“What does one call the use of random non-alphabet characters to indicate cursing? It’s a universally understood device, and is applied in both graphic and textual settings. It is such a commonly accepted staple that I assumed it must already be defined and described — but apparently it’s not.”

Word of the day: Grawlix, “a string of typographical symbols used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swear word.”

UPDATE: Not really any flickr sets dedicated to grawlix, but retronomatopeya is a flickr set of vintage comic scans showing some lovely sound effects.

The New York Times reports on Serious Sans, the not-so-funny sibling to Comic Sans. The typeface is obviously different, but surprisingly shares some of the feel of its counterpart, just without the extreme goofiness.

“Listen People” by Kim Ch’on-taek (1725-1766)

Listen people, wherever you are,
please attend to these words:
Will your youth last forever?
Will your white hair turn black again?
Life speeds by like a dream,
why not fill each minute with joy?

Jiyeon Song at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California has designed One Day Poem Pavilion, an experiment in experiential typography. Light shining through complex perforations in a dome produces shifting lines of poetry on the ground. The poetry’s form forces the audience to reflect upon (individual) experience, time, and “the finite nature of human life.”

See the piece in motion or watch a slide show of photos up close.

Get Helvetica Off Our Money

Can Scientists Dance? – A bevy of students, postdocs, and professors perform interpretive dances for their Ph.D. dissertations. Like Simone Recchi performing Dynamical and chemical evolution of blue compact dwarf galaxies a la Daft Punk’s “Around the World”.

Quote, Unquote – There has been a bit of discussion (read: ire) over the widespread use of “dumb quotes” (straight) over “smart quotes” (curved). Straight apostrophes denote inches and degrees and minutes and seconds, while curved apostrophes are used in conjunctions and quoting. There are a number of reasons to purposely use one or the other, but anything else is just laziness. Thankfully, Wordpress has me covered.

10 trends that will define logo design in 2008 – I guess it’s already time for another makeover.

Slide Show – “Are you ready for PowerPoint karaoke?” No.

How do you build a public library in the age of Google? – Slate.com photo essay on the changing architecture and role of public libraries. As digital content becomes more and more pervasive, there’s less need for a stuffy old library filled with nothing but books. Public libraries in major cities around the country are responding to this not only with new offerings (coffee shops, movie rentals, more computers) but with new architecture as well.

The 2008 Tournament of Books

In which we would seed the year’s most celebrated works of fiction in a March Madness-type bracket and pit those novels against each other in a “Battle Royale of Literary Excellence.” In honor of our favorite character in contemporary literature, David Sedaris’s brother, aka “The Rooster,” we decided to present the winning author with a live chicken.

Schnabel, Strike, and Helvetica – Kurt Anderson over at Studio 360 has a short romp through New York with Helvetica director Gary Huswit. And, as you may have guessed, some bits on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the ongoing writer’s strike.

Don’t Fear Starbucks – Contrary to popular belief, the mass reproduction of Starbucks coffeehouses has generally led to mom-and-pop shops being more profitable. While the number of Starbucks locations tripled between 2000 and 2005, the number of local coffeehouses did not decline, but jumped 40%. And when Starbucks opened six new stores in Omaha, all during 2002, business went up at every local coffeehouse.

Small is beautiful – the best new literary journals – A quick list of notable literary journals that have emerged over the last few years. (The Paris Review makes the list because of its reinvention in 2005.) With only seven entries, it is hardly comprehensive, but I love it if only for including A Public Space, my number one resource at the moment for discovering new writers.

Songza – Pretty much the better looking version of SeeqPod. In other words: browse for mp3s, play, collate, share.

Lastly, a sad note: Can atheists be parents? TIME Magazine reports on a New Jersey couple denied the right to adopt based on their lack of belief in a “Supreme Being”. (I place that phrase in quotes not out of derision, but out of befuddlement. The wife is a pantheist, which while not anywhere aligned with the conventional Christian perspective, certainly belies a strong spirituality. And isn’t that the point?)

Most recently, Michael Bierut discusses The New Ugly, the reemergence of ugly design that, if nothing else, definitely provokes a response. The question is from where is this trend emerging?

Whether reactionary spasm or irrevocable paradigm shift, if history is a guide, once the game is afoot, scores of designers will be eager to get with the program. Obviously, doing ugly work isn’t difficult. The trick is to surround it with enough attitude so it will be properly perceived not as the product of everyday incompetence, but rather as evidence of one’s attunement with the zeitgeist.

Bierut cites UK magazine Super Super as one approach to The New Ugly. Creative director Steve Slocombe lacks any formal design training, which “has left him unencumbered by the profession’s history and therefore more able to seek out new forms of expression.” Ignorance is bliss, eh?

Ultimately, Bierut takes a wait-and-see stance on The New Ugly, but (at least concerning the “Ignorance is bliss” crowd) Jessica Helfand would probably disagree. No doubt having looked into her crystal ball and presaging Bierut’s article, Helfand wrote four days earlier on the importance of historical context in design. She admits that enjoyment is the likely catalyst for all design, but argues that “I just kind of liked it” should not be the end-all-be-all decision. Later decisions should consider more than at-a-glance enjoyment. Unfortunately, inadequate design school curricula fail to impart upon students the fundamentals of design history, disabling them from considering the context of their designs.

But Helfand would certainly love the second possible source of The New Ugly. While some designs eschew history and “rules”, charting their own ground, some acknowledge what has come before and present their new ugly as reactionary design.

If you can’t ignore the rules, break them. “We have created something original in a world where it is increasingly difficult to make something different,” announced Wolff Olins chairman Brian Boylan in the midst of the brouhaha surrounding the London 2012 launch.

The practical differences between design that exists for lack of context and design that exists for want of distinction may be difficult to see, but I am sure Helfand would appreciate the theoretical differences.

Of course, some (web) designers have no concern for typography at all, ugly or beautiful. Indeed, the art seems outdated, stuck to the confines of a millennium old medium. However, as long as words remain the most widely used ways of disseminating information, typography will reign supreme. Web designers would do well to learn the fundamentals of “shaping written information” considering web design is 95% typography.

From Wikipedia, “Foo Camp is the annual invitation only, no-structure, no plan, tent on the lawns, hacker event hosted by publisher Tim O’Reilly. O’Reilly describes it as ‘the wiki of conferences’, where the program is developed by the attendees at the event, using big whiteboard schedule templates that can be rewritten or overwritten by attendees.” Basically, 200 of the world’s greatest scientists, technologists, and writers have come together in Silicon Valley to discuss the future. It astounds me.

No full report (that I know of) has come out as of yet, but Nature’s own tech blog, Nascent, sheds light on the topics discussed over the past two days. Most notably: “controlling neuronal activity using flashes of laser light”, nuclear explosion (specifically, NASA’s old Project Orion), humanity’s evolutionary future, nanotechnology, the conservative nature of science, and 3D camera technology. And that was just Friday and Saturday. Hopefully, a lengthy recap will make its way onto the web shortly.

The blunders of AOL: If you haven’t heard, AOL recently (accidentally) released a 2GB, semi-anonymous list of what some of its users have searched for. TechCrunch has a nice post on the matter. AOL removed the data from their website, but not before it was downloaded by numerous people. And, in true 21st century fashion, that various websites have popped up in order to provide a nice interface for the search data: AOL Search Database, Don’t Delete, AOL.Yogurt Rat, among others.

Excited for the release of Snakes on a Plane? Just can’t wait? Well, you have to. But, while you’re waiting, check out the CafePress Snakes on a Plane gallery. Don’t forget the mother of all Snakes on a Plane shirts, Jeffrey Rowland’s airplane with snakes flying it.

Helvetica, the film. A documentary by Gary Hustwit, of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (Wilco documentary) fame, dealing with one of the most popular typefaces today. Visit Helveticafilm.com to learn some more about the film and watch a trailer (when available).

For some reason, bump keying has entered the blogosphere again. The story first came out over a year ago, so I’m confused as to why it’s around again, but it doesn’t always hurt to rehash old news. Bump keying, for those not in the know, is a terribly simple way to open any door by cutting a key down and then (you guessed it) bumping it. YouTube has some videos on bump keying (look at “Explore More Videos” for more), and The Open Organization of Lockpickers came out with a PDF on the subject. These are newer links, but you could always watch What The Hack’s (large large large 600mb+) video: Bumping revisited. Then, of course, there is the Wikipedia page.

Those looking for something easier to make at home, the quick vibrating lock pick for just $15 or less.

Amazing webcomic of the day: xkcd – “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” Also from this brilliant mind, The Best Thing project and BestDate.

Random links:

I leave you now with Salon’s Literary Guide to the World.