It should be obvious to most readers of this blog that Basic Maths, the WordPress theme that Allan Cole and I released recently (and available here), is a direct descendant of the overall look and feel of Subtraction.com. There’s a good reason for this: over the years, I’ve been asked countless times by others if they can use the Subtraction.com ‘theme,’ even though none existed — even if it did, I would have been inclined to say no, wanting to preserve its uniqueness for myself. So when I sat down to design Basic Maths, the aim was to create something that would satisfy this desire to have something Subtraction.com-like in the marketplace — not a clone, but a reinterpretation. As reinterpretations go, it’s pretty straightforward, I think. Nevertheless, I thought it would be interesting to showcase some of the steps in its design evolution, and how I arrived at the theme as it stands today.

In this terrific rebuttal, Antonio Carusone smacks down the flagrant inaccuracies found in this article at Webdesigner Depot. The article purports to list the various “advantages and disadvantages” of designing with a typographic grid. Carusone does a measured, even-handed job of calling bullshit on the author’s arguments, even while the article’s fundamental misapprehension about the entire subject begs for a much less gentle rebuke.

As an example, here’s just one of many gems, with the author’s original emphasis included:

“Generally speaking (very generally), creative designs should stick to more freedom and not use a grid — or at least use a very lenient one.”

I’d never read Webdesigner Depot before, but based on the quality of this article, I’m pretty sure I’m not missing anything.

The legendary designer and partner at the landmark studio Chermayeff & Geismar answers questions for Logo Design Love. Among the brands on his C.V. are Mobil Oil, New York University, Chase Bank and National Geographic.

The Book Cover Archive surveys the best covers from each of the last ten years. Includes John Gall’s crowd-pleasing cover for “A General Theory of Love,” which is among my favorites.

In advance of being spun off from Time Warner next month, AOL debuted new corporate branding yesterday, rolling out not just a revised logo but a visual system with a bit of a twist to it. Using a modicum of cleverness, the company’s new look is in fact a kind of visual randomizer in which a new, mixed-case typographic mark “Aol” (instead of the previous initialism “AOL”) is superimposed on top of various whimsical, silhouetted images.

Giving back to Twitter department: earlier in the month I asked people who follow me on Twitter for recommendations for new typefaces.

What I was looking for was an alternative to the typeface Klavika, which I quite like; it’s among the very best fonts that have been released in the recent past, in my opinion. Inconveniently for me, I somewhat subjectively regard Klavika as having been ‘claimed’ by a friend of mine who uses it more consistently and more effectively than I do.

So I wanted something of my own, something similarly contemporary and similarly strong in its forms, a real workhorse of a typeface that I can call to duty during those times when Helvetica won’t do. I got back tons of replies, and I thought I’d present my favorites here for those who might find themselves on a similar hunt.

Fifteen Brooklyn illustrators reminds us of various other useful applications for newsprint. On sale for US$10.

Things that have been keeping me from blogging: raising a brand new baby, having grown-up time with my girlfriend, walking my dog, holding down a day job and, now finally revealed: working on Basic Maths, a brand new theme for WordPress that I designed with my friend Allan Cole.

After months of plugging away at in during whatever free time we’ve been able to find, we’re finally releasing it into the wild today, to coincide with WordCampNYC 2009. (In fact, I’m heading over to that conference later today, and Allan will be speaking there early this afternoon, so if you’re there, be sure to say hello.) It’s available right now for purchase at this link — for a limited time only, it costs just US$45, which is less than half the price of other, far less awesome WordPress themes, if you ask me.

Last Wednesday The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Phillies to win their twenty-seventh World Series. After a nine year title drought, the victory predictably thrilled Yankees fans like myself while also re-igniting the old complaint that the franchise is a bully in the baseball market, that the team uses an obscenely resourceful payroll to effectively and unfairly buy championships.

Actually, the pilot light for that particular criticism never goes out, whether the team has won or lost its most recent bid for the World Series (or even when they make no post-season appearance at all, as happened in 2008). For almost a decade, the Yankees have consistently maintained the highest payroll in Major League Baseball while failing to bring home a World Series title, and during that time the grousing took the form of ridicule. What Yankees fans heard then was: “See? You Yankees can’t buy championships, even with all of your money.” What we hear today is: “See? You Yankees just buy championships with all of your money.”

This is not a coherent line of argument, but then again it would be naïve to look for any motivation here other than envy, because the logic at work is so suspect. It’s pretty safe to say that a good number of those who hate the Yankees because of their payroll are unabashed capitalists, too; they’d be very unlikely to begrudge the fact that the highest valued, best performing organization in any given market also led that market. That’s not just capitalism, it’s the way capitalism is practiced in America.

Various comics artists interpret their favorite literary figure/author/character. Pretty entertaining.