Typography Today: Links

Some links about typography for you to explore:

• The end of Type 1: A significant milestone for font users has arrived: This month, Adobe is shipping several application updates which remove support for the original PostScript font format known as Type 1. Whether this change affects you or not depends quite a lot on how far back you and your work go. If some of your work dates back 20 years, some potential problems are lurking around the corner. (via Type Network)

• Five typography trends set to make waves in 2023: This year’s trends are all about what’s underneath. From code and generative typography to type as a political tool, how and why we create type will be driving what’s coming next. (via It’s Nice That)

• Monotype’s annual type trends report for 2023.

• Type Design Resources: A growing, public, collaborative collection of type design resources. Everything from learning the basics to running your own foundry.

How to be Strategic

Julie Zhuo:

Basically, a strategy is a set of actions designed to achieve a particular objective. It’s like a route designed to get you from Point A to Point B. A more interesting question is “what makes for a good strategy?” And for that, I subscribe to Richard Rumelt’s definition: a good strategy is a set of actions that is credible, coherent and focused on overcoming the biggest hurdle(s) in achieving a particular objective.

Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash

Tech as Art: Supporting Artists Who Use Technology as a Creative Medium

The report Tech as Art: Supporting Artists Who Use Technology as a Creative Medium, presents findings from a field scan commissioned in 2019 by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation:

This report is the result of a two-year research initiative exploring the multifaceted creative practices of artists who engage with digital technologies. The research examines the creative infrastructure supporting tech-focused artistic practices and provides insight into the existing challenges and opportunities faced by artists and organizations working at the intersection of arts and technology.

The report (available here) shares detailed findings; identifies challenges; and ends with recommendations for different stakeholder groups, including funders, arts practitioners, policymakers, and educators. Of particular interest to me is the section addressing artists creating projects within and between virtual worlds using extended reality technologies to create completely new forms of art experiences never seen before.

The following essays were commissioned as a companion to the report:

“Recoding the Master’s Tools: Artists Remake Systems of Oppression and Extraction in Technology” by Vanessa Chang

“How Artists Can Bridge the Digital Divide and Reimagine Humanity” by Agnes Chavez

“Teaching the Co-Creators of a New Economy from Lincoln, Nebraska” by Megan Elliott

“Artist Perspective: Building Afrocentric Technoculture and Community” by Ari Melenciano

“Space, Time, Sustainability, Community: Giving Digital Artists What They Need” by Stephanie Pereira

“How the Arts Sector Can Support Transformational Technology” by Omari Rush

“Funder Perspective: Broadening Support for Arts and Technology” by Eleanor Savage

“Future World-building Depends on Artists and Collaborative Networks” by Kamal Sinclair

“Where Is the Public Discourse Around Art and Technology?” by Hrag Vartanian

“A Call-to-Action in STEAM Education” by S. Craig Watkins

Progress Through Creativity

This year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, celebrating the best “in the business of creativity,” begins today and runs virtually all week. The launch films for the festival, variations of the same script narrated by various creatives, were an additional shot of creative caffeine to get me going this week.

The Health Benefits of Coffee

While I consume coffee in what I sometimes describe as a coffee bowl, rather than a coffee mug, Jane E. Brody, in the Personal Health column of The New York Times, shares some very promising findings about the health benefits of coffee:

The latest assessments of the health effects of coffee and caffeine, its main active ingredient, are reassuring indeed. Their consumption has been linked to a reduced risk of all kinds of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, gallstones, depression, suicide, cirrhosis, liver cancer, melanoma and prostate cancer.

In fact, in numerous studies conducted throughout the world, consuming four or five eight-ounce cups of coffee (or about 400 milligrams of caffeine) a day has been associated with reduced death rates. In a study of more than 200,000 participants followed for up to 30 years, those who drank three to five cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, were 15 percent less likely to die earlyfrom all causes than were people who shunned coffee. Perhaps most dramatic was a 50 percent reduction in the risk of suicideamong both men and women who were moderate coffee drinkers, perhaps by boosting production of brain chemicals that have antidepressant effects.

As a report published last summer by a research team at the Harvard School of Public Health concluded, although current evidence may not warrant recommending coffee or caffeine to prevent disease, for most people drinking coffee in moderation “can be part of a healthy lifestyle.”

To all my family, friends and my colleagues, peers, collaborators for whom ‘it’s coffee time’ is a real and perhaps even essential part of who they are, this is fantastic news.