#46 - Type inspired by the 70s and 80s

Hi folks,

Here are a few things I thought were worth sharing this week.

## Notes on type

GT Super, the latest release from Grilli Type was inspired by display serif typefaces from the 1970s and 80s. Swiss designer Urs Lehni found a newspaper clipping and shared it with Noël Leu, who was fascinated by the simple beauty of the lowercase ‘a’, which featured pointed terminals instead of the usual serif at the top. Noël began drawing the typeface soon after.

Google Fonts now offers open source Korean fonts, using machine learning and a “subset slicing strategy” which sorts the 17,388 glyphs into around 100 slices. Until now the Korean alphabet, Hangul, has been a challenge to work with due to the huge character set which results in file sizes impossible to to load. You can find the new fonts in this this awesome interactive showcase.

Static sites, usability and front end handbooks #

Phil Hawksworth built a JamStack comments engine using Netlify form handling, serverless functions, and build triggers. Then Chris Coyier wrote about it. This means you don’t have to rely on 3rd party services such as Discus to enable comments on your static sites, if you so wish.

“Everything we make has an impact on people’s lives. As designers, we’re not just building things – we’re influencing what people do, what people think and how they feel,” a quote from Markus Pirker, founder of usability tool Userbrain, taken from a designers guide to usability testing.

The 2018 edition of Cody Lindley’s Front-End Developer Handbook is super useful if you want a broad outline of what tools you should be using as a front-end developer and where to learn them.

Minimal art and creative process #

I stumbled upon these minimalist works by Dutch artist Arjan Janssen. I’ve always been a sucker for process, particularly when it comes to creative work. This silent film by George Meertens shows Janssen’s painstaking drawing technique, which I find fascinating.

The Defiants Ones #

The Defiant Ones on Netflix if you haven’t seen it yet is well worth watching. The documentary follows the rise of music moguls Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine from their early success through to selling Beats headphones to Apple for $3 billion in May 2014.

For your ears #

I hope you like hip hop. Here’s (almost all of) the The Chronic by Dr Dre for your listening pleasure.