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  The Adobe Fonts design team launched a fun little side project last week: Glyph Finder! If you’re looking to see how the design of a specific character varies across a random selection of different typefaces in our library, add whichever Unicode code point you like (if you know it), or take a random one for a spin (if you don’t). Kudos to @jakegiltsoff for the bulk of the design work and Jason Kisch for actually building the thing. Go and have a play! https://labs.fonts.adobe.com/projects/gl...

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  This review perfectly sums up what’s so good about the excellent Widow’s Bay: “[…] a horror-comedy that manages to be both an incredibly funny and dense laugh-out-loud joke machine and a genuinely scary and menacing fright fest. Neither generic marker takes precedence over the other; they are mutually, ecstatically intertwined. It’s an incredibly difficult tonal balancing act, and […] the show’s writers and directors pull it off with such aplomb.” https://newrepublic.com/article/210089/widows-...

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  RE: https://follow.ethanmarcotte.com/@beep/116770848187982155 I find myself flip-flopping daily between enthusiasm for AI and despair at AI — although I suppose one is excitement about the technology’s potential, and the other is sensible cynicism about the industry itself. Either way, the negative effects are real, and @beep is always articulate in his criticisms.

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  The Fine Specimens book tour has come to an end, and my last pop-up newsletter, covering the final stop in Paris, is almost ready to go out. (Turns out I had more to write than I thought.) Ahead of that, here’s a little photo montage, as per this little tradition. What a lovely few days.

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  This morning I published the latest issue of my #typography newsletter — the first for a while, but also probably the last until after the summer. Inside: new fonts, new sites to find fonts, type-specific tools, inspiring lettering portfolios, and loads more. You can read it online at https://elliotjaystocks.com/newsletter/summer-fonting

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  New on Adobe.Design: a short piece by me on using grade to elevate our typography. If you’ve not encountered grade before, it might at first seem rather like weight, but where weight serves to differentiate (adding emphasis and contrast to text), grade’s purpose is to unify (bringing consistency to text that looks different when it shouldn’t). Huge thanks to my editors, Laura Feinstein and Sue Garibaldi! https://adobe.design/ideas/keeping-type-consistent-in-changing-conditions

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  I made a better way to buy my books from my own website: go to https://elliotjaystocks.com/books, hit “Buy directly from me”, then select your region. Unfortunately, shipping rates are stupidly high and I can’t compete with Amazon. But you do get the books themselves at a discount (£26 instead of the £30 RRP), they come straight from me, and they can be signed (if you want).

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  [1/7] For the last 6 months, while searching for a Spotify alternative, I’ve tried all the streaming services, slowly writing a blog post about my experience with each. Now that post is finally live! And here’s a brief thread if you’d like the main points summarised. (Views are my own, obviously.) https://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/spotify

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  Loving the CRT vibes of this year’s Web dev Conf site. https://webdevconf.com/

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  Has anyone tried opening an existing Claude Code project in Claude Design? The disconnect is bizarre. You can change things, but they don’t get pushed back to the main project — they exist in a weird limbo of duplicated files. I even asked Claude specifically, and it said: “The recreations are a sandbox: a place to try changes and see them, decoupled from the real site.” It’ll then give you a new, heavily commented CSS file to paste into the actual one, which surely must be a stopgap, right?

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  Lovely to see a new website from Suitcase Type (whose Tabac superfamily I used for Lagom a few years ago): https://www.suitcasetype.com

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  This makes for an amusing and sobering read. “No external dollar of profit has entered this system. Nobody outside the circle has paid for anything useful. But every valuation in the loop just went up, because each company can now point to the others and say look, demand is exploding [...] It is a group of friends standing in a circle, each handing the next one a ten dollar bill, like the three stooges, all of them now feeling considerably richer.” /via @densediscovery@mastodon.social https:/...

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  Here, in video format, is a selection of pages from Fine Specimens. You can buy it from anywhere that sells books. Here are some shops (although the best one is your local bookseller): https://geni.us/FineSpecimens (Also, a reminder that the next leg of the UK / EU book tour is tomorrow night at Waterstones in Brussels!)

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  En route to Belgium! 🇧🇪 Tonight, I’ll be in conversation with my good mate, the author-illustrator Paddy Donnelly, at Waterstones in Brussels. We’ll be celebrating the launch of Fine Specimens and chatting about good ol’ books in general. Come along if you’re in town — it kicks off at 19:30, it’s free, and there’ll be beer! https://www.waterstones.com/events/meet-the-author-fine-specimens/brussels-161495

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  Ever wondered why “was”, “am”, and “be” are such different words, despite expressing different tenses of the same verb, “to be”? @colingorrie goes deep in the latest issue of his linguistics newsletter (which is fast becoming one of my favourite weekly reads): https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/why-the-verb-to-be-is-so-irregular

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  I’m super-late sending out the 2nd issue of my pop-up newsletter about the book tour (a combination of a family Easter break, doing my back in, and catching up on some much needed sleep), but I think today might be the day. Here’s the link if you want to get it (pop-up = no online archives): https://buttondown.com/notes-from-a-different-typesetting

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  I hope my friends on Substack will once again consider leaving the service that gives a platform to abhorrent people like Andrew Tate. (via @kottke on Bluesky)

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  For the last week, I’ve been using the Momotaro app (by @lszl) to stop myself from constantly checking my phone and... it works! I can’t say enough good things about the app and I love its beautiful website, too. Another great recommendation from @densediscovery. https://momotaro.app/eng/

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  Fellow writers beware! I got an email from a major publisher a couple of days ago and I was confused why it was so obviously written with AI. I had a brief exchange, as the responses seemed semi-legit, but something still smelled off. This is it: https://writerbeware.blog/2026/03/27/watch-out-for-this-scam-impersonating-editors-at-major-publishing-houses/

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  I’m back from Düsseldorf and I’ll be publishing the pop-up newsletter for that in the next couple of days, but somehow I managed to squeeze out an issue of the *regular* newsletter while (mainly) on various trains. You can read it online at https://elliotjaystocks.com/newsletter/positive-tracking and please consider dropping your email address into the form at the bottom of the page so that you can the next one straight to your inbox!

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  In an attempt to leave Spotify and try all of the music streaming services — and finish my long-in-the-works blog post about my experience with all of them — I decided to try Qobuz, somewhat reluctantly, as I’d dismissed as looking a bit ‘meh’. But not only am I surprised at how it answers pretty much every gripe I have with the others streaming services, but customising it with @jonhicks’ theme makes it considerably better. (Thanks, mate!) https://hicks.design/journal/qobuz-theme-v1-2-for-qob...

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  While I was attending @btconf in Berlin, I snuck backstage to see my talented friend @normanposselt, who very generously offered to take my photo. Norman can make even my wild fisherman vibe appear vaguely presentable! Thank you, mate.

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  Huge thanks to PRINT for the big ol’ “Type Tuesday” feature on Fine Specimens! Deb asked some really great questions and I had a great time answering them. https://www.printmag.com/type-tuesday/fine-specimens-finer-details/

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  Who’s going to be at @btconf next week?!? I can’t wait.

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  Next Wednesday, 1st April (this is not an April Fools!) I’ll be having a launch party for Fine Specimens at @Waterstones in beautiful Brussels. The event kicks off at 19:30 and I’ll be in conversation with my good friend Paddy Donnelly. Come and join us! It’s totally free, but please do RSVP by emailing the lovely Waterstones folks at Events.Brussels@waterstones.com

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  Very, very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at @Figma’s #config2025 event in San Francisco (and online) this May! Come along and hear me talk about #typography being the foundation of any design system. 8,000+ attendees. No pressure. 😅 https://config.figma.com/san-francisco

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  Don’t have a ticket to @btconf, but want to come to the Fine Specimens launch party and buy a book directly from me? Email me or send me a private message here and we can make it happen. Stop number 3 on the book tour is in Düsseldorf next Monday! More details on https://beyondtellerrand.com/events/dusseldorf-2026/side-events/fine-specimens-launch (Of course, I do thoroughly recommend getting a ticket if you can — it’s one of the best conferences you’ll ever attend!)

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  I’m so excited to be attending @btconf in two weeks’ time. Honestly, it’s consistently one of the very best conferences out there. And yes, I’m doing a Fine Specimens launch event there, too, but would be there anyway! https://beyondtellerrand.com/events/dusseldorf-2026

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  Earlier this week, I sent out the latest issue of my #typography newsletter. This little video scroll-through hopefully gives you a taste, but feel free to head over to https://elliotjaystocks.com/newsletter/how-done-is-done to read the issue in your browser. This one featured work by the new foundry @dogray, a WIP font from Manic Type, an interview with @alicesavoie, a database of women leading foundries, the new CAPTN OffScript podcast, a look at rescuing wood type by Daniel Swartz...

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  Got a big ol’ issue of my newsletter going out later today (or perhaps early tomorrow if the stars don’t align). This one contains a load of new type-related links *and* a collection of inspiring work I found while at @typeparis Now24, so if that sounds like the kind of thing you might like to receive in your inbox, please consider lending me your email address! (Plus, I never look at unsubscribe data, so there’ll be no hard feelings if you decide it’s not for you.) https://elliotjaystocks.c...