I never used to think of ‘font creation’ as an art form, but it is. Here’s an interesting interview with Cyrus Highsmith, senior designer at Boston’s Font Bureau:
My philosophy is that when an artist really pays attention to the needs of the audience, and is serious about craftsmanship, the result will be work that is imaginative and inventive. Original work, in other words. This doesn’t mean it comes from nowhere, or is a complete break from what has preceded it. It means that the work adds something new to the world. The effect of a new addition can be subtle, or it can rattle the whole ecosystem.
Here, at Maud Newton, a blog post on the death of cursive (something my teachers obsessed over when I was in school, practically proclaiming us adults and ready for the real world once we mastered the art of connecting our letters with swirly lines):
…in our rushed, computer-obsessed society, schoolchildren increasingly are taught printing for a year or two, given a year of slapdash instruction in cursive, and then introduced to the keyboard sometime around grade three. It’s not difficult to imagine a time, maybe a century hence, maybe sooner, when only experts can decipher the dips and curlicues of handwriting styles so prevalent in the 19th and 20th centuries.
And finally, this—Sita Sings the Blues, the full animated film, which is about Sita, a goddess separated from her husband Rama—and Nina, an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by e-mail. It is gorgeous, quirky, and an hour and a half long, so be sure you’ve got time when you start watching, because you won’t want to stop.