Mark’s Notebook - Page 42
Well, none of my fonts showed up on the Academy Awards show this year unlike last year, but my cousin Eric Simonson did. He and his co-producer Corinne Marrinan snagged an Oscar (Best Documentary Short) for their film “A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin.” Eric was nominated once before for another documentary short, “On Tiptoe: Gentle Steps to Freedom” (2000), and our whole family was excited to hear that he had been nominated again. Only this time he got the statue. Way to go, Eric! (And Corinne! though I don’t know you.)
I confess that I probably wouldn’t know Norman Corwin from Irwin Corey if I hadn’t worked on a package design for a collection of his radio broadcasts back in the nineties. I also confess I don’t know much about Eric’s documentary. All the years I have watched the Oscars, I have always wondered, where the heck can you see these short films? I saw his earlier nominated film at a family reunion. As luck would have it, “The Golden Age of Norman Corwin” will be screened this week at the Plaza Maplewood Theater in nearby Maplewood, Minnesota. I’m planning to go.
Congratulations, Eric!
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After driving past it for years, I suddenly realized what an absurd sign this is. Photo taken February 2, 2006, in the, uh, Midway area of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
My daughter and her friend asked me to draw a picture of Hello Kitty. For better or worse, I can’t resist playing the fool. We all had a good laugh.
So, there’s this thing going around blogs where you answer this list of questions, four answers each. I was tagged this morning by John Martz (a.k.a. Robot Johnny). It seems a bit like a chain letter, but I enjoyed reading other people’s answers, so I’ll play along:
Four jobs I’ve had:
- Bag boy, Penny’s Supermarket
- Art director, Minnesota Public Radio and several other places
- Freelance graphic designer and illustrator
- Type designer
Four movies I can watch over and over:
- Blade Runner
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- The Wrong Trousers
- Time Bandits
Four places I have lived:
- Beloit, Wisconsin
- Osseo, Minnesota
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Saint Paul, Minnesota
Four television shows I love to watch:
- Lost
- Monty Python’s Flying Circus
- Futurama
- Doctor Who
Four places I have been on vacation:
- Jamaica
- Montreal
- Lanesborough, Minnesota
- New York City
Four of my favorite dishes:
- Pizza
- Greek salad
- Aloo Mater Paneer
- Bowl of cereal
Four websites I visit daily:
- Typophile
- Typographica
- kottke.org
- Drawn!
Four places I would rather be right now:
- Asleep in bed (up too late last night)
- New York, 1930, with a camera
- Someplace warm
- A good bookstore or library
Four bloggers I am tagging:
The new release of Proxima Nova features a couple of compatibility fixes and more flexible access to alternate characters.
As a side benefit of one of the fixes, the Normal, Condensed, and Extra Condensed styles appear in their own font submenus. This turns out to be a better arrangement than having the whole family all in one submenu. I should have done it this way in the first place.
Alternate characters will now be much easier to deal with. I’ve set up seven “Stylistic Sets” so that alternate characters may be substituted globally in any combination. The new sets are also smarter the the original two in the way they handle the two-story and one-story lowercase “a” in the roman and italic. Again, I should have done it this way in the first place.
The update is free to customers who purchased before December 14, 2005. Customers who purchased after December 14, 2005 already have the new version.
I wish I could claim credit for finding this gem, but I haven’t even seen this movie (I hear it’s very funny, though). The font shown in the airport sign is the old Macintosh system font Chicago. Historically speaking, it’s possible, but an extremely unlikely font choice for a major airport, even one located in Chicago. Matt Soar spotted this and wrote about it on his blog. He also has written about typographical oddities in HBO’s Deadwood and the movie Paycheck. Good eye, Matt! (Update: Matt Soar seems to have deleted those entries from his blog.)