link pile: tech & design edition

[kradeelav]

• "Why [Cooper Black, a font] is everywhere" - fascinating mini-documentary on possibly the one font used in more places than helvetica is.

• also found the font review journal (RSS friendly) through the above video, which gives a much more in-depth historical and text-based glance of slightly more uncommon fonts.

• relatedly, Vox' 5 minute video on how the Memphis design style influenced the 80's design (along with MTV) was rad and led me down yet another 80's design rabbit hole ... I always love digging into the anatomy of design movements, there's a sense a science/mechanics there that reveals so much more than what it looks like at first glance.

• 'why are unix read/write/execute permissions Like That' - i've always wanted to know why messing around with cpanel / ubuntu permissions are always 775 or some other weird number, now both you and I know :D 

• I don't have it working quite Yet, but here's the most promising photoshit-CC-on-linux github bash script I've seen lately. currently also doubling as a neat little 'learn git 101' with a very tasty reward at the end :P krita's great for drawing but as a professional, i do want to have the meaty backup in the pocket just in case for weird edge cases like converting a pdf and such.

• legally skittish / not confident enough in your h4x0r skills to run a tor node? the firefox snowflake extension looks like a great safe and easy way to help circumvent censorship in a similar way. still would not install it unless if you're comfortable with Tor, but been applying it to all my machines.

• "debugging by tarot" - this is a unique spread that honestly makes a lot of sense and practical structure and that I feel several of you may enjoy at least the read through :)

Comments

[lukadian]

Me over here immediately clicking that debugging by tarot article. Damn that was a fun read! I’ll see if I can’t use this spread some time!

Oooh I’ll definitely be looking into the snowflake extension, that sounds rad, and like a nice way to passively help someone out! 8D

So many tasty Unix links, thank you I am fed, my crops are watered!

[queenlua]

those two videos on design were totally and completely fascinating; thanks so much for sharing!

[kradeelav]

;D of course! There's a lot of cool "physicality" to old school print design that's kind of becoming rapidly lost knowledge as this generation of designer's all digital - you're probably seeing the same thing with the coding side too. it's amazing to trace the reasoning of why x and y decisions are made that seemingly felt like "we do this just because" type of work.

[vsitante]

Oh my god, so much stuff to digest...and really serendipitous, as I was doing some design period research myself. Cooper Black has always seemed to me to "belong" to the 1970s (due to sitcoms), so I can't wait to see what the vid says. I actually have two things that I think I'll share in return:

You may already know this, but the site Fonts in Use is very good as an archive and research site. Contains all sorts of fonts references so you can finally figure what that rare 1979 cult album cover had for a header XD

And then this article, which is super interesting: Is it possible to determine what typeface of the 1990s will become a classic in the future? It's one of those obvious-sounding situations but the way it's written definitely makes you go "oh it may not be that obvious."

That tarot reading piece reminds me of the way (mostly Norse) divinity is done in the series Oh My Goddess! -- there's stuff of it that's based on electronics, like the possibility of getting a part of you (or your familiar) "hacked." Yggdrasil isn't a tree, but an operating system with tech issues of its own when big events happen. Then there's Skuld, whose domain is future, so she's an engineer basically...and she initially starts out in the manga hunting "bugs" (computer viruses.) :D But I digress, haha.

[kradeelav]

Thank you for that link to hyphen press - such a cool website with link treasures to a whole carload's worth of tabs. ;D

likewise with that description, you've made me 200% more curious to watch AMG ... it almost feels like a shoujo version of Lain or NGE when put that way with the mythos so intertwined with digital worlds. I could see how, in hindsight, that appealed to many in the early 2000's and all.

Deliciousness all the way around!

[vsitante]

(Time passes and now this is a very late reply, dearie me)

You're welcome! Fellow divers of rabbit holes, unite ;P

Well, now that you made those comparisons, I'd recommend digging into the movie first if you ever do check it out. It's the most "dark" of all animated entries, and even maybe the manga. Otherwise, it's generally slice of life with a lot of mystic battles once a in while. The characters are what make it enjoyable to read and watch, imo.

It's funny that you say shoujo, because almost everyone thinks it's shoujo but it's not! I'd say so too tbh but nope. it's seinen. Funny how publishing in a genre magazine labels you as such. (Though in its defense, it does have sexy scenes and absurdity...and someone like Urd, hehe.)