange, subtle, and yet still familiar with some really beautiful musical moments throughout even without David Gilmour’s memorable guitar parts or Clare Torry’s vocals on the Great Gig in the Sky.

• “No matter how splashy or fantastic any new innovation looks, there is always a downside.” We’re living in the timeline of the Jetson’s, but the future has run into our reality and exposed the moral faults and ugliness of human nature in the process.
• Josh Collinsworth nails it. A Message from the Captain of the S.S. Layoff.
• Tobi can get f**cked. This pissed me off like nothing else because it’s so utterly stupid.
• Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) from Mozilla looks to be another tool in taking back the internet. Hopefully we’ll see broad adoption of this idea quickly.
• Although both my computers are now just outside the macOS Sonoma upgrade window, the OpenCore Legacy Patcher might be a way forward though I’ve yet to decide how brave I’m feeling about this.
• We’re going to need a new definition of what constitutes an actual photograph once Adobe’s new Project Stardust is out in the wild. Also, noting the connection with the code name for the Death Star…
• New images from the JWST, including this one of the Orion Nebula continue to amaze along with how the inform how little we really know about our universe.
• “We have been playing design whack-a-mole. Our solutions only seem to open the gates to the next suite of confounding problems.” Hard truths from COLLINS that extend well beyond design and the C-suite.
• “The physical world can get along just fine without digital.” The opposite is unquestionably not true. The question is: will we count the costs?
• September's gobsmacking record setting temperatures. If we can’t shake ourselves out of our malaise and distracted lives, we’re truly f**cked.
• Seth is of course bang on with Convenience and Scams. Convenience is an idea at the root of what’s made parts of our lives worse rather than better.
• The Absolute Minimum Every Developer Should Know About Unicode. Unexpectedly relevant to my interests currently as I’ve waded deeper into the ocean of type design.
• New words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in September include a personal favorite: zhuzh.
• Hallelujah. In praise of the news kiosk.
• Possibly handy — the clamp calculator for all your responsive CSS needs.

Notable Type Releases

• Nikola Djurek’s Münchenstein is based on designs by Max Miedinger (yeah, the same one who designed Helvetica) and his all but lost typefaces Pro Arte and Horizontal. An oddball pairing, but intriguing for their historical value.
• An homage and extension of the original 1966 typeface, Maxitype’s OCR-X adds additional weights, an extended character set and unexpected features like ASCII Bubble and Alien stylistic sets.
• The open source B612 was commissioned by Airbus to be used on aircraft cockpit screens with a focus on readability including both sans and mono family variants.
• Kateryna Korolevtseva’s low contrast, high waisted and quirky Gart Mono (hat tip Robin) is not for coding, but editorially looks like it will be a stunner.
• The contrast of stone carving and digital precision in Commercial Type’s Ergon Is a measure of extremes pushed to their beautiful limits. Elegant and subtle at one end while crisp and sturdy at the other. Also, that lowercase g!
• The slight tapering in the vertical strokes of Fenul evoke a skeletal structure in its letterforms. The included stylistic set alternates and variable weight and widths give it a distinct voice, especially when set tight.
• Two decades in the making, LL Prisma is an epic revival of Rudolf Koch’s caps-only Prisma, now an expansive modular super family based on repetition and difference.
• Deriving inspiration from vintage jazz album covers, Swordfish’s jumping baseline and rhythmic pulse will get you moving or at least tapping along.
• ADB Detach’s exaggerated and expressive transitions (an understatement) are wild. Obviously best used at large sizes.