There is a commonly held belief that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system, a belief reinforced by Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s popular 2007 documentary about the typeface. But it is not true—or rather, it is only somewhat true. Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when it created a new signage system at the end of the 1960s. Why was Helvetica not chosen originally? What was chosen in its place? Why is Helvetica used now, and when did the changeover occur? To answer those questions this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica. These four strands are woven together, over nine pages, to tell a story that ultimately transcends the simple issue of Helvetica and the subway.

From the archive:

Helvetica essentially takes any word or phrase and pressure-washes it into sterility. I love it.

It sort of reeks of old thrift-shop, Danish furniture, and not in a good way.

Typography is not simply a frou-frou debate over aesthetics orchestrated by a hidden coterie of graphic-design nerds. You need only imagine a STOP sign that utilizes the heavy-metal typefaces favoured by bands Dokken or Krokus to realize that clear, clean and direct typography can save lives, or at the very least prevent drivers from prolonged bouts of confused squinting.

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway

A photo book by Lawrence Weschler.

Publishers Weekly gives it a Starred Review:

Charming, idiosyncratic and deeply intelligent, the book will likely captivate even readers who usually bypass the art history section of bookstores. The topic at hand is convergence: the visual rhyme between seemingly disparate images, and the way those rhymes stimulate new understanding of the scenes depicted.

All he does is articulate his own evocative visual and philosophical connections; we can make of them what we will.

Here's a sample:

The image itself (splayed across virtually every newspaper in the world) was uncanny, the caption more unsettling yet: Dec. 6, 1999, a pair of twelve-year-old ethnic Karen twin brothers, the Htoos, Johnny on the left (that's a boy?) and Luther (Luther!?) on the right, leaders of a beleaguered Myanmar insurgent group known as God's Army, whose members credit them with mystical godlike powers that "render them invulnerable during battle."

Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences

Neal Stephenson:

There's a gap emerging between the kind of thinking that requires long, uninterrupted, serious concentration on something and superficial surfing behaviour.

What I'm seeing is that there's a great deal of people who we wouldn't think of as being intellectuals in the normal sense, but in certain specific realms they are quite sophisticated, knowledgeable and able to focus for long stretches of time.

You're inside for several years and then suddenly the gates fly open! And you're plunged into this complete interaction with the outside world.

From the archive:

Being in the water alone, surfing, sharpens a particular kind of concentration, an ability to agree with the ocean, to react with a force that is larger than you are.

Also:

I had one little side room we called “the pi room,” because on its walls were 53,000 digits of pi, done in pale green on black, a “Matrix” homage. But a very funny thing happened once it was up — people would go into the pi room, and their brains would become quiet, and they would emerge relaxed — to the point where if someone was getting stressed, we’d say, “Go stand in the pi room.”

Finally:

That's the kind of thinking that comes naturally in such a place, where 100 years is nothing.

Self-defence with a parasol

Great stuff. Check out the Afghanistan Drug War portfolio.

Aaron Huey, Photographer

This book is for people who experience heartbreak over love notes with subject-verb agreements ... for anyone who’s ever considered hanging up the phone on people who pepper their speech with such gems as “irregardless,” “expresso,” or “disorientated” ... and for the earnest souls who wonder if it’s “Woe is Me,” or “Woe is I,” or even “Woe am I.”

Martha Brockenbrough’s Things That Make Us (Sic) is a laugh-out-loud guide to grammar and language, a snarkier, American answer to Lynn Truss’s runaway success Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Brockenbrough is the founder of National Grammar Day and SPOGG -- the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar -- and as serious as she is about proper usage, her voice is funny, irreverent, and never condescending. Things That Make Us (Sic) addresses common language stumbling stones such as evil twins, clichés, jargon, and flab, and offers all the spelling tips, hints, and rules that are fit to print. It’s also hugely entertaining, with letters to high-profile language abusers, including David Hasselhoff, George W. Bush, and Canada’s Maple Leafs [sic], as well as a letter to – and a reply from – Her Majesty, the Queen of England.

Brockenbrough has written a unique compendium combining letters, pop culture references, handy cheat sheets, rants, and historical references that is as helpful as it is hilarious.

Things That Make Us (Sic): The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar Takes on Madison Avenue, Hollywood, the White House, and the World

The language, these days ... !!!

The Short Versions of Great Movies

Good evening. This is your Captain.
We are about to attempt a crash landing.
Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Place your tray tables in their
upright, locked position.
Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees.
Your Captain says: Put your head in your hands.
Put your hands on your hips. Heh heh.
This is your Captain--and we are going down.
We are all going down, together.
And I said: Uh oh. This is gonna be some day.
Standby. This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time. And this is the record of the time.

Also:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

From the Air

Malcolm Gladwell:

Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth.

In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importance of precocity has hardened into an iron law.

But the freshness, exuberance, and energy of youth did little for Paul Cézanne. He was a late bloomer—and for some reason in our accounting of genius and creativity we have forgotten to make sense of the Cézannes of the world.

Gladwell's new book, Outliers, is available for pre-order. It will be released next month.

Late Bloomers

Even when he’s drawing space vehicles, the myriad of minutiae executed with sharp precision hints at Keith Thompson’s classical influences. I’ve spent hours browsing Keith’s incredible portfolio and getting lost in the stories written for most of the art on display. The worlds behind each piece feel thoroughly conceived - it’s clear the author mulled over each detail of the fable along with the art. Gorgeous detailing decorates mutants, deities and demons, some of it recognizable, like this machine-beluga or the violin necks in the legs of the lovely musician below.

Allegories In Digital: Keith Thompson

Nicholson Baker:

Baker's irresistibly readable short novel presents the quirky -- and often hilarious -- inner life of a thoroughly modern office worker. With high wit and in precisely articulated prose, the unnamed narrator examines, in minute and comically digressive detail, the little things in life that illustrate how one addresses a problem or a new idea: the plastic straw (and its annoying tendency to float), the vacuous civilities of office chatter, doorknobs, neckties, escalators and the laughable evolution of milk delivery from those old-fashioned hefty bottles to the folding carton. Using the keenly observed odds and ends of day-to-day consciousness, Baker allows his narrator to re-create the budding perceptions of a child facing a larger mysterious world, as each event in his day conjures up memories of previous incidents. Through the elegant manipulation of time, and sharp, defining memories of childhood, the narrator dissects each item of apparent cultural flotsam with the thoroughness of a prosaic, though wacky, technical manual. The rambling "footnotes" alone are worth the price of this cheerfully original novel.

The Mezzanine