Subtraction

Handy tool displays type specimens based on typefaces available in your system currently.

A look at how the studios did business-wise in 2008 — better than most, as it turns out. “Ticket sales at North American movie theaters totaled US$9.6 billion, a decrease of less than 1 percent over the previous year, according to Media by Numbers, a box office tracking company. Although attendance declined 5 percent, to about 1.3 billion, the industry was able to buttress revenue with higher ticket prices and premium 3-D offerings.”

That last bit about premium prices is particularly interesting: “In 2008, the studios discovered that audiences would pay ticket prices of up to US$25 to see a movie in 3-D (‘Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour’). Screenings of ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ at Imax theaters, also carrying premium prices, did blockbuster business.”

From several years ago but still worth a look: typographer Mark Simonson highlights director Wes Anderson’s preoccupation with the typeface Futura in his “third feature film,” a trend that also continued in Anderson’s subsequent inferior yet visually consistent releases.

Impressive full-color drawings made by artist Stef Kardos using Brushes, “a natural media painting application for the iPhone and iPod touch. It offers several realistic brush styles, an advanced color picker, a gallery view, and virtually unlimited undo and redo.” The demonstration video on the Brushes page is quite remarkable.

Edward L. Glaeser says: “Historically, human capital — the education and skills of a work force — predicts which cities are able to reinvent themselves and which ones are not. Those people who are continuing to pay high prices for Manhattan real estate are implicitly betting that New York’s human capital will continue to come up with new ways of reinventing the city.”

Disarmingly witty, plush toy versions of popular meats — ya gots yer t-bone steak, yer pork chop and yer hambone. You may not necessarily need these in your life, but you’re probably happy they’re out there.

Simple search tool allows you to check dozens of sites to see if your preferred screen handle is available or in use.

Sadly, digital technology will put the final nail in the coffin for Polaroid’s iconic instant film product at the end of the year; after earlier ceasing the manufacture of its cameras, the company will stop making the actual film after 31 Dec. For the remaining users and fans orphaned by this turn of events, Photojojo offers this typically excellent round-up of coping tips, including a look at some substitutes of varying levels of satisfaction.

A friend of mine just showed this site to me today, which I apparently missed when it first debuted several months ago. It’s a nearly perfect re-creation of the Apple Keynote presentation-making application — or as nearly perfect as can be expected within a Web browser — built with the Cappuccino Web framework, which enables “desktop class applications” through JavaScript.

280 Slides is an impressive piece of work, but I wonder if it isn’t somewhat quixotic too. Though browser applications will inevitably become more desktop-like as they become more powerful, that doesn’t mean they should be designed to look and function like the software that lives on your hard drive. It’s still important to be true to the medium and the platform. That’s why Gmail is such a huge success; it doesn’t try to ape the desktop. Rather it makes the most of the strengths and weaknesses of the browser. Trying to re-create the desktop experience note-for-note seems like an ill-advised way to create a great browser application.

Designer Tom Genoni offers up a quick tool for creating layout grids, with fine-tuned control over gutters and margins, and drag-and-drop placeholders for advertising units. Not the first of its kind, but slightly more robust than others. A great start.

An unmitigated calamity of a public service announcement from the early 1990s: an anti-gang lecture delivered in miserably watered-down hip-hop style, accompanied by a jaw-droppingly banal video narrative. Given the distance of years, it comes across as both hilarious and horrible.

“Dozens of Apple patent applications were published today revealing research that Apple had done in 2007 on many topics encompassing future versions of Mac OS X. The most intriguing is a series of patent applications which describe a ‘multidimensional’ user interface. Apple has essentially been working on true 3D desktop environments.”

As digital media facilitates our increasing disconnection from the old paradigms for how popular music is consumed — physical distribution is on its last legs, ‘albums’ as a concept are less convincing than ever, and the pay model is fitfully molting its old ways — I wonder whether our attitudes towards live performances are changing as well.

A little more than a decade ago (yikes) I was a pretty heavy patron of live music, seeing at least two shows a week in small clubs in Washington, DC, where I lived at the time. Perhaps I watched too many mediocre bands within too short a time span, but it only took me a few years to develop a powerful distaste for the trappings of live performances: the unnecessarily deafening volume levels, the perpetual discomfort of standing on your feet for hours, the juvenile shenanigans of bands who like to keep their audiences waiting interminably — for no apparent reason other than they’re really incredibly immature, insecure pretenders to artistry. Blech. That’s not for me anymore.

A visual exercise in breaking down various Disney cartoon characters into their constituent shapes, using three-dimensional rendering software.

Everyone’s favorite tee-shirt aggregator published their picks for the best tees to give as gifts this holiday season. I wrote about Rumplo in June and still find that browsing its catalog is one of the more entertaining ways to waste one’s workday. Not that I do that.

Amid Amidi’s recently launched companion site to his book “Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation.” In case you missed that one, published two years ago, it’s an illuminating exploration of the mostly forgotten and/or under-appreciated talents that reinvented postwar cartoons as expressions of Modern abstraction. The result is a school of visual rendering that’s remembered with great fondness by many. Also, don’t forget Amidi’s Cartoon Brew, which is also excellent.

Starting today, visitors to NYTimes.com have the option of seeing an enhanced version of our home page that we call Times Extra. This alternate view of the same editorial slate adds links to related coverage from third-party news sources and blogs — right there beneath our main news stories.

Now, I haven’t been posting much about what we’ve been up to at the Times because there’s been so much good stuff (like our voter mood gauge from election night, our holiday shopping guide from David Pogue and our overhauled video library, among many others) that I didn’t want to overrun this blog with press releases.

False modesty aside, I’m making an exception for Times Extra because, well first I think it’s a quiet breakthrough that’s pretty neat, and second, because it’s a concept that I personally hatched on the side with my Times colleague Philippe Lourier, the brains behind our Blogrunner aggregation engine. It was originally something of a lark so we’re pretty happy that it’s finally seeing the light of day (as a beta experiment). Of course, it would still be nothing more than an intriguing idea without the many, many hours of additional dedication from the designers, editors, technologists, the ace project manager and the hard-driving product manager that joined our campaign to make this happen. For their long hours, patience and dedication, I’m incredibly grateful.

Smartly-curated blog features high-quality title sequence clips from movies recent and old, accompanied by some commentary and occasional interviews. Highly enjoyable.

New resource that aims to be “a one stop shop for all designers to learn about grid systems, how to design them and how to use them. The site features links to articles, tools, books as well as templates and other goodies.” Impeccably designed, as is to be expected from Antonio Carusone, who is also the proprietor of AisleOne.

“The Modern Listener’s Guide brings together the previously disparate worlds of indie-rock and information graphics… The first print in the series is a lyrical and statistical undressing of Destroyer’s 2006 album ‘Destroyer’s Rubies.’” To be honest I’m tiring of info-graphics as a short-cut to credibility for client-less graphic design, but this poster looks attractive enough. What’s more, it doesn’t hurt to call some attention to this really phenomenal album.

“The world’s US$71 billion battery market, once an old-tech backwater, is becoming a hothouse for innovation. The flow of U.S. venture-capital dollars into battery development has grown from US$4.3 million in 2002 to more than US$200 million this year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.”

For folks my age, I bet you get a nostalgic feeling of delight when you see this new shirt from Chris Glass and his cohorts over at Wire & Twine.

Oh, and while you’re over there, take note that my Subtraction.com tee-shirts are still available, including the ever-popular Hel-F’ing-Vetica design. They make for excellent holiday presents.

In general I’m not a fan of the ongoing public radio series “This I Believe,” finding it too precious. And the transcript for this installment from Brian Eno, which extolls the virtues of singing as a socially valuable activity, reads a little more stuffy than suits my taste. But the spoken version of the essay, not to mention the idea, is disarmingly profound:

“When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue…

“So I believe in singing to such an extent that if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing become a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for co-operation with others. This seems to be about the most important thing a school could do for you.”

The noted typographer muses on the deep past and uncertain future of screen typography’s atomic unit. “It’s likely that the pixel’s final and most enduring role will be a shabby one, serving as an out-of-touch visual cliché to connote ‘the digital age.’”