The History of Typography Told in Five Animated Minutes

in Creativity, Design, Video - Arts & Culture | May 6th, 2013

Caslon, Baskerville, Hel­veti­ca… these names have graced many a pull down menu, but what do they sig­ni­fy, exact­ly?

Graph­ic design­er Ben Bar­rett-For­rest spent 140 hours ani­mat­ing the 291 paper let­ters on dis­play in the His­to­ry of Typog­ra­phy, an intro­duc­tion to the ways in which lan­guage has been expressed visu­al­ly over time.

From Guten­berg’s inky, monk-inspired Black­lis­ter font to the ever-con­tro­ver­sial Com­ic Sans, Bar­rett-For­rest employs stop motion to spell out the quan­tifi­able rea­sons that cer­tain ser­ifs and stroke types are easy on the eye. Let’s not tell the cre­ators of Lla­ma Font or Mr. Twig­gy, but leg­i­bil­i­ty is the moth­er of sur­vival in this are­na.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Font Based on Sig­mund Freud’s Hand­writ­ing Com­ing Cour­tesy of Suc­cess­ful Kick­starter Cam­paign

A Short Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of the GIF

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has devot­ed the last 15 years to  pro­duc­ing The East Vil­lage Inky, an entire­ly hand­writ­ten zine whose aging read­ers com­plain that they can no long make out the tiny print.

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The Craft and Philosophy of Building Wooden Boats by Hand

in Creativity, Life, Philosophy | May 6th, 2013

Andy Stew­art builds boats with his own hands for life-affirm­ing rea­sons. It’s a way to make inan­i­mate objects come alive, to breathe new life into our world. But Stew­art also enjoys the chal­lenge of it all. The sea, he tells us, is the “final arbi­tra­tor” of your work. Quite deci­sive­ly, it tells you whether a boat has been craft­ed with pre­ci­sion, whether every piece of wood con­tributes to the larg­er hull/whole. If your boat can stand the rig­or­ous tests of nature and time, you know you’ve mas­tered your craft. The short doc­u­men­tary above, Shaped on all Six Sides, was direct­ed by Kat Gar­diner.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing a Fla­men­co Gui­tar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Expe­ri­enced in 3 Min­utes

The Joy of Mak­ing Artis­tic Home­made Gui­tars

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The Strange Day When Bugs Bunny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons | May 6th, 2013

Great tal­ents seem to embody their craft. It’s as if they invent­ed the form and then broke the mold when they were fin­ished with it.

One of the best mod­ern exam­ples of this vir­tu­os­i­ty is Mel Blanc, voice of Bugs Bun­ny and near­ly all of the Looney Tunes car­toon gang. Blanc, who voiced more than 1,000 char­ac­ters, was famous­ly hard-work­ing. At one point in his career, he scram­bled from stu­dio to stu­dio around Los Ange­les to work on 18 radio shows in one week.

As Mal­colm Glad­well likes to say, that kind of prac­tice leads to mas­tery. And, in Mel Blanc’s case, it may have saved his life.

Radio Lab, broad­cast over WNYC, recent­ly aired a piece about Blanc (lis­ten below) fea­tur­ing an inter­view with his son Noel Blanc, who is also a voice actor. Noel Blanc tells the sto­ry of a ter­ri­ble car acci­dent that bad­ly injured his father in 1961 as he was dri­ving home along Sun­set Boule­vard from a job in San Fran­cis­co. Mel Blanc, dri­ving an Aston Mar­tin, col­lid­ed with anoth­er car on Dead Man’s Curve. Blanc was almost killed and slipped into a coma. Blanc’s son and wife spent two weeks at his bed­side try­ing to revive him, but got no response.

One day, about 14 days after the acci­dent, one of Blanc’s neu­rol­o­gists walked into the room and tried some­thing com­plete­ly new. He went to Mel’s bed and asked, “Bugs Bun­ny, how are you doing today?”

There was a pause while peo­ple in the room just shook their heads. Then, in a weak voice, came the response any­one would rec­og­nize.

“Myeeeeh. What’s up doc?”

The doc­tor then asked Tweety if he was there too.

“I tot I taw a pud­dy tat,” was the reply.

It took sev­en more months in a body cast for Blanc to recov­er. He even voiced Bar­ney Rub­ble in the first episodes of The Flint­stones while lying in bed with a micro­phone dan­gling from above.

The Radio Lab piece includes excerpts from an episode of This is Your Life when Blanc’s doc­tor tried to explain how he revived his patient. “It seemed like Bugs Bun­ny was try­ing to save his life,” was all he could say.

Radio Lab fea­tures anoth­er neurologist’s opin­ion: Blanc was such a hard-work­ing pro­fes­sion­al that his char­ac­ters lived, pro­tect­ed from the brain injury, deep in his uncon­scious mind. The doctor’s ques­tion must have sound­ed like a director’s cue.

Essen­tial­ly, “Mr. Blanc, you’re on.”

And he was, until 1989. Lis­ten through to the end of the pod­cast. The end of Blanc’s life is as remark­able as his long career.

Below, we have added a relat­ed doc­u­men­tary, Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thou­sand Voic­es.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site to see more of her work. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @mskaterix.

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The Meticulous Business Ledger F. Scott Fitzgerald Kept Between Hangovers and Happy Hour

in Books, Literature, Writing | May 6th, 2013

fitzgerald ledger
It used to be that accept­ing an advance on an unwrit­ten nov­el was as good as admit­ting fail­ure before the work is even fin­ished. Can you imag­ine blue-blood nov­el­ists Edith Whar­ton or Hen­ry James tak­ing a check before fin­ish­ing their books?

F. Scott Fitzger­ald may have been a long-suf­fer­ing wannabe when it came to high soci­ety, but he nev­er pre­tend­ed to be any­thing but a busi­ness­man when it came to writ­ing. For near­ly his entire pro­fes­sion­al life he kept a detailed ledger of his income from writ­ing, in which he not­ed the $3,939 advance he received for his in-progress nov­el, The Great Gats­by. The new Gats­by film out this sum­mer is the fifth adap­ta­tion. The first earned Fitzger­ald $16,666. (See the sur­viv­ing footage here.)

Recent­ly dig­i­tized by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the lined note­book, which the writer prob­a­bly packed with him on all of his trav­els, paints a pic­ture of a prag­mat­ic busi­ness­man repeat­ed­ly on and off the wag­on. Sound like Gats­by? Maybe a lit­tle.

The famous­ly hard-drink­ing Fitzger­ald must have done his admin work after the hang­over wore off and before hap­py hour. He metic­u­lous­ly not­ed every pen­ny of every com­mis­sion earned, divid­ing the book into five sec­tions: a detailed “Record of Pub­lished Fic­tion,” a year-by-year account­ing of “Mon­ey Earned by Writ­ing Since Leav­ing Army,” “Pub­lished Mis­ce­lani (includ­ing nov­els) for which I was Paid,” an unfin­ished list of “Zelda’s Earn­ings” and, most inter­est­ing of all, “An Out­line Chart of My Life.”

A true Jazz Age sto­ry­teller, Fitzger­ald sets up the droll social scene of his own ear­ly days: Not long after his birth on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1896, the infant “was bap­tized and went out for the first time—to Lambert’s cor­ner store on Lau­rel Avenue.”

It’s worth a stroll through Fitzgerald’s clipped account of his child­hood, for the humor and the poignant ref­er­ences to birth­day par­ties and child­hood mis­chief. By 1920 the writer is mar­ried and has some pro­fes­sion­al momen­tum. In the mar­gins of that year’s page, he writes “Work at the begin­ning but dan­ger­ous toward the end. A slow year, dom­i­nat­ed by Zel­da & on the whole hap­py.”

By the last entry, the state of Fitzgerald’s life is grim—“work and wor­ry, sick­ness and debt.” The book reads like a whirl­wind of drink­ing, writ­ing, trav­el and jet-set­ting. Fitzger­ald holds his gaze steady on social dynam­ics, not­ing gath­er­ings and argu­ments with friends along­side the notes about his cre­ative bursts and dry spells.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site at and fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix.

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James Joyce Plays the Guitar (1915)

in Literature, Music | May 6th, 2013

Joyce and guitar

The work of James Joyce has inspired many a musician—from John Cage to Kate Bush, and Lou Reed to Irish band Ther­a­py?.  The famed Irish writer was him­self a great lover of song (his only col­lec­tion of poet­ry is titled Cham­ber Music); most read­ers of Joyce know that he packed his sto­ries and nov­els with thou­sands of allu­sions and quotes from pop­u­lar and clas­si­cal songs. Few­er know that if the ency­clo­pe­dic mod­ernist had not become James Joyce the heavy­weight author, we might know him as James Joyce, singer and com­pos­er. Joyce once shared the stage with opera singer John McCor­ma­ck and stud­ied and per­formed music through­out his life.

Joyce the singer is typ­i­cal­ly pic­tured “droop­ing over the keys” of a piano (as Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny founder Sylvia Beach put it). But he also played the gui­tar, as you can see from the 1915 pho­to above (tak­en in Tri­este by Joyce’s friend Ottac­aro Weiss). Joyce’s small-bod­ied gui­tar has been housed at the Joyce Tow­er Muse­um in Dublin since 1966, in an unplayable state.

Now, Eng­lish luthi­er Gary South­well has under­tak­en a restora­tion of the instru­ment at the behest of Tow­er Muse­um cura­tor Robert Nichol­son and Fran O’Rourke, pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Joyce’s alma mater, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin. A musi­cian him­self, O’Rourke will per­form Joycean Irish songs dur­ing Bloom­sweek to off­set the cost of the project, accom­pa­nied on the restored Joyce gui­tar by Irish clas­si­cal gui­tarist John Fee­ley

Luthi­er South­well describes the gui­tar as “a fair­ly stan­dard instru­ment of the peri­od… not from any great mak­er of the past or any­thing like that.” In the video above from The Irish Times, see South­well, Pro­fes­sor O’Rourke, and Joyce schol­ar Ter­ence Killeen describe the state of the gui­tar and its his­to­ry. And below, lis­ten to Joyce’s only known com­po­si­tion, the melan­choly “Bid Adieu to Girl­ish Days,” sung by tenor Kevin McDer­mott.

h/t @faraway67 and @matthiasrascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Mick Jones Plays Three Classics by The Clash at the Public Library

in Music | May 5th, 2013

The venue isn’t as large. The head of hair isn’t as full. The beat does­n’t dri­ve as hard. But the song remains the same. Above, Mick Jones revis­its a Clash clas­sic, “Train in Vain,” at the open­ing of The Rock and Roll Pub­lic Library in 2009. If you want to see vin­tage Clash, then check out some of the clas­sic Clash con­certs we’ve high­light­ed below. Oth­er charm­ing songs played that day at the library include:

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Stay Free

Note: We orig­i­nal­ly post­ed Mick­’s library gig in March of 2012. I’m repost­ing it today to see if we’ve got some tech bugs worked out and because I love these endear­ing clips so much. Hope you enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clash: West­way to the World (The 2002 Gram­my Win­ning Film)

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

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Leonard Bernstein Conducts Beethoven’s 9th in a Classic 1979 Performance

in iPad, iPhone, Music | May 4th, 2013

Even if you don’t know clas­si­cal music, you know Lud­wig van Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 9. Fin­ished in 1824, Beethoven’s final com­plete sym­pho­ny, and the first from any major com­pos­er to use voic­es, has risen to and remained at the top of the West­ern orches­tral canon as one of the most fre­quent­ly per­formed sym­phonies in exis­tence. The Japan­ese have even gone so far as to make it a New Year’s tra­di­tion. I remem­ber, when first learn­ing the Japan­ese lan­guage, watch­ing an edu­ca­tion­al video about an ama­teur neigh­bor­hood cho­rus con­vert­ing the orig­i­nal Ger­man into more read­able Japan­ese pho­net­ic script, so as to bet­ter sing it for their cel­e­bra­tion. A charm­ing sto­ry, to be sure, but at the top of the post, you’ll find Beethoven’s 9th ren­dered with the exact oppo­site of ama­teurism by the Wiener Phil­har­moniker, with Leonard Bern­stein con­duct­ing. (Part one, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.) Then again, at the root of “ama­teur” lies the term “to love,” and who would dare accuse Bern­stein, how­ev­er con­sum­mate­ly pro­fes­sion­al a man of music, of not lov­ing this sym­pho­ny?

“I’ve just fin­ished film­ing and record­ing the great 9th Sym­pho­ny,” Bern­stein says in the clip just above, describ­ing how the expe­ri­ence got him think­ing about his­tor­i­cal dates. “My asso­ci­a­tions led me back to the year of my own birth, 1918, the year of the great armistice which brought the First World War to an end. Now, I had the key. The pass­word was peace, armistice, broth­er­hood — ‘ain’t gonna study war no more.’  Peace, broth­er­hood, we are all chil­dren of one father, let us embrace one anoth­er, all the mil­lions of us, friend­ship, love, joy: these, of course, are the key words and phras­es from [Friedrich] Schiller’s [“Ode to Joy”] to which Beethoven attached that glo­ri­ous music, rang­ing from the mys­te­ri­ous to the radi­ant to the devout to the ecsta­t­ic.” You can also watch the per­for­mance that put Bern­stein’s mind on this track as one of the many includ­ed in Beethoven 9, Deutsche Gram­mophon’s first iPad/iPhone/iPod app. For free, you get two min­utes of the sym­pho­ny with all fea­tures enabled. “The full expe­ri­ence,” their site adds, ” is then unlocked through In-App Pur­chase.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973)

Bern­stein Breaks Down Beethoven

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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10 Golden Rules for Making the Perfect Cup of Tea (1941)

in Food & Drink, History | May 3rd, 2013

In 1941, Eng­land found itself in an all-out-war with Nazi Ger­many. It had sus­tained severe dam­age when the Nazis unleashed the Blitz on 16 Eng­lish cities between Sep­tem­ber 1940 and May 1941. Despite the heavy toll, there was only one thing for most Brits to do — to keep calm and car­ry on and pre­serve small moments of nor­mal­cy when pos­si­ble. Of course, that meant drink­ing tea and not just any tea, but good tea. Above we present Tea Mak­ing Tips, a short 1941 film cre­at­ed by the Empire Tea Bureau, that out­lines the gold­en rules for mak­ing tea wor­thy of its name. The nar­ra­tor reminds the view­ers, “Tea is not a man­u­fac­tured arti­cle which can be made, bot­tled up and served at will. It must be pre­pared every time it is acquired, and it’s suc­cess or fail­ure depends entire­ly upon the atten­tion you pay to the six gold­en rules.” If you watch the 10-minute film, you’ll actu­al­ly count 10 rules (if not more), many of which are still pre­sum­ably rel­e­vant to a tea drinker today. They are as fol­lows:

1) In gen­er­al, store tea leaves in an air­tight con­tain­er, prefer­ably away from cheese, soap, spices and oth­er items with strong aro­mas.

2) Also keep the tea off of the ground and away from walls.

3) Always use a good qual­i­ty tea. You’ll spend a lit­tle more mon­ey, but you’ll actu­al­ly get more bang for your pound.

4) Use fresh water. Stale water makes stale tea, which no one needs, espe­cial­ly in wartime.

5) Make sure you warm your teapot before adding hot water and tea leaves.

6) Use the right ratio of tea leaves to water.

7) Steep the tea in water that’s nei­ther under-boiled nor over-boiled.

8) Let the tea infuse for the right amount of time. 3–5 min­utes should cov­er most kinds of tea. Oth­er kinds will need more time.

9) Use tea pots made of chi­na, earth­en­ware, and stain­less steel. Avoid ones made of enam­el or tin.

10)  Don’t add milk to the tea too soon. Wait for the last pos­si­ble minute.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

Epic Tea Time with Alan Rick­man

This is Cof­fee!: A 1961 Trib­ute to Our Favorite Stim­u­lant

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