With the advent of the Android operating system for mobile devices, which was eventually purchased by Google, a family of fonts known as Droid was commissioned.

Pretty, easy to read, and free!

AScender Corporation’s Steve Matteson began work on them in late 2006, and my do they look nice. Although the OpenType versions (with ligatures, glyphs, and other obscure characters) cost $30 each, you can get the bog-standard TrueType ones (released under the Apache License) from here at Android’s git repository.

Cool things happen when you have a high-speed camera.

For the longest time, the ubiquitous tube map resembled a road map. Everything was to geographical scale, and landmarks and street names were printed alongside station names:

This was fine in the early days, but as the network grew and became more and more complex, this style, as you can probably imagine, became quite confusing. It was this that sparked a revolutionary idea in the head of one Harry Beck, an electrical engineer working with the London Underground Signals Office. Well used to the schematic drawings of signal diagrams, he re-drew the map in his spare time in 1933, sacrificing geographical accuracy to create the simple, succinct layout with which we’re familiar today.

His design was met with skepticism, but the Tube’s publicity office relented and placated him with a small print run of pamphlets entitled ‘A New Design for an Old Map’:

To the surprise of his superiors, Beck’s map became a runaway success, and was imitated all over the world. Even though he left his job in 1940 to work with the London School of Printing and Graphical Arts, he continued to update the map until 1960, when he was suddenly let go by London Transport, his role filled by the publicity officer.

Beck continued to submit designs long afterwards, all of which were rejected without comment. He died in 1974, yet to this day his work inspires the Tube’s graphic designers:

This barely scratches the surface of this pop-culture gem’s fascinating history. A man named Clive Billson maintains this website where you can find out more about it.

Le CyKlop is a French artist who travels around painting the various posts found on the streets of Paris. Little by little these huge, staring eyeballs are taking over the city, it would seem:

Les CyKlop envahissent la ville et scrutent les humains de leur gros œil unique et coloré.

According to his blog, however, the Paris authorities intend to rip them up to make the place more ‘car-friendly’. Hopefully I’ll get over there to have a look at them in the meantime! In case La Mairie gets rid of them too soon, here’s a video, detailing the process: