Happy VD! Per Design Taxi,

The company has teamed up with OpenType font converter Fontself to release one unique color typeface per day through 15 February 2019 for Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.

The five packs are designed by artists from around the world, and celebrate nature, culture, architecture, and even unicorns. 

This hand-rotoscoped style makes me happy:

actually augmented reality:pic.twitter.com/2P3jL9QUpF

— Luke Wroblewski (@lukew) January 22, 2019

Mark Kawano points out that Ofir Shoham has a whole feed of such work on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

Animated @juliandeguz13 grooving it out to Baby Be Mine by Michael Jackson ~ back dancers: @vee_jaay @jakebrandorff ~ filmed by @timmilgram @tmillytv #dance #animation . . . #breakdance #stopmotion #dancer #2d #dancedance #rotoscope #dancers #adobe #digitalart #art #artist #dancelife #dancehall #animations #aftereffects #cartoon #doodles #oddlysatisfying #viralvideo #scribble #satisfying #mograph #motiongraphics #viral #stopanimation #handdrawn #editing #edit

A post shared by Ofir Shoham (@blottermedia) on Jan 19, 2019 at 2:01pm PST

Interesting news:

Allegorithmic’s Substance family of tools are used in the vast majority of AAA games, including Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, and Forza. They’re increasingly being used for visual effects and animation in entertainment, including in award-winning, popular movies like Blade Runner 2049, Pacific Rim Uprising, and Tomb Raider. And they’re being adopted in the fields of design, product visualization, retail and marketing. [artwork gallery]

I’m curious to see how this goes. We introduced 3D painting to Photoshop some 12 (!!) years ago, but in retrospect we (or at least I) were naive about the sheer amount of investment & complexity it would entail. Will this acquisition finally help lower complexity & barriers to entry? We shall see.

I once argued that “Photoshop 3D is not (just) about 3D,” but rather about building a general way to import, render, and manipulate non-native content. So little of that dream has come to pass… But hey, it’s a new day, and in the end we shall all be dead. 🙂

[YouTube]

I 100% don’t need Scribit (a $449 drawing robot now funded on Kickstarter), but I 100% want it:

[YouTube]

Here’s hoping you get a little downtime to chill this week, all the better to check out bits of graphic design history like this tour from Vox:

When asked to visualize what jazz looks like, you might picture bold typography, two tone photography, and minimal graphic design. If you did, you’re recalling the work of a jazz label that single-handedly defined the “look” of jazz music in the 1950s and1960s: Blue Note.

Inspired by the ever present Swiss lettering style that defined 20th century graphic design (think Paul Rand), Blue Note captured the refined sophistication of jazz during the early 60s, particularly during the hard bop era, and gave it a definitive visual identity through album covers.

[YouTube] [Via Stefan Bucher]

Bao chicka BAO bao!

This short film was easily my favorite thing about The Incredibles 2 (ahead of which it ran), and Pixar is now sharing it freely on YouTube. Dig in!

In Bao, an aging Chinese mom suffering from empty nest syndrome gets another chance at motherhood when one of her dumplings springs to life as a lively, giggly dumpling boy.

Mom excitedly welcomes this new bundle of joy into her life, but Dumpling starts growing up fast, and Mom must come to the bittersweet revelation that nothing stays cute and small forever.

This short film from Pixar Animation Studios and director Domee Shi explores the ups and downs of the parent-child relationship through the colorful, rich, and tasty lens of the Chinese immigrant community in Canada.

[YouTube]