Now this post has gotten me excited, wastrel aesthete that I am. I was on the Wiki Biedermeier page not too long ago, either in connection with the Scottish art noveau (Charles Mackintosh) or the political use of the myths of Revolution during the Bourbon Restoration.
I forget the topic.
typography seems like one of those areas i'm not really interested in, because it seems likely to be made up of impenetrable rules that go in and out of fashion with the decades, contradicting each other. similar fields are interior decorating and literary criticism
That's some pretty mild throat-jumping. Anyway, she didn't suggest that big novels might be nice, too. She said, "Novels are supposed to be big!". I don't imagine that "Novels are not required exclusively to be small and domestic in their concerns" would have met with objection.
2: All I know is that New Times Roman or whatever that flick was called was one of those things where people say "oh it's about a font, but it's so much more interesting than that" and then they are later found dead because I murdered them after sitting through it.
When I was young, my mother had me read a book about calligraphy entitled The 26 Letters. The author's name, eerily enough, was Oscar Ogg.
(Trying to push the comments on this thread to double digits)
TIMES NEW ROMAN ISN'T A FONT! IT'S A TYPEFACE!!
||
Bleah. I drank too much last night (coworker's of Buck's in from out of town came over for dinner), and I have just realized that I am avoiding getting on my bike and riding home. I suppose I'll bike home tomorrow instead. I am pathetic.
|>
I don't read many new novels and I've never read Dwell, but we get Real Simple. It's part of my effort to learn about white people without becoming self aware and some of the recipes look good.
||
I wonder what the Pope is encoding when he denounces "the pressure exerted by the prevailing culture, which constantly holds up a lifestyle based on the law of the stronger, on easy and attractive gain." Is it the standard "allowing gay rights is oppressing us," or something else?
|>
I think he's announcing his opposition to Thrasymachus, and to Gyges' grandfather.
or whatever that flick was called was one of those things where people say "oh it's about a font, but it's so much more interesting than that" and then they are later found dead because I murdered them after sitting through it
Seriously boring shit. This is completely correct.
Well Times New Roman and Helvetica are hard to tell apart.
I like Top Shelf Times New Roman.
I will bolster my reputation as a tasteless boor by confessing that eekbeat and I liked the Helvetica movie.
I will say that I find 90% of all movies boring at some point, so odds were stacked against Helvetica.
17: Well I'm glad of a little affirmation anyway! And yes, Helvetica.
#16. Eh. I liked Helvetica. If that makes me tasteless THEN TASTELESS I SHALL BE. (I have old issues of Dwell in my bathroom, too. What can I say? Design porn relaxes me.)
Boredom is in the heart of the viewer. I find indie character dramas fascinating and raucous comedies and big action films boring.
When I was reading fiction on the other hand, I read both John Hawkes and Gary Jennings. I do wonder if the "big" post-modern novels are constructed, structured, pointed enough to be worth their weight. I recently re-read (including the links and comments) the 7(?) posts on The Kindly Ones over at the Valve.
neb (?) this is one if your few posts I can attempt to understand and find interesting. I can't get the description of modernism as romantic nostalgia out of mt head.
I do wonder if the "big" post-modern novels are constructed, structured, pointed enough to be worth their weight.
Infrequently, I think. Not a single novel by Pynchon or Barth has ever given me as much pleasure as a novel by James.
I can't get the description of modernism as romantic nostalgia out of my head.
"Romanticism + Industrialism = Modernism" -- John Barth. (I am, however, willing to crib Barth's clever lines.)
Surprising. I found The Sot-Weed Factor to be pleasure unremitting.
The part about what novels are supposed to be is much less objectionable than the stuff that comes after, which is a kind of breathless boosterism of claiming too much for something one likes. But then she says earlier that that's what she's doing, so it's not really objectionable either. It make a good blurb.
Well Times New Roman and Helvetica are hard to tell apart.
Speak for your serif.
I finished The Sot-Weed Factor with a pleasure akin to the kind that comes from running a marathon. I was happy to have endured it, but I wasn't keen on doing it again real soon.
An attendee of a party I was at last Saturday was wearing a shirt on which was written "Helvetica"—in Comic Sans.
The next morning, walking down my street, I passed a guy wearing a shirt on which was written "I went drinking with Gary Powell and all I got was a lousy iPhone prototype."
The battle against people using Comic Sans for their slides in talks seems to be lost. I even saw it in an actual paper the other day! (As part of a figure, not like the entire text of the paper.) It is very sad.
Though my most typeface-minded friend has nothing but scorn for Computer Modern, which I find acceptable enough that I feel no need to mess with defaults.
Ooh, Netflix has Helvetica available for streaming. Surely it's not more boring than the calculation I was going to do tonight.
30: Have the butler watch Helvetica for me, or have him do the calculation? Stress!
I didn't just like Helvetica, I really liked it. I also like Helvetica, which is definitely more than merely a font, or even a typeface.
To the OP, while I don't doubt that Biedermeier design represents in some respects a retreat from the political to the domestic, it also represents an aesthetic for an expanded market of both consumers and producers, so for many people individually, likely not a retreat at all, just an opportunity to indulge in stuff (one wishes to make an IKEA analogy, but he is reminded of why analogies are banned in the first place). The Wiki Biedermeier page referenced in 1, incidentally, is fairly far-ranging as Wikis go, but the one on Eastlake design, which is entirely germane to the discussion, is disappointingly thin.
Typography enthusiasm is, I think, not essentially a like phenomenon, however sudden it may seem. Jan Tschichold, for example, was writing about typography in moral terms in the 20s. I have found that my exposure to type geeks has increased recently, partly because IRL I know only a handful of such people (who tend to be really into it if they care about it at all), but the ones I find on the Internet are tight with their fellow fanatics and offer lots of interesting links.
I am loving this documentary, and I am so not a type geek.
Though I am feeling kind of guilty about leaving my butler to slave away over my calculations.
leaving my butler to slave away over my calculations.
He turned down the $15/hr?
Jan Tschichold! I have an irresistible urge to buy The New Typography any time I find a used copy. Many of my friends now have gifted copies of it.
The director of Helvetica is an old friend of my best friend. He always takes her to crazy parties. (The party where everyone is dressed as a Fellini character! The party at Dean and Britta's place!)
The interview with Erik Spiekermann about halfway through is awesome. His accent, mannerisms, and sort of playfully scornful attitude toward Helvetica are precisely like someone I know, mutatis mutandis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bctlOkUX6U
Tschichold's essays collected as The Form of the Book are fascinating; they're all about why things like margins and indentations must be so. The Hartley & Marks edition in the link is appropriately satisfying as an artifact. And look at how handsome it is in Russian. So handsome I bought a copy.
35.1: I have half a dozen or so copies of it around the bookshop if you're needing one.
Hmm, weren't you going to send me a book, parsimon?
A short history of Comic Sans from its designer, Vincent Connare.
A couple of them, Jesus. If you'd like that as well, I'll throw it in. Consider it done. Now just to actually send them.
4, ... it's so much more interesting than that" and then they are later found dead because I murdered them after sitting through it.
There is a new serif in town.
I'm curious what the argument is against comic sans, other than just pure elitism. or do i need to watch the helevitica?
@43: positively grotesque...
I love Transport, the UK highway signage type, although I think I actually prefer Rail Alphabet (by the same designers - Jock Kinnear and Margaret Calvert - for the modernisation-era British Rail).
And DIN 1451 is pretty cool, although you'd want to be sparing.
I'm curious what the argument is against comic sans, other than just pure elitism.
That it is ugly, and that it is used abundantly and unironically by people who do not realize it is ugly.
In other words, pure elitism, but the best kind of pure elitism.
It is ugly and it is also harder to read, and it is whimsical. People use it on texts for which this is completely inappropriate.
That was interesting...I tried to declare a style in order to set that in Comic Sans; it didn't work but it did do something weird to the comments box.
Comments boxes are a bit tempramental here. I've had block quotes do the same thing in the past.
Since you were trying to initiate a nuclear explosion, it's a good thing the comment box didn't let you, isn't it?
It's OK! It was in friendly wobbly letters!
so does Papyrus engage in noble savage colonial mcfont ugliness
43: If you'd begun that statement with "Heather, my love," I'd reconsider my pointed indifference to typeface!
There is a trainer at my gym whose face looks very familiar to me, but I could never quite place it. Having clicked on the link in 54, I now realized he looks just like the charcater in frame two.
Reading some of the replies in the link in 58, I realized the only feeling one should feel about people with strong opinions about typefaces is pity.
Generally, anybody with strong aesthetic opinions is to be pitied. Those of who are content to be surrounded by incomprehensible ugliness are vastly happier.
60: You're lucky Blume doesn't read this blog.
Not "IN DAMNED US"? Are you in the content group or the pitiable one?
60: Good point. You never see dung beetles needing expensive therapy sessions.
59: Correct! I used to have strong opinions about people who have strong opinions about typefaces, but I realized I was just being silly. Now I point and laugh with a casual indifference.
Reading some of the replies in the link in 58, I realized the only feeling one should feel about people with strong opinions about typefaces is pity.
Whereas I thought the notable thing about that thread was how hundreds of random internet folk felt the need to drop by to say "who cares about fonts fonts are lame don't you know you shouldn't criticize I liked teh 3d!1!!!"
You have to admit, it is totally ridiculous to be critical of the aesthetic decisions made by a film director. It's just moving shapes and loud noises! Who cares what they look like?
67: I guess that I didn't read far enough into the thread. The first ten comments or so are about the horror of papyrus.
68: Tweety, it's a font.
I'm not getting 69.2. It's a font, and, yes?
so does Papyrus engage in noble savage colonial mcfont ugliness
There's an Irish bar down the road from me with all the lettering in the O'Windows set in Papyrus. Because the fake Irish were fake Egyptians, back in the day.
In an odd coincidence, across the street is a Tarot card reader with signage in uncial script.
I think I've mentioned this before, but the street signs in San Luis Obispo are in uncials. It's pretty cool.
Papyrus font is among the Stuff Christian Culture Likes.
About a month back, the hideous huge screen at the Pizza place that my kid likes carried subtitles in blocky, pixellated comic sans. So outrageously hideous that it made me feel smugly superior-- and it was a cooking show that was being subtitled.
Tweety, it's a font.
IT'S NOT A FONT! IT'S A TYPEFACE!!1!!
IT'S PEOPLE! WINGDINGS IS PEOPLE!
Does anyone here think Helvetica is ugly? I think it's ugly. I'm not sure why, other than some kind of moral/aesthetic failing on my part. It just seems kind of pinched and dry.
My favorite font is Futura, although I've gotten fond of Garamond Pro and I like Cooper Black a lot.
Mmm. Futura. My old college newsrag uses a combination of Futura for headlines; Minion for blocks of text. I like the two together.
For me, Helvetica has a more pleasing weight than Futura. But then I tend to like chunky typefaces. Cooper black is very handsome. I like Garamond but it tends to look a little wispy on the page.
Garamond is good for the long-windedhanded(?), as it's close enough to Times New Roman not to raise a professor's eyebrow as to typeface tomfoolery, and it buys you something like an extra half page every five pages compared to Times New Roman of the same 12-pt. size.
82: As in you can shrink your too-long essay, or as in you can stretch your too-short essay? It sounds like you're saying the former, but off the top of my head I'd say that Garamond actually takes up more space than TNR.
But how do you feel about Helvetica Light, Mitch? I like most sans serif faces in their lightest forms. Helvetica Light, Gill Sans Light, Futura Light, Gotham Light. Then when you need a headline, you can just use book, or medium at most. B.M.G. Bold Must Go!
||
Oh goddamn it. I've hardly biked all week -- one and a half round trips, that's all. And now I check the weather and there's a severe thunderstorm watch. Fine. I'll leave the bike here over the weekend. Feh.
It's a conspiracy, I tell you.
|>
one and a half round trips, that's all.
Which is what, 40 miles?
That's not that bad.
Look, they're all south of you anyhow.
89: It's not so much having a low-mileage week, as that I'm terrible at forming habits. I'm going to have to kick myself into biking next week, now, rather than doing it as a matter of course.
That makes sense. Hopefully complaining about it on the internet helps establish biking as the norm.
I just dodged a thunderstorm after heading downtown on a bike. But for me, that's like a 0.2-mile ride, so not so impressive.
And now I'm home and I probably wouldn't have gotten struck by lightning or anything. Checking the weather was the real mistake here.
94: It's really coming down here: sheets of rain, chasing each other down the street. I'd hate to be biking right now. (Not that it's exactly the same storm, but kinda sorta.)
||
Hey, Friday Night Lights is back on free TV? w00t!
|>
94, 95: 81 degrees, sunny with a few nice fluffy clouds, light NE trades. Not that bad, really.
Yeah, yeah, go chew on a hunk of sugar cane, Island Boy. Not all of us get to live in Paradise.
||
This article is both hilarious and sad. But mostly hilarious.
To help turn the tide on this crisis, it's important for parents and work supervisors to be able to spot a chronic or even just a casual masturbator in their midst. Maternal wisdom has long stated that oversleeping, locked doors, avoiding eye contact, messy beds, fear of clean underwear, long steamy showers and a pungent bleach-like odor on one's bedsheets are all red flags of masturbation invasion. One trick passed on to me is that you can press your nose to a young man's mattress, inhale deeply and (irregardless of the smell) announce, "That smells like semen." If the boy's face turns red and he runs from the room, the evidence is clear.
|>
On this island that would be "go chew on a subdivision". Cane's been gone for 10 or 15 years. But I appreciate the thought!
I think Btock and Heebie should swap reading material for a couple of weeks and live-blog the results.
Wow, the link at 106 is very interesting. I'd never heard of the site before, but I got that link from a right-wing Christian who was dead serious about it, and definitely didn't think it was parody.
We had to bike home through a storm coming back from our concert last night; not so bad! Especially when at the end of it you're at home and can change.
Can anyone ever really change, Tweety? I mean, really, truly change.
Did I send you crazy, racist e-mails after riding home in the rain? No I did not.
98: Yeah, yeah, go chew on a hunk of sugar cane, Island Boy. Not all of us get to live in Paradise.
But wait, all this time I thought you lived in a paradise, Island Girl?
Also, Elvira Gulch didn't hesitate to ride *her* bike in the face of a coming storm.
111.last: The internet says it's Elmira Gulch, gulchist.
111: I love this place, but it is definitely fallen. Why do you think they call it the Apple?
Can LB spear bullfrogs? She cannot. It's getting hard to find a rat these days, even.
112: Stanley is right! Although "Elmira Gulch" beats "Elvira Gulch" by only 18k to 5k in Google.
In searching for that Google tool whose name I forget (I am in fact losing my mind) where you compare two search terms, discovered this site with results from "Google Your Race" (and Religion). Although my favorite is:
"Humans are known for..." (top 15 in Google's search results):
- their tremendous survivability and adaptability, even under the least hospitable of conditions
- being abusive parents
- abusing their authority and punishing their enemies brutally
- presenting about 30 different neotenies in comparison to the chimpanzee
- their treachery and encourage the portal to not believe them
- their ability to survive in extreme conditions
- being passionate about everything they do
- their curiosity and creativity
- their unusual and difficult behavior
- arrogance
- systematic eradication of self and others
- intelligence
- their adaptability
- their mistakes
- turning off interrupts when they are busy running high-priority program
that Google tool whose name I forget (I am in fact losing my mind) where you compare two search terms
Googlefight, which oddly doesn't track precisely with the numbers one gets from actually googling?
113: Why do you think they call it the Apple?
The Wikipedia article on that is somewhat interesting.
From a 1909 book, "Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city. . . . It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap." Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.
And turns out that Sacramento is the Big Tomato.
117: I think I've shared before that in unscientifically polling random people over the last year or so, the vast majority (which includes a mostly vaguely liberal-ish crowd) think that cities are a net tax drain while rural and suburban areas pay in more than they get back in services, resources, etc.. It's an odd and counterintuitive finding to me, but I'd be unsurprised to find it roughtly mirrored in an actual nationwide poll.
Duh, you can't eat pavement, Stanley.
104: It is a little hard to take Protecting Yourself From "Big Sodomy" straight.