So, as posted elsewhere, the Android platform now has its own set of fonts, created by Ascender Corp. They look pretty good from what I can tell from the PDF sampler, though only time will tell how they’ll be used. I’ve written before on the subject of mobile typography, and it’s clear that the problems with it are rarely down to the actual font - Nokia Sans is, after all, a rather pleasant face. What I’m really interested in is if the Open Handset Alliance will create a strict set of UI guidelines, with a grid, and whether any of the manufacturers will adhere to them.

So here’s the sampler from the PDF, without the hideous distracting colours (the fact that they were displayed thus doesn’t bode well to my mind):

Now this is what I call a character set. Swissmiss pointed me at this incredible new typeface by Alejandro Paul, on Veer. I have a strong urge to buy it just to play at typing things and seeing the ligatures appear. I mean, some of these ligatures are whole words!

Discovered over on Fubiz, this beautiful animation from zero to ten using imagery from the arts of bonsai and ikebana. This really is a beautiful short film, and it reminded me of something I’d seen before, so a little bit of checking through my saved files and links I realise I saw some of the preparatory work on artless. In fact, I wrote about it here. The artwork is by Shun Kawakami, Illustration, Suibokuga, Drawing by Tadashi Ura and the photography (?) by Taisuke Koyama

The first picture here is from artless, the remainder are stills from the animation.

This robot has been programmed to write out the entire Martin Luther bible in a calligraphic style on a long roll of paper. I wonder if they’re going to bind the pages up and publish it? What the robot does is a step up from print in reproducing the manuscripts made by monks, which is great, though it doesn’t say (though my German isn’t good enough to read the product page) whether the robot arm applies differential pressure and angle of stroke depending on the previous letters, or how far across the line it is, or how far down the page, like a human being would. If it did, then that would in my mind give the work a magical, delicate quality of something written. I don’t want to get all tedious and mystical about some missing innate human or animistic quality, but I like the idea of a robot arm having to stretch a bit at the edges of the page, altering its stroke weight after a particularly arduous cadel previously, all that kind of stuff. I can imagine a whole series of publications that could be given this ‘hand done’ treatment. We could have special editions of books made by one-time-only robot arms, ones that get tired after a number of copies and can’t be made to write any more, books made by robots with a signature style, with minds of their own. All eventually of course leading to original works created by machines so advanced we have to refer to them as human (or post-human) too…

If you fancy emailing me about this, do go ahead, but read this first!

• I didn’t make this robot, I’m not involved with the team who made it, and what I know about it is written above
• I am well aware that the original version of the Bible being written was printed, but I’m also aware that the Gutenberg Press had features to attempt to replicate human variation in manuscript writing. My comments are a hope for the future of this machine and not a ‘lament’ or a complaint about it.
• Please don’t be unpleasant. I have no idea what is so upsetting to people about this robot, but please don’t send me insults.

Found via Computerlove, the portfolio site of James Stone, mimeArtist. It’s a nice site, but the thing that got my attention was the great logo, it’s beautifully expressive and simple. Wish I’d thought of it.

Just found this, Robert Stadler Installation in a Parisian Church, which is wonderful. I am, amongst other things, a great fan of French Rococo architecture, and to add a digital typographic mark into it just works so well for me.

This is a great logo. I came across it today on the Canadian Press site (oddly enough). I’ve recreated the logo here from a graphic of the Canadian flag on Wikipedia. The Canadian flag itself is a great piece of work too. Why can’t we all have nice graphical flags?