Right now I’m searching for anything and everything that is alternate to the base news coming off the TV, Internet, and Radio. This war, though I believe it’s justifiable (see today’s Salon article about those on the left who believe in the occasional use of the military for a few select values-based reasons), is going to be insane. Well, to get your mind off it for 2 minutes, check out Typophile’s project called “The Smaller Picture”, which is quite brilliantly allowing a collective of interested people to create a font from scratch. It must be one of the first examples of mass design, and it certainly must be the first example of collective type design. Perhaps most interesting visually, The Smaller Picture also allows you to see the timeline of the development of individual type characters. This is an amazingly sophisticated project, created by Kevan Davis.

I’ve noticed that very, very, very few websites use purple as a color for anything, including text, illustrations, navigation, design elements, background colors, animation … just about anything. I find this incredibly fascinating (this, as the country is going to war, I know). I’m not sure of the exact reasons but here are my suppositions:
1. Purple doesn’t have a “cool” factor, unless your name happens to be Prince.
2. Purple doesn’t read very well; it’s not legible for most people, in part because it’s so unused.
3. Purple is fey, and perhaps its use is considered too feminine for the male-focused Web.
4. Purple has a coyness about it, and a cheapness, that recalls bordellos, or overly permissive sexuality.

It was inevitable but Barbie and her friends now have their very own Web log. I know that many people are upset that now “blogs” have been thoroughly commercialized, but if anything, these new sites point out the design and communications potential and pitfalls of daily public diaries. (The writing is poor on the Barbie sites but they are thoughtfully constructed, unlike most blogs.) In fact, I’ve become quite tired of folks who are somehow persuaded that the Internet was created under the sign of liberty and individual speech … partly because I used to be one in 1996.

This is tough.

I’ve been a big fan of a small, Toronto-based firm that sells — and is called — Fonts for Flash. I purchased a few of their fonts today, which are both inexpensive and highly usable for Flash and any Web design work that one might undertake. I always think that the folks who create these fonts, which appear very small though legibly on websites, are a bit like those that can write a paragraph of Biblical text on a grain of rice. These fonts are miracles of microscopic ingenuity.

I recently put down my $30.00 to subscribe to Salon Premium and so far so good. I wanted to see if it was worth paying actual money for actual content — and it is quite refreshing to get full articles, no advertisements, and faster connectivity to prime pulp for a (small amount of) change. No flash banner ads means 10 seconds more time for me. I found this article there, on Saddam’s love for suicide bombers comprehensive.

There is much more important news happening right now, but I am utterly astounded and tickled sick that Congress voted to call french fries “freedom fries”. As the world’s largest military power about to flex its muscle, this is so pathetic and full of bad symbolism that I’m embarrassed to even post this.

The whole U.N./U.S./U.K. war fiasco is looking increasingly like a U-circus — which is somehow alluded to in this week’s New Yorker. No, not in the actual content of the magazine but in the first 10 pages of ads by clothiers like Banana Republic, Prada, and Armani. I’m sure it’s not my imagination getting the better of me — in the ads, tents and clowns and colorful text and fanciful textures are all a play on the carnivalesque that is our daily political and economic environs.

I must state for the record that my ol’ alma mater, Brown University, now has one of the finest university Web sites I’ve seen, perhaps the finest. The new redesign (probably launched only days ago) allows for much better navigation, cleaner access to many sub-sites, and nicely featured, large images on the home page.

Our friend Susan, from TO, is in town this weekend. In her honor, take a look at this cool blooper on last week’s Star’s Business page.