Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and relax.
Photo: Alan Highton
Venezuela’s Nightly Lightning Show »
If you enjoy a good thunderstorm now and then, you should make plans sometime to visit Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. This locale receives more lightning than anywhere else on Earth, thanks to its unique combination of heat, humidity, and wind from the surrounding Andes. People from all around the world travel there just to see the astonishing light show.
Alasdair Baverstock (great name, by the way) of The Guardian went down to check it out:
Night falls quickly this close to the equator, and soon we were absorbed in star-gazing. Meanwhile, the lightning show was tuning up in the far distance, ready to burst on to the stage in the small hours.
The low-growling thunder grew louder, setting the scene for the opening act of a major storm far off across the lake, electrifying the horizon. The palm-dwelling monkeys retreated into denser bush as the atmosphere began to sway their treetop dwellings, and we carried our chairs to where we might better witness the action. Suddenly, the first enormous bolt leapt to earth, followed by a roar of thunder that reverberated through the foliage.
I, for One, Welcome Our New Newsletter and Podcast Overlords »
Glenn Fleishman, writing for Jason Snell's Six Colors on the resurgence of podcasts and newsletters as potential business models:
Conversational or casual podcasts that are recorded straight-through and then aired with relatively little editing — a ratio of one-to-one up to three-to-one editing time to time aired — are inexpensive to record, produce, and distribute. They take mostly labor. [...]
The ability to have a relatively high degree of leverage — if one can both attract good numbers of listeners and those listeners have an interest in the goods and services — makes an editorial site as much as advertisement for listening to the podcast as the other way around.
Poster of the TwoPoint typeface.
Typographica's Favorite Typefaces of 2014 »
There's never a bad time for a little font nerdery. As such, the folks at Typographica have selected and reviewed their top 58 typefaces for 2014:
The independence of type designers themselves is increasingly evident. Small foundries have existed since the dawn of digital fonts, but now they are the norm. Only a handful of the selections in this year’s list were published by companies with more than ten employees. [...]
Amid this shifting landscape I hope our list of favorite typefaces can serve as a guide. The writers are as diverse as their selections. They are font makers and users with a variety of perspectives, each picking a 2014 release (or two) that floated their boat.
Click or tap any of the typefaces listed on that page to read its review. Here's an excerpt from the review of the Woodkit typeface:
That sense of play is what Woodkit is all about. It is certainly not a revival in the traditional sense, but Ondrej Jób breathes new life into the otherwise mundane act of setting type on a computer. Woodkit encapsulates all that is fun about building up words and images out of prefabricated blocks (toypography?).
All the News Where It Needs to Fit »
Mike Monteiro of Mule Design explains some of the thinking that went into the studio's recent redesign of the Seattle Times website:
And while the mighty roar of presses has been replaced by the tap tap tap of glass sheened thumbs, society owes a debt to protect the journalists who have so often protected us from oppression and ignorance. We need our news. We need our trusted sources. We should help journalism adapt to the world it’s helped keep free.
So when Albert McMurry from The Seattle Times called us and said “we have an impossible deadline and some very real constraints” we were only too happy to answer the call to service.
Mule also recently launched an absolutely gorgeous redesign of the National Audubon Society's website, and wrote about that process as well:
We went on a birding adventure in the Baylands Nature Preserve just behind the Googleplex. Without appreciating the operational complexity and embracing the love of birds, our work would not be possible.
Then we talked to the audiences Audubon hoped to reach and inspire: current members, hard-core birders, younger urbanites with outdoorsy aspirations, and people who liked birds, but didn’t necessarily like like them.
These sorts of case studies give a small but fascinating glimpse into the workings of awesome, high-level design, and we can't get enough of them.
Akira Kurosawa — Composing Movement »
The latest entry in Tony Zhou's video essay series, Every Frame a Painting, examines how director Akira Kurosawa used motion of all sorts to convey meaning in his films.
A Kurosawa film moves like no one else's. Each one is a masterclass in different types of motion, and also ways to combine them.
Note: Some of the scenes in this video are graphically violent. Perhaps a little cartoonishly so by today's standards, but beware all the same if you are at work or watching with children.
"Heights" from Aaron Campbell's Clouds & Gradients, Part 3
Clouds & Gradients, Part 3 »
Vancouver-based illustrator and designer Aaron Campbell posted a new series of concept artwork stills on Behance for a graphic novel project he's been working on, and all we can say is...wow.
Be sure to also check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this collection.
"Collector" from Aaron Campbell's Clouds & Gradients, Part 1
Photo: “Wanna play?” by Álvaro Serrano
Street Photography in Madrid with the Olympus 17mm f1.8 Lens »
To celebrate the arrival of Spring, our friend and T&T contributor Álvaro Serrano shot an awesome collection of street photography in Madrid using his new Olympus lens:
Madrid is an amazing city, full of life and color all year round, but it gets even better when the cold temperatures of winter subside and the glorious spring sunshine takes their place. As the days become longer, the heartbeat of this unique city begins to pick up the pace and when the first heat wave of the year hits the streets, its effects are immediately felt all the way across town, like a shockwave. [...]
With that scenario in mind, I definitely felt this was as good a time as any to take out my new Olympus 17mm f/1.8 lens for the first time and have some fun documenting the arrival of spring to the Spanish capital.
As Álvaro mentioned on Twitter, the people in the photo above had only met moments before the shot was captured. Dictionary definition of serendipity.
Got any suggestions for articles, videos, stories, photographs, and any other links you think we should be posting in our weekly Quality Linkage? Please do let us know on Twitter.