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Midweek Miscellany

A new monograph on Japanese un-brand MUJI to be published by Rizzoli later this month (via Swiss Legacy).

Finishing Touches — Type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones on the little details that make their typefaces:

In the middle of Gotham, our family of 66 sans serifs, there is a hushed but surprising moment: a fraction whose numerator has a serif. So important was this detail that we decided to offer it as an option for all the other fractions, a decision that ultimately required more than 400 new drawings. Why?…[I]t’s something that we added because we felt it mattered. Even if it helped only a small number of designers solve a subtle and esoteric problem, we couldn’t rest knowing that an unsettling typographic moment might otherwise lie in wait.

And on the subject of typography… A handy PDF chart for mixing typefaces (via Smashing Magazine)

Blade Runner Will Prove Invincible — Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner, the film adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, in a letter to the production company (via Coudal):

The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people — and, I believe, on science fiction as a field… Science fiction has slowly and ineluctably settled into a monotonous death: it has become inbred, derivative, stale. Suddenly you people have come in, some of the greatest talents currently in existence, and now we have a new life, a new start… My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you… It will prove invincible.

And by coincidence, not only did I just watch the director’s cut of Blade Runner again just the other day (for approximately the bazillionth time), it was recently announced that Blade Runner director Ridley Scott would be producing a 4-part TV adaptation of The Man in the High Castle for the BBC. Awesome.

Deceptively SimpleThree Percent’s Chad W. Post on OR Books innovative publishing model:

The OR Books business model is deceptive in its simplicity. In many ways, it’s a throwback to a time before supply-chain intermediaries permanently altered the bookselling business—a time when publishers were also printers and bookstores. It’s a model that—if successful in the long run—thrives on both satisfying the needs of customers and maximizing the publisher’s return.

And finally…

Part One of Eleanor Wachtel’s interview with John le Carré about his new book Our Kind of Traitor for CBC Radio’s Writers & Co.:

Writers and Co. John Le Carre Interview