A transmission from the deep south.
![Production artwork from Spaces of Play’s forthcoming iPhone game Spirits. Team member Andreas Zecher:
The game [borrows] some basic gameplay mechanics from Lemmings-style games, but has a very different graphical style and atmosphere. Players can manipulate the wind in the game world and guide the spirits towards the exit of each level using four different actions: Blow wind, suck in wind, dig tunnels and build bridges.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l0soj5VJ2V1qz6jndo1_400.jpg)
Production artwork from Spaces of Play’s forthcoming iPhone game Spirits. Team member Andreas Zecher:
The game [borrows] some basic gameplay mechanics from Lemmings-style games, but has a very different graphical style and atmosphere. Players can manipulate the wind in the game world and guide the spirits towards the exit of each level using four different actions: Blow wind, suck in wind, dig tunnels and build bridges.
Apple has made some puzzling decisions over the last few years that leave one wondering if they really care about typography as much as they did in the 1980s when the Mac launched the desktop publishing revolution.
— From Stephen Coles’ detailed analysis of the iPad’s typographic failings, in which he provides a short history of Apple’s achievements in the field, and a list of eight areas in need of improvement (from justification and hyphenation woes to the absence of support for embeddable typefaces and @font-face). A key observation: where Helvetica was a smart UI choice on the iPhone with its high PPI count, Stephen finds it “muddy” and borderline illegible at smaller sizes on the iPad’s much lower-resolution display.
Can you name a company you admire that spends its time enforcing patents, instead of innovating? Remember the pirate flag you flew over Apple’s headquarters when you were building the Mac? Is Apple part of the Navy now?
— From Wil Shipley’s open letter to Steve Jobs regarding the HTC lawsuits.
Even if Firefox, IE, and Opera halted development today and added no new features, Apple and others on the WebKit team would be working their butts off to make the web richer — because they want it for themselves.
— Neven Mrgan, The WebKit monopoly. (via WebKitBits)
Apple’s pro photography app Aperture 3 has at last added an export option for custom adjustment presets. Here, then, is a presets file containing four of my custom adjustments, yours to apply and remix as you like.
To install the presets, switch to the Adjustments tab in the main Aperture window then select Edit Presets… from the Presets drop-down menu. Now from the Actions drop-down menu in the bottom left corner of the Adjustment Presets window, select Import…, locate the downloaded file and press Import.
Old, but good. David Lynch on the iPhone film experience. (And from the related videos, why he turned down Return of the Jedi.)
As an industry, we need to understand that not wanting root access doesn’t make you stupid. It simply means you do not want root access. Failing to comprehend this is not only a failure of empathy, but a failure of service.
— Mike Monteiro writing about Apple’s iPad. (via John Gruber)
The Font Game from Johno Boardley, Justin Stahl and Kari Pätilä is in the App Store approval queue, due out any day. It’s a single-player, quick-fire font identification game in which you race the clock to name 30 typefaces in a multi-choice format. The beautifully designed interface makes liberal use of H&FJ’s Whitney family, which is a welcome change from the usual Helvetica. I’ve played with an early beta and even then the subtle animation effects and slightly non-standard UI made for a very handsome product. I’m sure it’ll be a big hit.
Just when I thought the scrapbook design meme was played out, MetaLab’s Sara White produces what may be the definitive theme of its type for Tumblr, Vintage Scrapbook. It’s a paid theme via Envato’s Theme Forest, but at $12 — and with MetaLab’s customary attention to every single detail — it’s a steal. I’d love to see an option in Tumblr’s Theme Garden for designers to offer paid themes, perhaps with a revenue split akin to the App Store.
Written and designed by Matthew Buchanan. Colophon. Please give credit. Email
