Considerable work goes into making the cultural icon that is a Blackwing pencil. I had no idea the journey to making them crossed international boundaries between Japan and California, but given their impeccable quality, that really shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. Art & Design Giorgia Lupi’s opinion piece, In Defense of the Detour, so perfectly captures my own thoughts and feelings about the risks of AI on creative exploration. Do not skip the messy middle because that’s where the magic is. Having been through Shinjuku station in Japan recently, this makes perfect sense to me. A security guard finds fame as designer of duct tape signs. His signs are better than a lot of real ones, especially as a non graphic designer. I’m adding Du-Good Press to my list of places to drop by in New York City whenever I make it back there and am thankful for the Eames Institute for introducing me to Leslie Diuguid's practice. I miss screen printing regularly. Syd Mead: Future Pastime, an exhibit of the visionary futurist’s artwork opens next week on October 8th at the Transamerica building in San Francisco and runs until December 17th. A must-see. Also on the must-see list is Martin Venezky: Process Work on display now at the Letterform Archive (running until November 8th). The Tekagi (Japanese for “handwriting”) animation library is pretty darn impressive. May need to find a reason to fiddle with this for work or play. Color Palette is a nifty tool for generating Risograph color swatch samples in a variety of forms and outputting the necessary color separations to actually run them on the machine as well. ISO Paper Sizes are the best paper sizes. If only America would get with the program on metric. This list of uncommon but useful design terms from Anthony Hobday is handy. Thanks Colly. Big fan in reverse over here. Type of Note I love a good stencil typeface, and the five widths, sharp cuts and square-ish details of Blaze Type’s Zeyond Stencil are such a visual home run in my eyes. Definitely one I want to find a project for. Plattner Type’s Sleight Collection immediately made me think of Roxy but with a vastly expanded scope and increased versatility. It captures the same elegance and authority of it’s origins in art nouveau and sign painting while carrying it forward with modern uses in mind. Speaking of stencil faces, Slight Chance, probably my favorite design from DJR’s monthly Font Club was just expanded with a stencil variant, which is of course — excellent news. Cuica has an abundance of stylish charm — and all those lovely ink traps and generous curvatures strewn throughout its design that make it perfect for large display uses. Superior Type’s Thaw, like Sleight (above), pairs high contrast thick and thin strokes with an expressive and experimental approach to produce a typeface that’s distinctly contemporary and dramatic. Namioto from Dalton Maag is a hypnotic display font where papercraft meets wood type. A fair description as any I’d say. It’s very fun — and seeing its name set in the font shows how it shines when used right. Vieno’s square mechanical terminals break it away from the classic Didot and Bodoni style into something fresh and original. Shaped through 15 weights, it delivers a full-force workhorse punch to what I suspect will make a fantastic editorial-centered family. TWK Burns mixes extremes — from the lightest lights to the heaviest blacks, to dots and diacritics that crash right into letterforms, to its oddly satisfying rotalic styles. One More Thing As a drummer, I would be remiss to not note the release of the brilliant new documentary Neil Peart: No One's Disciple which premiered during TIFF on September 16th and a week later on CBC in Canada. Not surprisingly though, it’s made its way onto YouTube for all to see. Even if you think you don’t like Rush, it’s a joy to see Geddy and Alex perform with drum greats, and Neil’s close drum buddies, Stewart Coupland (The Police), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Danny Carey (Tool), and Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree). Me, I’m looking forward to seeing them again next weekend in Seattle and then again the following week a little closer to home in San Jose. It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for me and I don’t quite feel like I’m out of the weeds yet, but am happy to allow myself an hour to start catching up on website things. I’ve got about half of the next issue already mapped out but who knows, I could end up scrapping much of that by the time it’s ready to post. My recent bike crash is certainly one reason why I could dedicate time to this, but also yesterday’s ride combined with overly hot temperatures proved that maybe I need to rest a bit more before getting back out there. Reply via e-mail or follow me at @scottboms@typo.social on Mastodon.