November 01, 2011

Clarity vs. Obfuscation: Steve Jobs & Occupy Wall Street

I have no intention of making this blog a political one, but I did find interesting Frank Rich’s insight into the phenomenon of Occupy Wall Street protesters mourning Steve Jobs, a multi-billionaire:

Yet those demonstrators who celebrated Jobs were not necessarily hypocrites… Jobs’s genius… was his ability “to strip away the excess layers of business, design, and innovation until only the simple, elegant reality remained.” The supposed genius of modern Wall Street is the exact reverse, piling on excess layers of business and innovation on ever thinner and more exotic creations until simple reality is distorted and obscured.

Just food for thought. (Oh, and if you haven’t read Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, you’re missing out. I’m halfway through his follow-up, Boomerang, and it’s similarly compelling.)

Font games

• Cheese or Font? That is the question.
• Compare your letter-spacing skills to experts’ via Kern Type, the kerning game. (Happily, I didn’t entirely suck at this.) [Via Adam Jerugim]
• If you’re up for a greater challenge, try Shape Type, the letter-shaping game.