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THIS WEEK’S NEW EPISODE
This week’s guest is Stephen Coles, the associate curator and editorial director at Letterform Archive in San Francisco! We talk about why other museums have historically neglected graphic design, why you shouldn’t wear gloves when handling a very old book, and whether AI will ever outgrow its hideous restaurant menu era.
Find the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify — or find your favorite app here! A full transcript of this episode is available here.
BEHIND THE SCENES
👖 Planning vs. pantsing
I’ve heard it said that there are two types of writers: Planners, and pantsers. The planners know ahead of time exactly where they’re going with a story, while the pantsers prefer to fly by the seat of their pants. Think about the original Star Wars trilogy: If George Lucas knew all along that Luke & Leia were siblings, he probably wouldn’t have them kiss in the first two movies. George R.R. Martin, on the other hand…
But I digress. For most of my career in the media, I’ve been a planner: I research topics, prepare notes & question lists, and try to anticipate conversations before they happen. For every in-person interview this season, I’ve come to the studio equipped with a small spiral-bound notebook.
But one of the joys of making this podcast has been becoming a better pantser. Sometimes, a thought occurs to you mid-conversation that you have to chase, and that happened this week with Stephen Coles: I realized when he was talking about appreciating good design, I had seen a lot of casual online chatter about bad design, specifically as committed by generative AI.
Stephen, being a good sport and an insightful thinker, had great answers to my questions about ugly AI menus. Understanding why the internet has found them so repulsive just makes me appreciate the hard work of human designers even more.
— Eric
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IN MY INBOX
⚾️ Taxidermy, Popemobiles, and baseball
CC BY 2.0 / -JvL-
Am I crazy, or is a bunch of stuff in this story about AI in museums… not really AI? Sounds like stuff we were already doing years ago?? “When perusing the collection online — or when scanning any collection item in the museum in person — visitors can access detailed information on each object’s acquisition, conservation and provenance, along with that visual description and in some instances a 3-D model.” [New York Times]
Looks like I have to go to Reno! The new Light Circus neon museum, which Stephen was just telling me about after our interview, looks super cool [Reno Gazette Journal]
A new taxidermy museum in Amsterdam is playing around with visitors’ expectations: “In natural history museums, animals are posed as they could be seen in the wild. At the Art Zoo, a Japanese giant spider crab stretches its 6-foot legs above a doorway beside the leg bones of a mastodon that nearly reaches the ceiling.” [WRAL]
The Vatican Museums have a new exhibition about the history of the Popemobile, featuring eight Mercedes-Benz cars dating back to 1930. But as far as I can discern, they are not acknowledging the first thing I thought of, the Popemobile from Pixar’s Cars 2. [Vatican News]
A bit late to this, but the Milwaukee Brewers’ first-ever world series win has a museum angle! Thanks to a bet between The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, the former museum has won (on loan) a Claude Monet painting, Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London, 1904. [Wisconsin Public Radio]
THE GIFT SHOP
🎁 I should have bought two of these
There is only ONE WEEK LEFT to enter our Gift Shop Giveaway! If you’re already subscribed to this newsletter, then don’t worry, you’re in. (Full rules here)
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One of the prize packages will include this pack of Parisian postcards I bought from Letterform Archive’s gift shop, and omg. I might go back to buy another one after I give these away, because they’re so pretty. The winner will also get stickers, postcards, and maybe some surprise goodies!
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Before we go … here’s comedian/musician Elle Cordova singing about a fraction of the fonts she knows, by way of Gilbert & Sullivan: