Category: Typography

A difference that makes a difference

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A lovely little thing I just noticed this morning.

As you probably know, when you set an iPhone to charge and it’s oriented horizontally it now goes into a sort of ‘ambient mode’ for which there are various skins/settings.

One of my favourites that I discovered pretty accidentally is this clock with very jolly type. I’ve been using it for about a week but this morning I noticed something lovely.

The small ‘complication’ that indicates when I have my alarm set for nestles up against the bottom of the ‘1’ numeral here.

But then – a minute later…

As I said. Lovely.

Perhaps I ‘over-respond’ to gestures like this, having some insight into perhaps how it was made, or having been in similar situations where something like this is proposed, but – deprioritised, put in the ‘backlog’, interrogated or cross-referenced against some bloodless ‘user story’ for the value it would return on investment.

But – that value is not easily captured.

What this detail indicates is care, and joy

A generosity in the team, or individual that made this, that I feel when I see this every day.

A difference that makes a difference.

More please.

War of the worlds: don’t believe the type.

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waroftheworlds_petercho

For the IDCA conference this year in Aspen, Peter Cho has created a “typographical accompaniment” to Orson Welles‘ hysteria-inducing 1938 radio play of “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells.

“Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds, originally broadcast in 1938, is perhaps radio’s
most famous drama. While the existing audio recording is not of contemporary quality,
media artist Peter Cho has create a typographic accompaniment which provides
animated subtitles for the play. The typography will allow the audience to read along with
the story of panic and invasion, turning the radio play into movie for which the viewer must
provide his or her own imagery.”

Hopefully, this combination will get a release on the web somehow, as a flash movie or stream of some kind. I’d love to sit in a darkened room, listening to Orson Welles, with atmospheric type projecting eerily around me…

It seems that Spielberg is planning a version of War of the Worlds for 2006.

All of this, of course, is just an excuse for me to link to the fabulous War of the World book covers gallery again.