Link tags: optical

Monotype restored the font Walbaum, a 200-year-old serif typeface — Quartzy

The history and restoratin of a neglected typeface, complete with this great explanation of optical sizing:

Nix illustrated the point with an analogy: “Imagine if we all decided that 10-year-old boys would be the optimal human form,” he says. “Rather than having babies, we just shrunk 10-year-old boys to baby size, and enlarge them to the size of a full grown man. That’s kind of what we’re combatting.”

The crooked timber of humanity | 1843

Tom Standage—author of the brilliant book The Victorian Internet—relates a tale of how the Chappe optical telegraph was hacked in 19th century France, thereby making it one of the earliest recorded instances of a cyber attack.

Julian Beever's pavement drawings

Scroll down to see "Anamorphic illusions drawn in a special distortion in order to create an impression of 3 dimensions when seen from one particular viewpoint." Insanely great.

Mr Angry and Mrs Calm

An optical illusion; a mind hack, if you will.

eChalk colour perception

This is the most amazing optical effect in the world... or at least a good mind hack.