My friend Steven Johnson wrote Time mag’s Twitter cover story. And went and got himself on the cover.
I’m standing next to a Croatian-born American genius in a half-empty office in Watertown, Massachusetts, and I’m about to be fried to a crisp. Or I’m about to witness the greatest advance in electrical science in a hundred years. Maybe both.
— Paul Hochman writes for Fast Company about the coming revolution in wireless electricity, and the competing approaches of the various players. (via David Kaneda)
A spread from Pentagram’s redesign of The Atlantic. H&FJ’s beautiful Mercury Text serif is unmistakable in the byline.
They had illustrations of the premises on their business cards and sometimes they over-inflated the size of the buildings, to give [them] importance and stature. It’s sort of the same online. You can invent. I work out of the spare room. I exist solely on the internet.
— New Zealand typeface designer Kris Sowersby compares the type foundries of old with the modern-day realities of his profession, in an interview with Rose Hoare for Sunday magazine. It’s a nicely weighted piece that explains the design process in layman’s terms without being condescending, although I was surprised that it skipped one of his more celebrated commissions, more so in light of this.
All the so-called clean development mechanisms authorized by the Kyoto Protocol, designed to keep 175 million tons of CO₂ out of the atmosphere by 2012, will slow the rise of carbon emissions by … 6.5 days. Depressed yet?
— Spencer Reiss suggests in the June 2008 edition of Wired magazine that carbon offsets are the environmental version of subprime mortgages.
Within its vivid spaces, Leo can be a citizen in a way that may never fully be open to him in the “real” world. He’s a child of the network, and he writes a lovely email.
— Russell Brown’s final column for The Listener on the internet and the human condition.
I was the first at Microsoft to know about Netscape. I remember calling down there and saying, Hey, I’m with Microsoft, and I’m looking around at all these people who started Web browsers because I think we’re going to do one inside of Windows and we want to know if we might look at your technology as a source for this, do a license deal, or we buy your technology. And they told me basically to go fuck off.
— Internet Explorer program manager Thomas Reardon on his early-90s dealings with Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, from Vanity Fair’s comprehensive history of the modern Internet, “How the Web Was Won”. (via John Gruber)
I realize my design and schedule seem scary, but the truth is, I wouldn’t be willing to sail this route in any production sailboat available on the market today. They’re all too expensive, of course, even used, but more important, almost all are sinkable, most are far too slow, and they’re just not strong enough.
— Seafarer David Vann is days away from attempting a non-stop solo circumnavigation in a home-made trimaran he built for $25,000 using tools and parts from Home Depot. Read his piece for Esquire and then follow his progress.
The Dark Genius of Kyle Cooper
The creative force behind the beautiful title sequences for Se7en, Donnie Brasco and more than 150 other features.
