•Comment•

In lettering, it just has to work in that one instance. In type design, you have a larger system that you can’t neatly predict. The complexity is so much greater. For me, type requires a more mathematical approach, which can sometimes make my brain switch off. When we did OpenType coding back at Cooper, I really had a hell of a time with it. I just couldn’t get that part of my brain to function. Maybe it was just so dormant that I couldn’t wake it up.

It’s a very different way of thinking. That’s the thing about type design; it stands between other disciplines, programming, linguistics, draftsmanship, commerce, Intellectual property. It’s what makes it so interesting, but it can also be daunting if you lean towards one discipline more than others.

Type design is not just sitting there tweaking beziers all day. As much as you sometimes wish it was.

Mark McCormick.

•Comment•

… if you have a home, why publish elsewhere? Why not put everything on that home to begin with? … why create and maintain an independent home? Why own a domain, setup servers, configure software, hunt down and test typeface after typeface? Why worry about spam or hacks or hackers? Why trade sleep for CSS precision? Why make and remake an SVG file to get the padding just so?

Simple: To revisit. To collate. To gain informed perspective by placing the words once separated by both time and vast digital expanses next to one another. To give those same thoughts the shape you saw for them when you wrote them. The shape they may have never achieved out in the wild. To reedit the edits from editors you didn’t agree with. To — if not own the bits — feel like you own the bits. To make sure the margins are absolutely, goddamned, perfectly measured.

Craig Mod.

•Comment•

Mass Indie is the zine publishing of web publishing. The everyperson indie. Godaddy a domain, snag a Tumblr, fiddle a DNS and Go Go Go. Don’t have eight bucks? Skip the domain and jump straight to Go Go Go. It’s right there and it’s faster than a Xerox at Kinkos. Don’t like Tumblr? Ghost it up. Livejournal’s still a thing. Wattpad welcomes all. Geo-plaster at hi.co. Kindle Single it and give it away. Toss it on Scribd. Pastebin the notion. Splatter your post across twenty tweets. Heck, Google Doc it. The Web Is Here For You To Use. Post to multiple platforms. Pledge allegiance to no one. You don’t owe ’em nuttin’. Everybody Minecraft — stake your claim. Then restake it again tomorrow. The land’s wide open and there’s always more IPv6 to go around.

Craft Indie is calculated indie. Laborious indie. Tie-your-brain-in-a-knot indie. No easier than it’s ever been. I’m talking about breathing your bits — really possessing, sculpting, caressing, caring for, caring after your bits. Knowing. Takes buckets of effort. And buckets be heavy.

Craft Indie is lose your afternoon to RSS 2.0 vs Atom specifications indie. Craft Indie is .htaccessing the perfect URL indie. Craft Indie is cool your eyes don’t change indie. Craft Indie is pixel tweaking line-heights, margins, padding … of the copyright in the footer indie. Craft Indie is #efefe7 not #efefef indie. Craft Indie is fatiguing indie, you-gotta-love-it indie, you-gotta-get-off-on-this-mania indie.

Both indies are united by and predicated on openness. Universal accessibility. This is why to impinge on Net Neutrality is to impinge on the very quintessence of what makes the web the web. Lopsided hierarchy woven into the fabric of the web upends the beautiful latent power of online publishing. The dudette should not abide.

Craig Mod.