Font Men: A Short Film About Jonathan Hoefler & Tobias Frere-Jones

Font Men is a SXSW 2014 Official Selection in the Film Festival. It is a behind the scenes look at Jonathan Hoefler & Tobias Frere-Jones. Given the recent company split it also feels like a sad obituary of sorts.  

You've seen their work. Before their recent split, they collectively ran the most successful and well respected type design studio in the world, creating fonts used by everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the President of the United States.

Font Men, gives a peek behind the curtain into the world of Jonathan and Tobias. Tracking the history of their personal trajectories, sharing the forces that brought them together and giving an exclusive look at the successful empire they built together.

Arts Education Fuels the Economy

Sunil Iyengar and Ayanna Hudson for The Chronicle of Higher Education:

In December, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released preliminary estimates from the nation’s first Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account. The account is meant to trace the relationship of arts and cultural industries, goods, and services to the nation’s ultimate measure of economic growth, its gross domestic product.

The numbers are still a work in progress. In this context, "arts education" refers only to postsecondary fine-arts schools, departments of fine arts and performing arts, and academic performing-arts centers. Yet even for this limited cohort, the findings are impressive:

The total economic output (gross revenue and expenses) for arts education in 2011, the most recent year for which data are available, was $104-billion. Arts education thus claims the second largest share of output for all U.S. arts and cultural commodities, after the creative services within advertising. In 2011, arts education added $7.6-billion to the nation’s GDP.  In that year alone, arts education as an industry employed 17,900 workers whose salaries and wages totaled $5.9-billion.  For every dollar consumers spend on arts education, an additional 56 cents is generated elsewhere in the U.S. economy.

Bodytorque.Technique: The Australian Ballet

After spending A Year With The Australian Ballet we now catch up with The Australian Ballet as they embark on a new movement in ballet, one that focuses less on storytelling and instead puts the spotlight on the athleticism and technique of the dancers. 

Life After Pi: A Cautionary Tale About Art And Bankruptcy

“Life After Pi” is a short documentary about Rhythm & Hues Studios, the L.A. based Visual Effects company that won an Academy Award for its groundbreaking work on “Life of Pi”– just two weeks after declaring bankruptcy. The film explores rapidly changing forces impacting the global VFX community, and the Film Industry as a whole.

This is only the first chapter of an upcoming feature-length documentary “Hollywood Ending,” that delves into the larger, complex challenges facing the US Film Industry and the many professionals working within it, whose fates and livelihood are intertwined.

Benjamin Zander: The Art of Possibility

Maestro Benjamin Zander, author of The Art of Possibility, speaking on how simply you can motivate your students to win an A by giving them As right from the begining. Don't miss Zander's talk on the art of listening to classical music.