Read Inside the chaos of brand safety technology (branded.substack.com)
Integral Ad Science, Comscore and Oracle are leaking the top secret classifications they use to block ad revenues from the news.
The idea that brand safety is killing quality journalism is the shocking take away for me here. Companies are generally throwing away a lot of their advertising money into a dark pit, but to be doing it while actively killing journalism (and by proxy: democracy) is appalling.
Read On Digital Gardens, Blogs, Personal Spaces, and the Future by Justin Tadlock (WordPress Tavern)
I have been thinking a lot about digital gardens this week. A blog post by Tom McFarlin re-introduced me to the term, which led me down a rabbit hole of interesting ideas on creating a digital space…

My blog posts were merely random thoughts — bits and pieces of my life. 

Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:52AM

Despite having something that worked sort of like a blog, I maintained various resources and links of other neat ideas I found around the web. It was a digital garden that I tended, occasionally plucking weeds and planting new ideas that may someday blossom into something more. 

The idea of a thought space hiding in here….
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:53AM

“The idea of a ‘blog’ needs to get over itself,” wrote Joel Hooks in a post titled Stop Giving af and Start Writing More. “Everybody is treating writing as a ‘content marketing strategy’ and using it to ‘build a personal brand’ which leads to the fundamental flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.”
It is almost as if he had reached down into my soul and figured out why I no longer had the vigor I once had for sharing on my personal blog. For far too long, I was trying to brand myself. Posts became few and far between. I still shared a short note, aside, once in a while, but much of what I shared was for others rather than myself. 

For many, social media took over their “streams” of thoughts and ideas to the point that they forgot to sit, reflect, and write something longer (polished or not).

Personal websites used for yourself first is a powerful idea for collecting, thinking, and creating.

Getting away from “branding” is a great idea. Too many personal sites are used for this dreadful thing. I’d much rather see the edge ideas and what they flower into.
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:56AM

Personal websites can be so much more than a progression of posts over time, newer posts showing up while everything from the past is neatly tucked on “page 2” and beyond. 

This is an interesting idea and too many CMSes are missing this sort of UI baked into them as a core idea. CMSes could do a better job of doing both: the garden AND the stream
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 09:57AM

While I lament the loss of some of the artistry of the early web and lay much of the blame at the feet of blogging platforms like WordPress, such platforms also opened the web to far more people who would not have otherwise been able to create a website. Democratizing publishing is a far loftier goal than dropping animated GIFs across personal spaces. 

WordPress has done a lot to democratize publishing and make portions of it easier, but has it gone too far in crystalizing the form of things by not having more wiki-like or curation-based features?
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 10:01AM

Throughout the platform’s history, end-users have remained at the mercy of their WordPress theme. Most themes are built around what WordPress allows out of the box. They follow a similar formula. Some may have a fancy homepage or other custom page templates. But, on the whole, themes have been primarily built around the idea of a blog. Such themes do not give the user true control over where to place things on their website. While some developers have attempted solutions to this, most have never met the towering goal of putting the power of HTML and CSS into the hands of users through a visual interface. This lack of tools has given rise to page builders and the block editor. 

an apropos criticsm
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 10:02AM

I also want them to be able to easily build something like Tom Critchlow’s wikifolder, a digital collection of links, random thoughts, and other resources.
More than anything, I want personal websites to be more personal. 

Those in the IndieWeb want this too!! I definitely do.
Annotated on August 12, 2020 at 10:03AM

👓 Write on your own website | Brad Frost

Read Write on your own website by Brad FrostBrad Frost (Brad Frost)

The single best thing I ever did for my career was start a blog on my own website.
— Brad Frost (@brad_frost) January 18, 2019

Writing on your own website associates your thoughts and ideas with you as a person. Having a distinct website design helps strengthen that association. Writing for another publication you get a little circular avatar at the beginning of the post and a brief bio at the end of the post, and that’s about it. People will remember the publication, but probably not your name.

Amen sir!

Another great reason for Why to IndieWeb.

📑 I don’t want to be a brand. | Cheri Baker

Annotated I don't want to be a brand. by Cheri BakerCheri Baker (social.cheribaker.com)

“You should write down your brand statement, and then EVERYTHING you communicate online (or around your customers) should be in line with that statement. In short, if it doesn’t advance your brand, don’t share or say it.”

And my heart rose up in revolt and shouted: F@CK THAT SH*T!

Almost as iconic as “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!”

📖 Read pages 193-219 of Just My Type by Simon Garfield

📖 Read pages 193-219 of Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield (Gotham Books, , ISBN: 978-1592406524)

Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

Not the least significant of their innovations was to produce a $ sign; previously, printers had used a long ‘S’.

Highlight (yellow) – 14. American Scottish > Page 197

in reference to Archibald Binny and James Ronaldson of Binny & Ronaldson
Added on Thursday, December 28, 2017 morning

Binny & Ronaldson’s best known font is Monticello, which they called Pica No. 1. This was a modern hybrid of Baskerville and Caslon.

Highlight (yellow) – 14. American Scottish > Page 197

Added on Thursday, December 28, 2017 morning

Many American book publishers, including Scribner and later Simon & Schuster, favoured what was known as Scotch Roman for their books,
a slightly more modern transitional face showing heavy influences of Bodoni and Didot.

Highlight (yellow) – 14. American Scottish > Page 197-198

Added on Thursday, December 28, 2017 morning

Franklin Gothic, a typeface named after Banjamin Franklin and first published in 1905. […] made by Morris Fuller Benton […] had its roots in the German Akzidenz Grotesk…

Highlight (yellow) – 14. American Scottish > Page 200

Added on Thursday, December 28, 2017 morning

(The German designer and head of Fontshop, Erik Spiekermann, co-wrote a book called Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works).

Highlight (green) – 14. American Scottish > Page 202

Added on Thursday, December 28, 2017 morning

But they [Obama campaign posters not set in Gotham] looked slightly wrong in Gill Sans and Lucinda, and they only fooled some of the people some of the time.

Highlight (yellow) – 15. Gotham is Go > Page 219

A solid reason not to be cheap on fonts or substitute well-known fonts for others. This chapter had some interesting branding thoughts on type for politics. The tangential reference here to Abraham Lincoln’s quote is well couched, but only vaguely funny.
Added on Thursday, December 28, 2017 morning

Guide to highlight colors

Yellow–general highlights and highlights which don’t fit under another category below
Orange–Vocabulary word; interesting and/or rare word
Green–Reference to read
Blue–Interesting Quote
Gray–Typography Problem
Red–Example to work through

Crocodiles (and Polo Ponies) Go Missing as Scalpel-Wielding Consumers Revolt | WSJ

Read Crocodiles (and Polo Ponies) Go Missing as Scalpel-Wielding Consumers Revolt by Khadeeja Safdar (Wall Street Journal)

Clothes buyers wield blades, markers and iron-on patches to kill off embroidered clothing logos; ‘a tricky surgery’

Since its debut in 1926, the Lacoste crocodile has adorned polo shirts on everyone from the brand’s tennis-star founder to President John F. Kennedy.

Yet you won’t likely find one on Max Ilich. The 47-year-old consultant has extracted the iconic reptilian from at least 10 of his Lacoste shirts. “It’s a tricky surgery,” he said. “But I was pleased with the results.”

I’d always thought of doing this and had tried on a few things with mixed results. Generally I just eschew logos and don’t buy them any more unless I really can’t manage.