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I have a special episode for you today! In this conversation, you’ll hear from the iconic illustrator, storyteller, designer and Book Worm, Coralie-Bickford Smith. Coralie’s book covers have been recognised by the AIGA (NY) and D&AD (UK) and have featured in a numerous international magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, Vogue and The Guardian. The work she does with Penguin Classics on the clothbound series attracts worldwide attention and harks back to the world of Victorian bindings and a golden age of book binding. She graduated from Reading University with a degree in Typography and Graphic Communication. She’s now a renowned cover designer, as well as the author-illustrator of The Fox and the Star (2015) – the first picture book to win the Waterstones Book of the Year award – The Bird and the Worm (2017), The Song of the Tree (2020) and The Squirrel and the Lost Treasure (2023). In 2017 she received an honorary doctorate from Reading University. In this conversation you’ll hear Coralie’s creative process for book cover design, which weaves into a discussion about creativity more broadly. She demystifies her experience designing for other authors’ book covers versus working on her own books. You’ll hear about the way that she uses constraints in her work, the printing press in her kitchen and the typeface she’d use for the rest of her life if she could only choose one. Finally, Coralie and I connect over the joyful and serendipitous Big Magic of books. Below you’ll find some incredible examples of Coralie’s process work for her latest book The Squirrel and the Lost Treasure that she’s generously shared with the Talk Paper Scissors community. Let’s listen in… About Our Guest: Coralie Bickford-Smith is a London based designer, illustrator and author. She graduated from Reading University with a degree in Typography and Graphic Communication. Now a renowned cover designer as well as the author-illustrator of The Fox and the Star (2015) – the first picture book to win the Waterstones Book of the Year award – The Bird and the Worm (2017), The Song of the Tree (2020) and The Squirrel and the Lost Treasure (2023). Her book covers have been recognised by the AIGA (NY) and D&AD (UK) and have featured in a numerous international magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, Vogue and The Guardian. The work she does with Penguin Classics on the clothbound series attracts worldwide attention and harks back to the world of Victorian bindings and a golden age of book binding. She has been commissioned by a wide range of clients including The New York Times, Fortnum & Mason, Waterstones, Corriere Della Sera, Diageo, Harper Collins, Just Trade, Princeton Architectural press, Booths and Arts Council England. In 2017 she received an honorary doctorate from Reading University. Instagram: coraliebickfordsmith Twitter: www.twitter.com/cbickfordsmith Pinterest: CBickfordsmith Photo Credit: Stuart Simpson - www.stuart-simpson.com/ Music: Somewhere Nice by John Bartmann, Licensed Under CC0 1.0 Universal Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

Inspiration is a mysterious, elusive and perhaps even divine interconnectedness between everyone and everything. Communication, both through talking and listening, is a gateway for inspiration. When we explain concepts to others it can help clarify our own ideas and facilitate connections in our own minds, as well as in the minds of others. Working in an interdisciplinary team requires coming up with new ideas all the time and supporting the creative process of one another, part of which is encouraging inspiration. Whether before or after you listen to today’s episode, I encourage you to go back and check out last year’s inspiration mini-series, Episodes 131 - 133: 131: Inspiration and Digital Media with Reilly Stephens of Pinterest, 132: Inspiration Matters Featuring MDM 11.0, and 133: Inspiration Framework: Time to ‘ACE’ It. As I expectantly reopen my mind to the topic of inspiration, this episode marks a new chapter where I will share 3 things: a journey of highlights from recent sources of inspiration about inspiration, a conversation alongside 6 Master of Digital Media students at Toronto Metropolitan University who will share diverse perspectives on the topic of inspiration, and 2 new additions to my inspiration framework. Let’s begin with the always thoughtful and beautiful wordsmith, Suleika Jaouad, who recently shared a note about finding inspiration through awe in her publication, The Isolation Journals. On October 29, 2023 she said this: “The side table in this photograph sits in the living room of my farmhouse, right next to my couch. I spend a fair amount of time on said couch, so I see this table all the time, to the point that I don’t actually see it anymore. But a few days ago, the sight of the morning sun on this concrete planter and the tendrils sprouting from the woman’s head struck me still. It filled me with awe. Later I realized that this moment felt like a perfect embodiment of what sparks my creative process: the experience of wonder. It’s being stopped in my tracks by something I see, something I hear, something I read. It’s a question that suddenly and then persistently intrudes at the edges of my mind. Sometimes I welcome the question; other times, I don’t really want to invite it in, either because it might reveal something uncomfortable, or because the question feels too big, too insurmountable, too unanswerable. And yet when I begin to make something with it, be it an essay or a painting, I sense a shift. Like twisting a prism, the light falls in a new way, allowing a different or deeper understanding, giving me a sense of agency, if only artistically.” This guided me to continue my winding journey of inspiration, leading next to Brene Brown’s book published in 2021, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, in which she explores terminology to help human beings label what we’re experiencing. In Section #4: Places We Go When It’s Beyond Us, emotions of awe, wonder, confusion, curiosity, interest and surprise are grouped as roommates, nestled into this chapter together, with awe and wonder sharing a single bunk. Brown says this: “We often use “awe” and “wonder” interchangeably, which makes sense because as you can see, the experiences share a lot in common. But there is a primary difference between our experiences of these incredible emotions that’s worth understanding. I love how researchers Ulrich Weger and Johannes Wagemann explain it. They write, “Wonder inspires the wish to understand; awe inspires the wish to let shine, to acknowledge and to unite.” When feeling awe, we tend to simply stand back and observe, “to provide a stage for the phenomenon to shine.” Awe and wonder are essential to the human experience. Wonder fuels our passion for exploration and learning, for curiosity and adventure. Researches have found that awe “leads people to cooperate, share resources, and sacrifice for others” and causes them “to fully appreciate the value of others and see themselves more accurately, evoking humility.”” (p.58-59). I find this pretty incredible when I think about the ways in which wonder and awe lead to inspiration; another feeling that lives beyond or above oneself, wielding the power to transcend. In the final stop on the winding path of recent inspiration about inspiration, I landed at a book I acquired this summer, published in 2017 entitled The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World co-authored by an interdisciplinary team. In it, Stanford University Neuroscientist, David Eagleman, and composer, professor and artistic director, Anthony Brandt confirm that “to innovate is human” and that innovation will never stop; there will never be a settling point. Human brains are hardwired to evolve quickly and crave variation. Like most things in life, balance is required to arrive at a suitable equilibrium: “too much predictability and we tune out; too much surprise and we become disoriented… creativity lives in that tension” (p.23). Furthermore, one of the strong suits of the human brain is that it's constantly in a state of simulating ‘what-ifs’, imagining possible outcomes and simulating them internally. We are innovation machines! But our own brains and our own experiences will only take us so far. Eagleman and Brandt share that a ‘turbobooster’ for creativity lives outside of our brains and in the brains of others. This, too, has been my experience when working with creative collaborators who embody diverse backgrounds and lived experiences, facilitating the evolution of my ideas in ways that I know I could not achieve on my own. It’s in these moments that true interdisciplinary innovation is made possible, leading to the heart of today’s episode. I’m joined by a new cohort of Master of Digital Media students at Toronto Metropolitan University who share their diverse perspectives on the topic of inspiration: where it comes from, what it feels like and how to channel it. Let’s get into it. Take it away Aashana… ---- I love the way inspiration works, almost like a trampoline, the bouncer building momentum with each jump; the absorption of impact propelling the trampolinist to new heights not possible without the previous effort and leap of faith. By using the tools within the inspiration framework I created in 2022 — including connecting to others experiences through conversation in class and on this podcast — I’ve been able to further expand the inspiration framework itself. I believe that connecting to inspiration more often and more easily (in other words, controlling the uncontrollable) can be achieved more often and more fully through a framework of actions inviting inspiration to the sandbox through embrace, pace, place, space, interface and chase, with the now added ‘surface’ and ‘grace’. Working through this framework with a friend, family member or colleague may prove to reap additional rewards, especially in the latter part of the process. These 8 ‘ACE’ tools can all be used together or be used independently from one another. Let me remind you of each of the 6 previous, as well as the 2 new ones. Here’s to finding inspiration in the most unlikely places. About Our Guests: Experiences and stories are where Aashana finds her spark and motivation. A beaming source of creative energy and positive stimuli, she is passionate about crafting innovative solutions and designing opportunities that foster meaningful interactions. An illustrious experiential marketer and digital storyteller in the making, Aashana believes in celebrating life one experience at a time. Being an unapologetic go-getter, she chooses to be an “oops” rather than a “what if”! Mitch Kogan is an individual of many talents. However, where these talents mix and convene is in the field of digital art and storytelling. They are often seen using digital mediums like Photoshop or Canva to bring their imaginative ideas to life. Their creativity is constantly evolving and soaring, always looking for the endeavor that they could dive into next. Jahnoya is a digital enthusiast with a passion for dance, photography, storytelling, and design. With a BA from UBC in Psychology and English, she believes creativity can be leveraged in all fields and aims to combine creative and strategic thinking in everything she does. Jahnoya is ready to take her skills to the next level in the Digital Media world through her MDM program at TMU. Moustafa is a film festival organizer and a film producer with over a decade of extensive experience in event strategy and coordination, client success, brand marketing, and project management through working with major international film festivals, corporations, film sets, and agencies in Africa, Europe and North Africa. Sejal Bahl is a digital media and performing artist from India and a 1st year Master's student studying digital media at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her pronouns are She/Hers. She holds a bachelor's degree in Communication with minors in Theatre and Cinematic Arts from Saint Mary's College of California. She is a social justice advocate who loves a good story and hopes to continue to tell meaningful stories using multiple mediums. Ali Noorani is a User Experience Designer and a creative storyteller based in Toronto. Before, he was a journalist at Agence France-Presse where he broke Iran-related stories. His AFP career saw him often featured on various international networks. He later joined the NHK World to report the appeals of Japan from Tokyo. In 2021, he switched careers and jumped back into design some 15 years after landing his first job as a graphic designer. Music: Somewhere Nice by John Bartmann, Licensed Under CC0 1.0 Universal Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

Let's continue our journey, speaking with movers and shakers in the printing, typography and design spaces who make space for others through community-building. Welcome Hello, Print Friend, a podcast community with more than 200 episodes, nearly 100K followers on Instagram and heard in print studios all over the globe. Hello, Print Friend is a podcast dedicated to celebrating and amplifying contemporary printmaking and its culture. Releasing weekly interviews with artists, activists, curators, and print champions, they explore what brings together this passionate yet often geographically separated community across a press bed and around the world. Hello, Print Friend is a product of Miranda Metcalf’s love and passion for the medium of printmaking. After five years as director of Davidson Galleries in Seattle, Washington, she spent two years in Sydney, Australia discovering new prints and new printmakers, before relocating to Bangkok, Thailand where she served as the director of S.A.C. Gallery. In 2021, she returned to the US to work with Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. In August 2023 she took up the position of director of the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) at Alfred University. The IEA is high technology research studio facility encouraging and supporting projects that involve interactive multi-media systems, experimental sonic/video production, print media, digital imaging, and publications. In this episode, learn more about Miranda Metcalf (my newly-found print twin!), her historical pathway to printmaking and her hugely thoughtful answer to why the printed medium intrigues her so much. You'll learn how Hello, Print Friend got started and how it’s evolved over time, including why and how it exists as a bilingual podcast. Learn about Miranda’s favourite recent guests, including a deep dive into Miranda’s conversation with a famous political activist. Finally, you'll be guided down a winding path to hear Miranda’s favourite question to ask her printmaking guests, a discussion about the science of readability and even a typographic connection to Thai letterforms! Let's listen in... Thank you Miranda and all of the Print Friends. The community coming up in the next episode is the newly-launched Canadian Typography Archives, where I’ll be chatting with board member, Sam Archibald. Stay tuned… About Our Guest: Hello, Print Friend is a product of Miranda Metcalf’s love and passion for the medium of printmaking. After five years as director of Davidson Galleries in Seattle, Washington, she spent two years in Sydney, Australia discovering new prints and new printmakers, before relocating to Bangkok, Thailand where she served as the director of S.A.C. Gallery. In 2021, she returned to the US to work with Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. In August 2023 she took up the position of director of the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) at Alfred University. The IEA is high technology research studio facility encouraging and supporting projects that involve interactive multi-media systems, experimental sonic/video production, print media, digital imaging, and publications. https://helloprintfriend.com https://blog.alfred.edu/iea/ Music: Oopsie Doodle Master by John Bartmann, Licensed Under CC0 1.0 Universal Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

I recently had the pleasure of joining 2100 other creatives at Canada’s largest design conference, DesignThinkers Toronto 2023. In a number of the keynote talks, a theme that kept reappearing — both directly and indirectly — was creating the communities you want to be a part of. And coincidentally, this series of episodes (many of which were recorded before the conference) is all about exactly that: community. In the next 6 episodes, you’ll hear from movers and shakers in the printing, typography and design spaces who make space for others through their creating and maintaining national and global communities. In this first episode, we’ve Marcroy Smith, founder of People of Print. People of Print has established itself globally as the one of the world's leading print-orientated communities of creatives and collection of companies who pull together to perform workshops, events and answer creative briefs for clients including: The Guardian, Fiorucci, UEFA, Adidas, internet.org, V&A Museum, Pick Me Up Design Fair, MasterCard, Levi's, Missguided, Airbnb, Clarks Originals, Spa Sanctuary and various charities. He is author of the 336 page hardback book for Thames & Hudson titled 'People of Print: Innovative, Independent Design and Illustration.' Marcroy is also the founding editor and art director of Print Isn't Dead™ magazine alongside Posterzine®— a poster which folds down into a mini-magazine. These are self-published by People of Print (In Perpetuum). Marcroy has organised exhibitions worldwide featuring the work of established printmakers, illustrators and designers alongside those who are emerging. In the following episode, you will hear the origin story of People of Print, why print isn’t dead (as well as where this phrase originated), as well as the way that print and digital have a synergistic relationship. You’ll learn about the innovative ‘Posterzine’, the way in which Marcroy loves making new things as evidenced by his depth and breadth of work, and we dive into failure in creativity. There are lots of links to examples in show notes below. Let’s listen in… Links Discussed in the Episode: People of Print: https://www.peopleofprint.com/ People of Print Book: Innovative, Independent Design and Illustration: https://www.peopleofprint.com/pop/popbook/ Posterzine: https://posterzine.com/ Posterzine 01 Issue - Eike Kong: https://posterzine.com/products/posterzine01 Druk wide (display): https://type.today/en/druk_wide Reader (text): https://www.colophon-foundry.org/typefaces/reader Thank you Marcroy and People of Print. The community coming up in the next episode is Hello, Print Friend; a podcast with more than 200 episodes, nearly 100K followers on Instagram and heard in print studios all over the globe. Stay tuned… About Our Guest: Marcroy is the director and founder of People of Print Ltd, which has established itself globally as the one of the world's leading print-orientated communities of creatives and collection of companies who pull together to perform workshops, events and answer creative briefs for clients including: The Guardian, Fiorucci, UEFA, Adidas, internet.org, V&A Museum, Pick Me Up Design Fair, MasterCard, Levi's, Missguided, Airbnb, Clarks Originals, Spa Sanctuary and various charities. He is author of the 336 page hardback book for Thames & Hudson titled 'People of Print: Innovative, Independent Design and Illustration.' peopleofprint.com He has worked for established design and print studios, alongside freelancing for over 12 years where he worked on projects for clients including : The Guardian, Champion, Microsoft, History Channel, Dove, Tumi, Universal, Co-operative Music, Crystal Castles and Bella Union. He is the founding editor and art director of Print Isn't Dead™ magazine alongside Posterzine®— a poster which folds down into a mini-magazine. These are self-published by People of Print (In Perpetuum). posterzine.com Also the founder of Department Store, a curated marketplace of design-based vendors from across the globe, offering both affordable vendor fees and fair a commission rate on product sales. dept.store Marcroy worked alongside Chris Haughton on the 18x18 Project for Node which was displayed at the Design Museum during Fair Trade Fortnight. madebynode.com Marcroy has organised exhibitions worldwide featuring the work of established printmakers, illustrators and designers alongside those who are emerging. He is also a visiting lecturer who has presented and executed live briefs at Brighton University, BRIT School, UAL London College of Communication, UCA Epsom, UWE and BCU. Music: Oopsie Doodle Master by John Bartmann, Licensed Under CC0 1.0 Universal Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

It was a warm spring day in the town of Mainz, Germany where rays of sun danced around the clouds that cast shadows on the ground. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the day. Men and women, boys and girls, walked along the cobbled streets going about their daily lives. But, it was also no ordinary day. In fact, it was quite extraordinary. Because in front of me, inside a vault and beneath bullet proof glass, lay one of 49 remaining copies of the world’s first printed book: The Gutenberg Bible. As silly as it seems for a book to overcome you, the sheer magnitude of the object before me caught in my throat and I nearly cried. “I owe my profession to you. I owe my education to you. We owe our technology and communities and current place in time to you.” It was extraordinary, after all. But to understand this story, we need to back up nearly 500 years. Johannes Gutenberg was a businessman who lived in 15th century Germany. He was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Millennium and his work was credited as the most important of the last 1000 years. Although he deserves huge recognition because our world would not be as we know it today if it were not for him, it’s a common misconception to say that he invented the printing press. Instead, he commercialized it. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. You see, he took existing technologies (a press for making wine, paper, which was invented more than a century earlier, and moveable type that can be traced back more than three centuries earlier) to give birth to mass production. He saw an opportunity to make money in books: to speed up and radically alter book making because before Gutenberg came on the scene, books were written by hand. It’s somewhat ironic that the world’s richest man today, Jeff Bezos, got his start in exactly the same way: selling books. However Gutenberg’s financial fate didn’t end in riches (more on that in a minute). It would sometimes take months and even years for the text in a single manuscript to be copied. And after all of that work, there were two books. Two. This obviously made the books of the day very expensive and available only to those who could afford them. However it’s a misconception that most people of the time were illiterate. Yes, literacy rates improved because of the access to less expensive printed books, however most adults were taught to read basic words in their local dialect. This meant that they knew enough to be able to read a contract and get by in business, for example. While he didn’t, truly, invent the printing press, one critical component to the process that he did invent, was a device used the make (cast) the metal moveable type. Moveable type is like the letter tiles of a Scrabble game board. Each letter exists on its own little tile and they can be rearranged in any order you wish to spell different words. This is exactly what moveable type is but the letters were raised (similar to the way a rubber stamp’s image is raised) so that once all the letters were in place, ink was applied to the surface, paper laid over top and pressure was applied from above to transfer the ink to the paper. It’s simple technology in our eyes today (it’s essentially a craft project that every kindergartener does at some point in their playtime career) but 500 years ago, it was revolutionary. Let’s get back to Gutenberg’s movable type maker… he invented a little handheld device that contained and matrix and a patrix (a male and female mold) of a letter of the alphabet. When hot molten lead was poured into the mold, a piece of moveable type was formed. The letter was popped out, the mold was reset, and more lead was poured in to create another piece of type. This was done over and over and over again for each letter of the alphabet. This process ensured consistency from one letter to the next. (All of the e’s looked identical, and so on.) With enough letters, it allowed Gutenberg to arrange the type to form words, that formed sentences, that formed paragraphs, that formed pages to create books. So although the concept of moveable type was not new, the ability to create consistent and uniform pieces of type in a relatively quick and easy way (his mold system) was vitally important to the process. There were approximately 25 people working with Gutenberg in his print shop, which was considered a large company in the town of Mainz that had only 6000 people living there. Also, he had a modern way of thinking about jobs and salaries. He separated the jobs into titles with different salaries. For example, children were employed to move paper and add to the fire and they were paid very little, while typesetters (who were literate) were paid much better. Gutenberg completed his first book project after raising the funds for all 180 copies in advance of printing (so it was basically the world’s first successful Kickstarter campaign). The book was a bible, which was completed around 1455. The book was laid out with columns of text that have 42 lines each (which is why it’s often referred to as the 42-line bible). The book was of very high quality and it showed great consistency of printing through its 1286 pages. Blackletter, the typeface designed by Gutenberg and used throughout the bible, was created to mimic the handwritten characters found in previously scribed works. Here are a few more Gutenberg Bible facts: - The bible existed over two large volumes - 180 were produced, 49 still exist today (11 in the United States), and only 20 complete copies exist - There were two versions - one printed on paper and one printed on vellum (animal skin) - The two volumes were unbound so recipients would have had to take it to a book binder after receiving their copy - The pages were only printed in black (it would have taken too long to print other colours) so all colour in the drop caps and other flourishes was added later by hand (called an Illuminator) - Therefore no two bibles were the same If you want to get a more visual sense of what I’m referred to, I recommend watching an excellent documentary called The Machine That Made Us, where actor Stephen Fry retraces Gutenberg’s footsteps and uses the tools of the 15th century in an attempt to reconstruct his processes and technologies. It’s a really interesting watch. Over the next 50 years there was an explosion of printing throughout Europe. Before the year 1455 there were no books printed. By the year 1500, approximately 10 million copies of 3,500 works were printed and distributed. There was an unprecedented amount of technical and social knowledge in the world in the hands of people who could have never before afforded to own books. At this point in history the world ‘novel’ literally meant new and never been seen. Printing was so widespread, which meant there was huge excess capacity on printing presses, enabling printers to do something revolutionary. They started printing works other than religious texts; works that people had never read before. They printed novels. It’s safe to say that Gutenberg’s work revolutionized communication, changing the course of history for all future inhabitants of this planet. We’re all deeply connected to Gutenberg’s technology any time we read something on a paper or a screen. However, beyond the obvious connections to literacy and the written word, Gutenberg’s work has enabled humans to share information, spread knowledge, and build societies in ways that would not have been possible without having a way to mass produce books. Thank you Mr. G. But Gutenberg’s story didn’t end in complete fame and fortune. He was said to be a paranoid character who concerned himself in shady dealings; even shady for the 1500’s. His path to commercializing printing might even be seen as a ‘get-rich-quick scheme’. He invented technologies that would help successfully commercialize book making and printed subject matter that people would pay for, to turn a profit. But, ultimately, he ran out of money before he could get his idea off the ground so he turned to a wealthy lawyer (‘angel investor’ in today’s lingo) named Johann Fust to help him launch the business. Before his idea could really get off the ground, Fust sued him for the money he had loaned Gutenberg, plus interest, forcing him into bankruptcy. Fust got the print shop and the press. Fust then hired Peter Schoeffer, Gutenberg’s right hand man and technical guru who ran the press (basically my Scott Millward), and the two continued to print books and make lots of money in the process. But no matter how paranoid or shady or poor, the reality is that Gutenberg was an inventive man who brought the first, true printed book into this world. And in 2016, I had the rare opportunity to see this book first hand. It was an incredible experience. And now I have something exciting to share with you. Through the power (and magic!) of technology, you, too, can see the extraordinary thing I saw that day. Anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection can look at a Gutenberg bible right now. Unreal. The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin has scanned their complete copy of the bible to be accessible to the world. Check it out at www.hrc.utexas.edu/gutenberg-bible/. Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

We’re mixing it up today and it’s our first-ever Talk Paper Quizzers episode where contestants answer trivia questions to compete for the completely fictional, completely worthless, yet highly-coveted “Apostrophe” (see what I did there?!). This game show format is loosely based on NPR podcast, Ask Me Another. Today we have two contestants who will be facing off in three rounds: the first round will focus on the history of typography, the second round will focus on the technical aspects of font files and the third round will focus on the technical aspects of letterforms and typography. Each topic round will feature 3 games: The first game is called “Category Is…”. I will list a bunch of things that are all related in some way. When the contestants think they know the connection, they will yell it out. If they guess correctly, they’re one point closer to the Apostrophe. Even if they guess incorrectly, they can continue to guess until someone answers correctly. The second game is called “Two Lies and One Truth”. (It’s a twist on two truths and a lie.) I will challenge the contestants to figure out which of the statements is the truth amongst the three options. They may yell out the answer at any time and they will receive one point for each correct answer, HOWEVER they only have one guess. The third game is called “30 Seconds to Greatness”. This is a speed round (the pressure’s on!). I will ask each contestant 5 questions. If they don’t know the answer, they can say pass. They will receive one point for each correct answer. Whoever ends up with the most points at the end wins … the Apostrophe! If there is ever a tie, a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors will be played to break the tie. Type, set, match! Music Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Sound Effects Oohs and Ahs - noah0189 Winner Bell - oldedgar Game Chimes > Wrong - Raclure Timer With Ding - keweldog Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

In today’s episode I have the honour and pleasure to introduce you to two creative, innovative and talented emerging designers who are going to do big things in this world. In fact, they’ve ALREADY done big things. I am so pleased to introduce two of my Advanced Typography students, Veronika Wiszniewska and Mary-Anne Buerano. Both of these talented students produced phenomenally consistent design work throughout the semester and the cherry on top was their original typeface designs. Veronika designed a text face called ‘Aggers’ and Mary-Anne designed a display face called ‘Bright’. While each of these typefaces is very different from one another, both are original, both are hand-crafted, both are beautiful. I wanted to provide a platform for these talented artists to share their work and the stories behind their work. VERONIKA WISZNIEWSKA Based in Toronto, Veronika is a graphic designer and Graphic Communications student at Ryerson University, working towards a concentration in publishing and a minor in sociology. Beyond graphic design, Veronika enjoys creating traditional and digital illustrations, playing with photoshop, and has recently discovered a new found love for type design. She feels most fulfilled when taking on creative projects that combine her passions for design and social justice, especially when pertaining to queer communities. MARY-ANNE BUERANO Mary-Anne is a Toronto-based designer and visual artist with a passion for education and creating work that highlights underserved communities. She is currently working towards a minor in Communication Design and a concentration in Publishing at Ryerson’s School of Graphic Communications Management. Her body of work focuses on illustration, branding, and videography. MUSIC Podington Bear - Racoon Family Robinson Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle PHOTOS Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash Veronika Wiszniewska - Aggers Mary-Anne Buerano - Bright

Welcome to our third Talk Paper Quizzers episode where contestants answer trivia questions to compete for the completely fictional, completely worthless, yet highly-coveted “Apostrophe”! Tonight we have a live studio audience answering questions from the comfort of their homes. Our audience is made up of university-level typography students. Welcome all! There will be 4 rounds of questions and you will be asked a total of 20 true/false questions related to the 4 topic areas: Typographic Typos (and how to avoid them) Signs & Symbols (and the grab-bag of items that’s included in this category) Digital Documents (non-print typography) Custom Characters (original typeface design) Contestants in our live studio audience keep score at home. A member of our audience with the most points at the end of the game wins the Apostrophe! (We’re relying on the honor system here.) So grab a cup of tea, glass of fizzy water or something stronger and I invite you to play along with our pub-quiz style show too. Let’s Talk Paper Quizzers! Music Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Sound Effects Oohs and Ahs - noah0189 Winner Bell - oldedgar Game Chimes > Wrong - Raclure Timer With Ding - keweldog Crowd Cheer - wangzhuokun Victory Fanfare - humanoide9000 Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

Some typefaces are designed to be legible, others to be beautiful, others to be odd, eccentric and quirky. But some typefaces are designed for very specific purposes and extend into important world issues, far removed from the pages they’re printed on. Today we’re diving into typefaces that serve a higher purpose than just looking pretty. Instead, these typefaces aim to help make the world a better place from an environmental perspective. While I will be the first to say that there are MUCH larger and more impactful ways we can help reduce the consumption of resources (ex: challenging consumer culture on all fronts - in fashion, consumer products, food waste, excessive packaging, and LOTS more), I think the fact that design can have the power to produce a more environmentally friendly final product that aims to uses less ink, but also get us thinking is a very good thing; design that can nudge us to change our behaviours in so many other areas in our lives to create a much, much greater impact. Let’s have a look at 3 different designs that try to save the world, one typeface at a time. Ecofont Although author of Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, Simon Garfield, places Ecofont at #8 on his list of The 21 Worst Fonts in the World, there’s a lot to be said about Ecofont. It’s designed to save ink and therefore also save money and the planet in the process. Ecofont isn’t actually a font so much as software that takes existing typefaces and “prints them as if they had been attacked by moths” as Simon unapologetically states. He argues that because of the holes pecked into them, their weight, and therefore their true beauty, is lost. Although you can save approximately 25% of the ink consumption using Ecofont software, the design misses the mark. Function over form isn’t always a welcomed concept in the world of design. Simon goes on to suggest just using thinner weight faces that naturally use less ink and/or not printing out the drafts at all (we’ll get to that later) are other ways to save that don’t involve using the “Swiss cheese” of fonts. Money Saving Garamond What if the world’s most eco friendly typeface has been right under our noses for over 400 years? Designed in the 16th Century by french type designer, Claude Garamond, there have since been a number of iterations and remakes of the face, including the 1989-released Adobe Garamond. Garamond is an Old-Style serif text face designed to be used to typeset long blocks of copy. The typeface mimics handwriting with a pen but with a more formalized structure. In 2014, CNN reported the following story headline: Teen to government: Change your typeface, save millions. 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani worked on a money-saving research project that found him smack-dab in the middle of the world of fonts. Suvir noticed that he was receiving a lot more handouts in middle school than he did in elementary school. This prompted him to want to find creative environmental solutions different than simply not printing the handouts. In a live interview on CNN (brave soul!), he said that his research pointed to the use of typefaces on official government documents, specifically ways to reduce the overall ink volume on printed documents. Suvir notes that "Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume”. And his research process was fairly rigorous (especially for a middle-schooler who was only in sixth grade at the time… I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I was lip syncing to the Spice Girls and making friendship bracelets when I was his age). He collected random samples of teacher’s handouts and focused on commonly used characters, including e, t, a, o and r. He identified four specific typefaces to study: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. He used a commercial application called APFill® Ink Coverage Software to measure how much ink was used for each letter in each typeface. To verify his findings, he enlarged and printed out each of the letters to measure and chart the ink usage. His research concluded that using the typeface Garamond would save 24% ink consumption and could save the school board as much as $21,000 annually. This led the preteen’s teacher to suggest he publish the findings and the Journal for Emerging Investigators that uses the same standards as academic journals but focused on publishing the works of middle school and high school students. The journal’s reviewers saw the huge real-world potential of Suvir’s findings and advised him to look bigger, which was aimed at the US federal government with an annual printing budget of $1.8 billion. The General Services Administration estimates the annual cost of ink at $467 million and Suvir found that using Garamond exclusively could save nearly 30% or $136 million. And he estimates that an additional $234 million could be saved if each of the states jumps on board. Of course, switching typefaces isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds. There’s significant time and cost involved in re-typesetting the documents. There’s also a question of why the specific typeface was chosen to begin with. Is Garamond more (or at least as) legible than the current option? Is it as accessible? Does this typeface perform the same typographic functions as the typeface currently used? It’a a fine balance between ink consumption and the legibility and readability requirements of a typeface. For example, fine lines often don’t translate well to print at small sizes, exasperated when printed on uncoated porous paper. I also have to question whether this $1.8 billion expenditure includes toner-based printing (toner-based devices are much less expensive to print per page and last a lot longer when compared to inkjet), as well as commercial printing costs. I would be hard-pressed to believe that the $1.8 billion figure represents office printers alone. I would think some or even a significant chunk of this cost is in commercial printing costs, where the ink is much less expensive than its liquid inkjet counterparts. So while I see the novelty and value in Suvir’s research, I also have some questions as to how much savings there would be in reality, based on the government’s printing devices; specifically how much printing happens on very expensive inkjet-based printers, versus toner-based printers and commercial printing devices. Buuuuuuutttt, if Garamond is good enough for Dr. Suess and Harry Potter, it’s good enough for me. Ryman Eco Here’s a typeface actually designed with sustainability at it’s (very hollow) core. Ryman Eco was designed by Monotype in partnership with UK stationery company, Ryman. It was released in 2014 and you can download the typeface for free at: rymaneco.co.uk. It can save up to 33% of ink usage and the company touts that it’s “the world’s most beautiful sustainable font”. In a similar methodology to Ecofont’s holy letterforms, Ryman Eco contains stylized hollow channeled centres. Designer Dan Rhatigan’s aim was to minimize the surface area of every letter that “capitalizes on the imprecision of everyday printing”. At small sizes these channels are filled in with ink, creating the illusion of a fully filled letter. At larger sizes it acts as an ornate-looking display face; the negative space acting as a design feature. Form and function. Dan makes an excellent point in a video discussing the benefits of using Ryman Eco. He argues that we’re not harming the environment with all of the ink used; “rather it’s the packaging of all the ink cartridges, it’s all that plastic, the envelopes that those cartridges go into. If you reduce the amount of ink, it’s not just the ink savings but it’s the savings of all material that holds that ink.” In an article about the typeface by The Huffington Post, they report there are critics of Ryman Eco. Naysayers espouse that the solution of cutting ink consumption is simply not the answer. They argue that ending the world’s reliance on paper communication is the answer. Well... yes and no. The independent not-for-profit paper advocate, Two Sides North America, aims to debunk myths about paper consumption and work towards anti-green washing, showing the world that paper is a sustainable resource. There is A LOT of information to comb through on their website, but some of the highlights include: Papermaking is not a cause of forest loss in North America - the main causes include urbanization, agriculture and hydroelectric projects The use of forest products, like paper, has encouraged landowners to grow and manage more paper products; in the U.S., forests grew by more than 1200 NFL football fields per day in the 30 years between 1990 and 2020. “Go green - go paperless” campaigns are unsubstantiated; the energy consumption required for digital technologies is increasing by 9% each year This is a huge topic and area for debate in the graphic communications industry - there are so many factors to consider throughout the lifecycle of a product that make a one-size-fits-all solution impossible. Much like I expressed at the beginning of this episode that it’s naive to believe that simply using a different typeface will have a large impact on ‘saving the world’, Ryman Eco’s designer Dan states: “I don’t expect using 33% less ink to save the world directly, but I expect it to be one step in a bigger conversation about how we can save things. I expect it to be one gesture that triggers you to think about what else you can do to make an impact.” I couldn’t agree more. Music: Podington Bear - Pives and Flarinet Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

From The Great Gatsby, to Monsters, Inc., to The Godfather, typography has a significant role to play in film. From typefaces on movie posters, through to rolling the end credits and everything in between, today’s episode takes a scene out of the world of typography on the big screen (or your screen at home, for the time being). There’s a lot to learn about typography by examining it through the entertaining and very relevant lens of fonts in film. When recently watching the Helvetica documentary (how on Earth did I only JUST see it in 2020?!), one of the best ideas that I took away from the film had nothing much to do with Helvetica at all. It has to do with the idea that designers play the role of casting director; selecting actors (typefaces) for roles to convey the core message and help with storytelling in a project, literally giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘type cast’. The ‘typographic voice’ helps represent a brand, a message or an idea with a sort of ‘subliminal prompting’. For example, by applying two different typefaces to the same message (a grunge font and Helvetica, for example), the designer wants that message to be perceived in different ways. Type designer, Tobias Frere-Jones likens using the wrong typeface in a project to casting the wrong actor in a role. Ultimately, it will affect your experience. You’ll still follow the plot, but it will be less convinced or affected by the production. Taking this type casting role one step further and in a more literal sense, I thought it would be fun to examine type in film. Today’s episode looks at the ways in which typographic type casting choices can affect the success of films. First, let’s look at some incredible examples of type in film and then let’s break down the concept of kinetic (moving) typography into its four key components to better understand why it works so well. Fonts in Film There are so many excellent examples of type used in film that it’s tricky to narrow it down to just a couple of examples, but here I go. The three movies that I’ve chosen exist in three different genres and really couldn’t be more different from one another, which is also why I love them as examples. It shows the breadth and depth of the ways in which typography can, and have, been used in film. From indie films to some of the highest grossing films with the biggest actors and directors on the planet, type in film adds another layer to the story, helping to build emotion, helping make scenes more memorable through their creative use of words on screen, and ultimately tell a stronger story. First, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, one of my favourite movies for a number of reasons, including the fact that it unapologetically features Toronto throughout and it also stars my favourite Brampton-born awkward teen star, Michael Cera. This movie is based on a series of graphic novels of the same name by Bryan Lee O’Malley. There’s this video game quality to the entire film and typography is used in nearly every scene to visualize movement and sound effects; to help showcase the evolution of time, forward movement and speed; and to communicate to the audience who’s winning and who’s losing during fight scenes. It’s really well done. The trailer for the film is riddled with ridiculously good examples of the variety of type used throughout (check it out in the show notes www.talkpaperscissors.info). Typography was not merely an afterthought; it’s completely integrated into the movie, it helps establish the film’s brand and differentiation from other films in the category, and it helps tell the story. Another excellent example is Catch Me If You Can. Big shots, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, star in this Steven Speilberg-directed film based on a screenplay by Jeff Nathanson. The mid-century modern title sequence is where the film’s typography shines. The illustrations were created by Nexus Productions that features tall, monochromatic characters moving through their daily lives while the names of key people peel in and out of the shot. Long ascenders and descenders extend from names set in sans-serif Coolvetica, a typeface that was only 4 years young when the film was released. A secondary slab-serif face was used (Archive Antique Extended) to juxtapose Coolvetica. Naysayers have voiced their disapproval of the use of Coolvetica, an amended version of Helvetica intended for use as a display face, designed by Ray Larbie (who started Typodermic fonts in 2001 in Canada). Some have said that using this new-age reboot font doesn’t feel appropriate for a film set in Helvetica’s hey-day. Perhaps Helvetica or a completely different face more true to the mid-century modern time of this story, would have been a better choice. And finally, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." there was Star Wars. The iconic franchise, now owned by Disney, created the opening ‘crawl type’ sequence with text disappearing into a vanishing point in the galaxy, that has been described as being “as iconic as movies themselves”. A typographer by the name of Dan Perri is the person behind the scrolling yellow letters and he’s brought type to life in an incredible 400 films in the last 40 years. As the Independent reports, George Lucas asked Perri to study serials from the 1930’s and 1940’s, such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers for inspiration for the first Star Wars film. But it was the 1939 film, Union Pacific, about building a railroad across America that gave him the inspiration he needed. In this film, text is seen crawling along a railroad track in a very similar fashion to the final Star Wars crawl. (This is a great story of remix culture at it’s finest, too!) The Star Wars crawl type tells the backstory before the film starts. Achieving the crawl effect in the 1970’s was not nearly as easy as it is today. The sequence was shot using a physical model of the type laid out on the floor that was 2 feet x 6 feet in size. The camera moved along the printed type to create the effect and it was time consuming to get a smooth scroll. Although the typography for the first six films were set in Universe Ultra Condensed, the seventh film The Force Awakens, is set in a condensed version of News Gothic. Oops! Let’s move into breaking down why kinetic typography can work so well. What is kinetic typography? Kinetic typography builds motion into text and adds additional sensory inputs, such as sound, to draw in and capture attention. Kinetic typography in films can help further the narrative and add layers of additional meaning. There is a really excellent video on YouTube called pop culture typography created by a guy named Isaac Moores. He has created a three minute and 24 second masterpiece that showcases some of the most famous examples of typography in pop culture and in movies. It exemplifies what can be created in the world of kinetic typography and I encourage you to check it out for yourself in this episode’s show notes at talkpaperscissors.info. Let’s break down type in motion (otherwise known as kinetic type), into its basic variables, outlined in Ilene Strizver’s book, Type Rules! The Designer’s Guide to Professional Typography: Typeface selection - Considerations in regards to texture and weight and style all play into telling a story. Resolution and frame rate are also key factors when selecting type for a kinetic project. From this perspective, legibility could be one of the most important factors when it comes to kinetic typography because the viewer will only have a split second to read and recognize the words before they move some place else or completely off the screen. Unless they take the time to pause and rewind they don’t have the luxury of being able to just go back and reread a word or line of text. Movement - This variable is the key to what makes kinetic typography kinetic typography. By playing with scale, direction, repetition, velocity and/or speed to direct type around the screen, a story is told. Unlike many static ways typography is used in everyday life, (to inform or to persuade, for example), a key purpose of kinetic typography is to entertain. Telling a story through text and the movement of that text has to grab the attention of the viewer quickly and keep them engaged. Keeping your audience at the forefront of your design decisions will likely mean that your kinetic typography piece will not be very long. It can be very tiring and taxing to follow text darting around the screen for any length of time; but that said it can also be an incredibly effective way to capture attention in the short term. Colour - There are many technical considerations when it comes to colour for kinetic typography projects. When colour printed, the brand owner has a significant amount of control as to the final look of the colour in print. This then translates to each viewer seeing the printed colour in much the same way as one another (except in instances of visual impairment and colour blindness). This is not the same for viewing colour on screen. Whether it be a computer screen, a phone screen, a TV, or a movie screen colour can and will look very different depending on the way in which that colour is calibrated on each device. So if you’re a control freak, you’ll need to set your ways aside when applying colour to the type that will be viewed on screen. It’s very difficult to control what colour your audience will see with any sort of accuracy. Pleasing colour (for example, a blue that we recognize as the colour of the sky or grass that looks healthy and green) is what you should be aiming for versus accurate colour. A very important part of choosing colour for kinetic type projects is to consider colour contrast. Black text on a white background will always be the most readable and have the highest contrast. The same can’t be said for white text on a black background because it’s more taxing on our eyes to read reverse type. It’s not to say that you can’t incorporate reverse type into your design, but having viewers read reverse type, especially if it’s darting around the page can lose their attention fairly quickly. Whatever colours you choose, think about creating excellent contrast between the type and the background. Sound - in my opinion this is one of the most exciting ways to make type come to life. Overlaying music to set the scene, whether it be suspenseful and building intrigue to a climactic moment or just a happy tune that reinforces a happy message, sound can go a heck of a long way to helping engage an audience. Voice, spoken word and any other sound effects can also help add emotion and tell a story in a way that type alone (or for that matter graphics alone) can’t do as effectively. Ultimately, when bringing together the powerhouse forces that are appropriate font selection, strategic movement, smart colour choices, and layering in sound, you’ve got a winning formula and a world of possibilities of what can be created with kinetic type. This is especially true when great actors are paired with great typefaces on screen. Good typecasting everyone! Music by Freesound Let’s Go to Zanzibar - lena_orsa Epic Logo - Andrewkn Piano Bach - InspectorJ Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

The ampersand (you know, the ‘and’ symbol) might be my absolute favourite glyph. Ampersands are expressive, they’re classic, they’re abstract, and they’ve got a long history that dates back more than 2000 years. I’m so committed to my love of ampersands that I even had one as a feature at my wedding. A 3 foot tall handmade ampersand paper piñata stood between my soon-to-be husband and I during our ceremony and then it helped kick off the party after dinner when it hung from the rafters and I smashed it to smithereens spilling candy all over the dance floor. Interestingly, ampersands are ligatures; they are the combination of the letters E & T. They vary widely in their stylings, with some it’s easy to see the two letters and others are much more ornate and abstract, especially true italics versions within many typefaces. Much like human genetics, the combined results of the two parents can produce vastly different looking offspring. Author Simon Garfield of the masterpiece of a book called Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, describes ampersands this way: “Done well, an & is not so much a character as a creature, an animal from the deep.” In other words, it’s the unexpected, mythical, gangly kraken of the page. (“Release the ampersand!!!”) Furthermore, as author Keith Houston explains, “...the it­alic am­persand has be­come something of a play­ground for ty­po­graph­ers, and many it­alic am­persands are in­tric­ately de­signed works of art when com­pared to their con­form­ist ro­man coun­ter­parts.” There are very few characters that allow for so much personality and character; the capital Q, capital R and perhaps the capital S as the exceptions, but the ampersand provides an opportunity to move from following a formula to improvising in the recipe; from the science of type to the art of designing glyphs. For all of its prominence in our modern world, it’s important to note that the ampersand has a legendary origin story; a symbol with no known creator that rose from the ashes and beat the odds to become one of the most beloved symbols in existence. Cue dramatic music… There lives an epic symbol who had the odds stacked against him. Born an orphan to the letters e and t, nothing more than a scribble on a wall, in the ancient city of Pompeii. Almost lost forever under a layer of molten ash, the unlikely ligature was uncovered and adopted as a scrappy shorthand, rising up to usurp the established Tironian et with glitz and glory. He would live on for hundreds of years, making an impression as blocks of moveable type, making the shortlist for the typewriter keyboard and then appearing on some of the highest valued real estate; taking his mighty stance beside Tiffany and a permanent place in type history, literally carved in stone. This. Is. Ampersand. So that’s the Coles Notes version of the ampersand’s saga of rising to ubiquity, but what actually happened? How did ‘the little symbol that could’ go from a scribble on a wall to billions of uses in documents big and small, young and old? The Ampersand’s Ancient History As detailed in Keith Houston’s wonderful book that I reference often, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographic Marks, the ampersand spent nearly one thousand years coexisting with an opponent, the Tironian et. So let’s start here. What is a Tironian et? Who was Tiro? About 2000 years ago, Tiro was born a slave of Cicero’s household. As in the Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman politician, philosopher, lawyer, public speaker and all around celebrity. (As an aside, the ‘Lorem Ipsum’ filler text used by designers as a placeholder as a stand in for the real text. What is Lorem Ipsum? It’s actually a jumbled extract from Cicero’s On the Ends of Good and Evil.) Tiro was a scribe who was very good at his job and who became Cicero’s secretary, biographer and confidant. Cicero travelled to Greece and was impressed by their use of shorthand so he tasked Tiro with creating a similar shorthand for the Latin language. One of the few symbols that stuck (of over 4000) was Tiro’s character representing the Latin word ‘et’ or ‘and’. The Tironian et looks like a stylized subscript number 7. As the years went on, the Tironian et was popular in the Middle Ages, in manuscripts with blackletter script. Interestingly, part of the reason that the Tironian shorthand system didn’t stand the test of time was the distrust of witchcraft and magic that was connected with the secrecy of shorthand writing. The Tironian et continued to fall out of popularity and it virtually disappeared, except in one modern place... So where can this funny little elbow of a symbol be found in the world? Just a quick hop across the pond to Ireland and you can go on a symbol safari and see the Tironian et in the wild. The symbol’s still used in the Irish Gaelic language and can be seen on street signs all over the country. And if you’re wondering what happened to the talented, enslaved Tiro, he continued with a successful career after Cicero’s death, made lots of money, was a freed slave, dubbed himself Marcus Tullius Tiro, bought a farm and died peacefully at 100 years old. And speaking of 100, the ampersand wouldn’t be born for another 100 years after the Tironian et… and it was barely born, at that. The ampersand was practically an orphan - nothing much more than graffiti on a wall, scribbled by an anonymous artist in Pompeii around 79 AD. The Ampersand’s Modern History For many years, the ampersand was included in the alphabet. It was the 27th character and school children were taught the symbol as part of learning the alphabet. According to an article in Medium, ampersand was the only letter of the English alphabet that did not represent a sound. This is actually pretty profound because that’s what an alphabet is. Letters are symbols that represent spoken sound. At one time the alphabet was a truly a novel invention that enabled individuals to communicate spoken sound in a whole new way that would stand the test of time. A communication method that could outlive a person’s physical existence on Earth. For thousands and thousands of years before the first alphabet was developed, complex communication (more than simple pictograms or ideograms carved into a wall) was delivered by voice from one person to another. The alphabet meant that speech could be spoken, coded using symbols of the alphabet, and then decoded back into spoken sound at a later time, by someone completely different in a different place in a different time. So with this understanding, it’s quite meaningful that the ampersand did not represent a spoken sound. Let’s get back to the way in which the ampersand was incorporated into the alphabet. After XYZ came, ‘et, per se and’. It would have been confusing for kids to say ‘XYZ and…’ And what? So they were taught to say et (Latin for and) and then, per se and, meaning ‘and’ by itself, clarifying that it was referring to ‘and’ as in the symbol, the 27th character of the alphabet and not a link between the alphabet and something that comes after it. ‘Et, per se and’ morphed into ‘and, per se and’, which then morphed into the word ‘ampersand’. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that its first use of the word was in 1795 and by the year 1837 (less than 200 years ago) the term ampersand was immortalized in the English dictionary. So unlike the mysterious origins of fellow glyphs (such as the octothorpe), the ampersand’s nomenclature is fairly straightforward. It’s a conflation of ‘et, per se and’. And according to Grammar Girl, the word ampersand is referred to as a ‘mondegreen’, which is a word that’s name comes from a mishearing or a misunderstanding. When you sing the wrong lyrics to a song because they sound like something else, that’s a mondegreen. And a mondegreen is a mondegreen itself coined by writer Sylvia Wright, who misheard a line from a 17th-century Scottish ballad. She heard “Lady Mondegreen” instead of “And laid him on the green”. And decided to name this phenomenon after said fictional Lady Mondegreen. Looping back to the ABC’s, if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering how ‘ampersand’ was integrated into the ABC song as we know it today… XYZ, ampersand? Said simply, it wasn’t. The ABC song as we know it was adapted from a song called The Schoolmaster, copyrighted in 1834. Before this kids would often learn the alphabet using a rhyme called Apple Pie ABC and parts of this rhyme appeared in religious texts as early as 1671, appearing printed in its entirety in 1742. It goes something like this: “Apple Pie ABC” (original version): A was an Apple pie; B bit it; C cut it; D dealt it; E eat it; F fought for it; G got it; H had it; J joined it; K kept it; L longed for it; M mourned for it; N nodded at it; O opened it; P peeped in it; Q quartered it; R ran for it; S stole it; T took it; V viewed it; W wanted it; X, Y, Z, and ampersand, All wished for a piece in hand And because the ampersand came at the end of the alphabet, the 27th character, by the 1880’s ampersand became slang for ‘posterior’ or ‘rear end’. (I like big ampersands and I cannot lie?) You may have also noticed that the letters I and U were missing, which were added later with “I inspected it” and “U upset it”. Additionally, it’s important to clarify that not every book about the English language included the ampersand as the 27th character. Many did, but others didn’t. This non-standardized inclusion helps explain why the ampersand just kind of disappeared from the alphabet without much of a trace in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s. Ampersand’s Use While the use of the ampersand symbol is generally frowned upon in formal or even semi formal writing in the English language, It has its place in modern writing. Ampersands are used to link items in lists and are commonly used in the academic world to cite references. It’s also often used in the world of blogging and social media where there are fewer rules to follow, buuuuuuut they’re not recognized in hashtags or in URLs. They’re also commonly used decoratively alongside display type in headlines in large and small publications alike. If you’re like me you’ve probably used the word the abbreviation for etcetera (etc.) in writing both casually and formally. It’s a commonly used and commonly accepted way to specify that there’s more to the story. But did you know that the short form for etcetera (etc.) can and is also denoted using the ampersand? That’s right. ‘et’ meaning ‘and’ and ‘c’ for cetera meaning ‘the rest’. And it can also be denoted as ampersand with a c on the end. A short form of a short form. Inception for symbols... In researching this podcast episode and learning about how ampersands are used today, I learned something absolutely fascinating. I learned that when you see the credits roll at the end of a film, writers who collaborated more closely together on the project will have an ampersand between their names versus those with the word ‘and’. For example two writers within an ampersand between their names means that they actively collaborated and wrote the piece together, whereas two writers with an ‘and’ between their names implies that one writer was involved in rewriting parts of the other writer’s work. Who knew? Restore the Ampersand? In a publicity stunt for their 100th birthday celebration, A&W Restaurants created a video and started a change.org petition to ‘restore the ampersand as the 27th letter of the alphabet”. From the petition’s page: “...Ever tried to use an ampersand in a hashtag? Or a URL? It doesn’t work. We think that’s pretty lame. After all, the ampersand was actually part of the alphabet once upon a time. So as we celebrate our 100th birthday in 2019, we at A&W Restaurants are only asking for one thing: bring back the ampersand. It’s utilized by thousands of brands, organizations, bands, films and publications. It’s a useful, universal symbol of bringing things together... ...But then it mysteriously and inexplicably disappeared from the alphabet. In this digital world, its exclusion has made all of our lives a little harder. Think about it… Aandw.com is clunky and ugly. The Twitter handle @aandwrestaurants looks ridiculous. #A&W is read by computers as just one lonely #A. Sometimes using a “&” just makes a lot more sense.” Although clever, I’m not sure how much sense it would make to actually restore ampersand to the alphabet. The petition is appealing to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but the symbol’s got the odds stacked against it because it doesn’t even symbolize a sound, after all. The petition is aiming for 10,000 signatures and two years in they’re only 78% of the way there. Yikes, that can’t be a good thing. Coming Together Although A&W’s campaign is cute, I’ll think it’s little more than that: cute. But here’s some truly great change that happened because of the ampersand. There’s this really cool group of type designers and type lovers with an even cooler name: the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA). From time to time they will create amazing new type for a good cause and they call it FontAid. In 2010, SOTA released ‘Coming Together’ to support Doctors Without Borders and the Haiti Earthquake disaster. The symbolism in the ampersands is the unity and solidarity in helping one another through disaster relief. Here are some key facts about the typeface: The font file contains 483 different ampersands Nearly 400 designers from 37 countries contributed OpenType font format Cost $20 US After all, coming together is what the ampersand was built to do. Now you have a better understanding of what an underdog the ampersand was and at least part of the story as to how it rose to fame today. What was once a scribble of graffiti almost lost forever under a layer of ash, ‘the symbol that lived’ has entrenched itself into modern popular culture in so many ways. I know the ampersand’s roots are in Pompeii, but I think that it’s in some way connected to Canada. Speaking as a Canadian, any symbol that represents ‘eh’ has to be ours. But the ampersand is more than simply an abbreviation; it links type back to its origins of writing with a quill, reminding us of this history with every “Shift + 7” of our keyboards. Music by Freesound Epic Strings AlexProst Epic Chorus Song frankum Happy Sounds Mativve Record Scratches filmsndfx Canada geese sanus_excipio Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash

We’ve made it to the 21st episode and I have another very special interview for you. Sarah Aspler, Senior Editor at Buzzfeed, joins us on today’s podcast! She has a wicked sense of humor and creates nonsensical quizzes for a living. It’s magic! Sarah will help us understand some of the visual design decisions made at Buzzfeed, including a look into the world of professional meme-making and a glimpse into her career path that led her to her current role. I can’t wait for you to meet her. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Buzzfeed, it’s time to embrace this wonderful procrastination tool. Buzzfeed is “the world's leading independent digital media company, which leverages data and innovation to reach hundreds of millions of people globally.” In other words, their content permeates the hearts and minds of people in every part of the world. The company creates articles, lists, quizzes and videos, as well owning a portfolio of lifestyle brands, engaging in investigative journalism, and developing products and experiences. They are HUGE. Some key takeaways from Sarah’s interview: Procrastination can pay off! Anyone can write a post or create a quiz on Buzzfeed Spin class is hard! Lower res memes tend to be more popular than really polished memes Buzzfeed has an approved list of fonts that can be used by their designers Accessible design is so important in all areas of design - even quiz and meme-making! Sometimes you have to put your ego aside and accept a failure for what it is - learn from it and move on Knowing basic Adobe Creative Suite skills will help you stand out from others “Don’t be too precious with your work” - good is sometimes good enough, make you and your work available for people to see MUSIC Music by Podington Bear - Streetbeat Heat Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle Boat Origami Photo: Boat Origami Photo by Alex on Unsplash