Typeface design has turned out to be an activity that’s easy to start but very hard to master. It’s relatively straightforward to get to know your tools and learn how to draw basic glyphs. The hardest part is making the entire text look good. You run into problems when you like a glyph on its own, but it catches your eye when it’s part of the text. As Matthew Carter said, “Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.”
The biggest challenge with personal projects like this is the lack of restrictions. When you have a list of requirements, it provides the necessary constraints that shape your work. Without them, you tend to stagger from one idea to another, with no clear goal to measure your progress against. As a result, the design changes frequently.
But this lack of restrictions also has its advantages, as it creates a lot of room for experimentation. You get to understand why some typefaces have a curved leg on an ‘R’ and others are straight by just trying it yourself. You might copy an element from a typeface you like and discover why it works. You end up learning more in a given time by trying different things.
However, it’s hard not to hit a wall when you don’t have a specific goal. Knowing that making it good will take more time than just learning how to do it adds another layer of frustration. Even though there was never any particular goal to start with and it was always about learning, It feels like a failure not to see your projects “finished”.
Note to self: Never set goals like “designing a typeface for your site.” It’s too concrete, too result-oriented. It undermines the playful aspect of the process. Instead, focus on the journey.
I don’t want this to become a project I feel obligated to finish; I want it to remain a toy.
Friendship is much simpler when you’re a kid. You can simply approach someone and ask them to be your friend. You can visit your grandmother for the summer, come back, and pick up conversations as if nothing happened. Children’s friendships are about living in the moment and enjoying each other’s company.
As we grow up, friendships become more complicated. If you haven’t been in touch with someone, you might feel guilty—even when there wasn’t anything specific to discuss.
I realized that’s okay. Friendship isn’t supposed to be complicated. You can enjoy time together whenever you want without needing to be in touch constantly. This time together doesn’t have to be planned in advance. Meaningful friendships arise naturally anyway.
So stop overanalyzing. Don’t worry if you haven’t been in touch for a while. It’s normal to drift apart, and it doesn’t make you a bad person. The next time you’re in a place where an old friend lives, send them a message and ask to meet up. Think about how you want to spend time together and do something you used to enjoy. If they were a good friend before, that’s reason enough to enjoy their company again.
Sometimes YouTube can surprise you by recommending a video that exists simply because someone out there wanted to create it. Recently, it showed me a video from the Gawx channel. Great work deserves to be shared through word of mouth, so here are a couple that I liked.
Teenage Engineering introduced new version of their EP-1320 and created a gorgeous landing for this (captured screenshot). This is the kind of skeuomorphism I haven’t seen for a while. When I was a kid, it was a popular style for online games because of how immersive it was. I’m glad to see it coming back.
This is my second time watching Punch Drunk Love, and what a nice movie it is. While There Will Be Blood remains the most epic, beautiful, and comprehensive movie Paul Thomas Anderson and Robert Elswit created, Punch Drunk Love is the most original.
The main thing that I noticed during this rewatch are the colors. They are the main theme in this movie. They establish the emotions of the scenes. Even if you don’t pay attention to them, you feel them. Blue follows Barry everywhere — symbolizing his loneliness and detachment. Red represents everything good that he finds along the way; it’s happiness.
Everything plays so nicely together in this movie. It’s funny and sad sometimes. It can be brutal but also tender. The beautiful work of Robert Elswit is hard to describe, I want to watch this movie again and again just to experience every scene one more time.
