You never know where your interests will take you

A seven-year-old needs to figure this out: what would the Ford Escort Popular Plus be priced at if were assembled in Aotearoa?   Amanda and I were chatting about prodigies. Some young people are amazing, doing uni classes at intermediate or high-school age, or playing piano like Mozart, and while not all of us have […]

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Refreshing the body type on the Lucire site

EB Garamond 12 on the Lucire website.   Not exactly earth-shattering news, but we’ve changed the body type on the Lucire website from Bembo to EB Garamond 12. The cut of Bembo that we had didn’t feature macronized vowels—a big omission here in Aotearoa—though most recently it was a Latvian name, Elīna Arāja, which it […]

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Sharper headlines for Lucire

  We’ve made a tiny change to the look of the Lucire website, replacing Aileron Ultra Light in the headlines with Newsreader Display Light, namely the 72 pt cut. It always bothered me that Aileron didn’t have proper italics, only obliques. We could have licensed Freight Big Pro Light to match the print magazines, but […]

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Revamping my personal site after a decade

After 10 years, it was time for a new template for my personal site—I think it’s only the third in 21 years. Ten years is a long time on the web, and the previous template hadn’t been up to snuff for a long time. But there’s always the issue of finding time—which, thanks to Easter, […]

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The IBM Selectric version of Univers revived

This is one of the more fascinating type design stories I’ve come across in ages. Jens Kutilek has revived a very unlikely typeface: the IBM Selectric version of Univers in 11 pt.     A lot of us will have seen things set on a Selectric in the 1970s, especially in New Zealand. I’ve even […]

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Nostalgic thoughts: what sparked my interest in fashion magazines, and Nike’s 10 rules for business

  I have told this story many times: I became interested in fashion magazines with a 1989 issue of Studio Collections. In fact, it was its fifth anniversary issue. I really liked the typesetting, photography and print quality. I was probably one of the few people disappointed when they went to desktop publishing and the […]

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Free 2023 wall planner

  I needed a 2023 wall planner today, but none of the downloadable ones really suited—so I made my own. Rather than keep it to myself, I thought I’d offer it as a free download, in case anyone else wants it. They’re two A4s, six months on each, but as the file’s a PDF, you […]

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Tesla to a typeface designer, and a big missed target

Now that the quartet has been launched, it’s evident that Tesla’s naming strategy is all wrong. This is what they should be called.     On a related note:     Since I haven’t seen the March 15 video now circulating on OnlyKlans, I mean, Twitter, I can’t use the DIA reporting form. But those […]

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About me (according to libraries)

I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that I have a US Library of Congress entry, as a published author, though if I am reading it correctly, it relates to my 2010 mayoral campaign. Following the links there, I arrived at a Virtual International Authority File but the data there seem to relate to my Wikipedia […]

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Type coverage—in 2012

I’m not sure why I didn’t spot these back in 2012. This was very high praise from Cre8d Design, on ‘What is New Zealand’s iconic font?’ So nice to see JY Décennie in there. Still on type, the fifth Congreso Internacional de Tipografía in Valencia cites yours truly. Como consecuencia de todos estos cambios, surgen […]

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