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Some directors are known for their typographic flairfrom the ultrawide tracking of Christopher Nolans film titles to Quentin Tarantinos genre vernacular font and lettering selections. But last week, as we reported on Sean Bakers extensive use of Aguafina Script across his past four movies, we wondered: How many other directors have firmly embraced a single, singular typefaceand what does that typeface say about their films? The first part is easier to answer. It is rare, says title designer and Art of the Title editor-in-chief Lola Landekic. It’s a very interesting choice. As a creator, you have to sort of commit to a specific aesthetic. And I think you also have to know yourself very well and know that there’s a throughline in all your work. Thats clearly the case when it comes to Baker and the directors below. Sean BakerAguafina Script Perhaps the most audacious thing about Bakers use of Aguafina in the Best-Picture-winning Anora and his other films is the sheer amount of personality it contains. It is anything but a benign catchall facebut it is also a tonal fit that enhances the characters and themes at the heart of his most recent movies. Landekic likens titles and title sequences to seasonings that can make or break a dish. While Bakers work often deals with poverty and marginalized characters, the energetic Aguafina elevates everything all at once, providing a contrast to the common visual iconography around such subjects. It has perhaps been a key to his films since Tangerineand one that has carried over into marketing materials and more (a rare luxury when, for example, posters for the Men in Black films feature a bulky sans serif rather than Pablo Ferros far more interesting signature lettering that appears in the actual movies). It can be a difficult thing to achieve as a filmmaker, that kind of consistency of aesthetic, Landekic says. I admire anyone that can get that through the door because it’s hard these days where everything is created so piecemealoften the distributor controls the promotional materials, and the filmmaker has very little say into how that gets to look. Moreover, as you peruse this list, youll notice that it is a veritable boys’ cluband there are reasons for that. Women don’t get to make as many films, don’t get to make as many follow-up films, and don’t often get to have the level of control over their films that a lot of male filmmakers have, Landekic notes. So it’s a multipronged issue why we dont have a lot of female examples in this particular category. Wes AndersonFutura A lot has been written about Wes Andersons thoughtful and intentional approach to type and letteringbut the face that made him famous was Futura, which branded the first half of his filmography (so much so that many considered it an aesthetic betrayal when he sidelined it for Jessica Hisches title lettering in Moonrise Kingdom.) In Andersons masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums, Futura was essentially a character in its own right, appearing not just in titles, but on buses, books and myriad places beyond. It harkens back to the French New Wave and sort of how Godard used titles, Landekic says. The thing about Futura is that its very unadorned. It feels almost like you could overlook it. But the way that Wes Anderson uses it gives it a very clean stamp. . . . What it really does is it makes everything feel very arranged and curated. And for a filmmaker like Wes Anderson, that is a lot of the point. One further Futura aside: Its a common misnomer that Stanley Kubrick used it widely in his filmography. In reality, he only truly deployed it in Eyes Wide Shut, and it croppd up in promotional materials for other projectsthough he did reportedly call it his favorite typeface. Woody AllenWindsor Perhaps no typographic directorial bond runs as deep as Woody Allen and Windsor, which has kicked off every single one of Allens films since Annie Hall in 1977. As Jarrett Fuller, host of the podcast Scratching the Surface, has detailed, Legend has it that . . . Allen would often eat breakfast at the same New Jersey diner as noted graphic and type designer Ed Benguiat. Allen, knowing Benguiat as a “printer,” asked him one morningprobably sometime between 1975 and 77for a good typeface to use in the credits of his upcoming film. Benguiat offered up Windsor. It would go on to become synonymous with the director and all things related to him. And regardless of whether a given film of his was a hit or a flop, quality or not, Windsor was thereand, well, it just works. It’s long, it’s kind of lanky. It has serifs. That f that you see in the Windsor font . . . looks like Charlie Chaplin standing with his two feet poking out, Landekic says. And so it has that kind of feeling to me where it has a sense of humor about it in the way that [Allen is] using it because a lot of his comedies and his dramatic work deal with a sort of a humdrum misunderstanding elevated to a sense of dramatic chaos in some senseand Windsor kind of flies in the face of that, where it wants to be regal, but it’s very rounded. So it has two personalities embodied within it. John CarpenterAlbertus In addition to his directorial chops, Carpenter is known for creating some iconic soundtracks for his films. So it tracks that he would be meticulous about other elements within his fictive worlds. One such detail: The typeface Albertus, which he first used in the titles for Escape From New York in 1981, and further deployed in seven other films, including The Thing, Christine, Prince of Darkness, and They Live. One of the larger tenets of horror is a fear of aging, Landekic explains. Many monsters are considered monstrous because they are, for example, wrinkly or deformed in a way which can be likened to how age afflicts all of us. And so Albertus . . . has that feeling of time and legacy and something worn. You can easily imagine Albertus being chiseled into a rock face because of its shape. So it lends itself very well to that kind of atmosphere. Ultimately, as a title designer, does Landekic wish every director would take as strong an approach as those referenced in this article? Landekic says she loves the fact that David Finchers movies have such radically different title sequences, and she thinks trying to fit everything into a tightly branded box could push films more toward being devalued as mere content. She adds that it could narrow a filmmakers focus too early if they made such a decision at the outset of their career. If Sean Baker wanted to make a sci-fi film, would it work with Aguafina? Would he feel pressure to make it work? At the end of the day, I would like the film to feel cohesive,” says Landekic. “And however that happens, however that needs to look, is the ideal. Ultimately, a title sequence and a title font is in service to a larger picture.
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At a remote elementary school in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, until recently, access to safe drinking water was a daily challenge. The school tried to use groundwater, but there wasnt enough supply; the water was also contaminated with salt and metal. In the dry season, from December to April, droughts made the challenge worse. But last month, the school installed a new system that harvests rainwater, filters it, and then automatically supplies it to drinking fountains, the kitchen, and bathrooms. Its one of more than 270 schools, from rural Nepal to urban Taiwan, to work with a fast-growing nonprofit called Gravity Water to install the nonprofits tech over the last 12 months. What we’re really trying to do is modernize rainwater harvestingto take this ancient technology to solve a modern-day problem, says founder Danny Wright. Later this year, the organization plans to also begin adding the technology to buildings in a city in Massachusetts. [Photo: Gravity Water] Wright first started thinking about the potential for rainwater harvesting on a trip to Central America in college. He realized that access to clean drinking water was a challenge even in areas with abundant rain. One night, in a tent in the rainforest, he sketched a concept for a simple system that could filter rainwater in a rooftop tank and flow through a filter using gravity, without the need for electricity. [Photo: Gravity Water] Later, after finishing grad school in 2015, he was still considering the idea when he took a job at a school in Nepal. Like other communities in the country, the area struggled with water contamination because of the lack of modern sewage infrastructure. Children often got sick from drinking the water. Wright proposed building the rainwater system, and created the first simple prototype. We were pretty much building gigantic Brita filters, he says. When it worked, the project grew into a nonprofit. Over time, the system became more advanced. While the organization still builds the basic models in areas that dont have electricity, most projects are now more complex, using sensors to run automatically and switch between a utility water sourcesuch as a pipe running to a village welland stored rainwater. The installation process, which takes around 24 hours, involves adding downspouts to the roof, downspouts that direct rain into tanks, and a fridge-sized “rain box” next to the building that connects the tanks to the school’s existing plumbing. In some cases, schools now get most of their water from rain. Were working in places like Indonesia now, and Taiwan, where we have projects that get such consistent rainfall that were seeing our rainwater systems being utilized 80% of the year, Wright says. Urban Taipei obviously has different water infrastructure than rural Nepal or Vietnam. But in Taipei, in heavy storms, the local water supply often quickly becomes polluted. Other large cities, like Jakarta, are dealing with saltwater intrusion in their water supplies, both because so much groundwater has already been extracted and because sea levels are rising. In urban areas, too, rainwater often can’t filter back into the ground because most of the ground is covered in buildings or pavement. Gravity Water’s system can make use of that water, while also helping reduce flooding. [Photo: Gravity Water] In some cases, rather than storing rainwater long-term, the systems are designed simply to make use of rain on rainy days. “Rainwater doesn’t have to be a year-round solution,” says Wright. “But we could have a profound impact on resilience for water in these regions if we just use rain on the days there’s rain. We don’t even need to have storage.” The work, to date, has been primarily funded through donations; Apple gave the organization a grant to build the systems at 131 schools in northern Vietnam, for example. The organization also covers the cost of replacing the filters for schools who can’t afford it (maintenance costs roughly 25 cents a student per year at a typical school). But the nonprofit is also now working with UNICEF to build rainwater harvesting systems for community use. It’s also working on new models that don’t rely on philanthropy, in order to reach more people. It recently spun off a startup called Cloudwell that uses the same technology. “Households are our end goal, but it’s really hard to sell a product to households in communities that on average make less than $10 a day, let alone maybe $4 or $2 a day,” Wright says. Now, the organization is starting to talk with some utilities about providing them with the technology and infrastructure to collect rainwater; households would get the tech for free, and then get a rebate on their rainwater use. A current study, with Santa Clara University, is evaluating the economics using rainwater in this way, as well as looking at where the local climate and other factors make it most viable. There’s global interest. “I was just in Nairobi last week and every single community was so eager to start implementing the solution,” says Wright. The tech can also be helpful in places like the U.S., he says. Upcoming pilot projects this summer in Massachusetts (the nonprofit hasn’t yet announced the city) will add the tech to city and university buildings to help both with water resiliencethe state is currently in droughtand to help reduce serious flooding in heavyrain.
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Remote work is here to stay, and late-stage startups offer a nice mix of financial backing, stability, and potential for success that might be lacking in your current job. If you’re looking for a chance to join a company on the move while working from the comfort of your own home, this is the list for you. From AI to health to cybersecurity and more, these remote-friendly companies have plenty of openings. Grafana Labs: 50 Grafana Labs provides a suite of toolsincluding Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, and Tempothat help organizations monitor, analyze, and understand their applications and infrastructure. Grafana Labs is hiring for a variety of remote roles, including positions in engineering (software, backend, security), product management, customer success (technical account management), sales (account executives, solutions engineers), marketing (community, product, partner), support, and people operations. Vercel: 37 Vercel is a cloud platform for building and deploying fast, modern, web applications, best known for its focus on developer experience and non-server functions. Vercel is hiring for a range of remote positions in engineering (front-end, back-end, site-reliability engineering), product management, sales, marketing, finance, legal, and people operations. Headway: 36 Headway is a platform that connects patients with therapists who accept insurance, aiming to make mental health care more accessible and affordable. Headway is hiring for various remote roles in engineering (front-end, back-end, full-stack), product, data, and operations, focused on building and scaling its platform and network within the U.S. Apollo.io: 35 Apollo.io is a sales intelligence and engagement platform designed to help sales teams find, connect with, and close more deals by providing a comprehensive database of business contacts and integrated sales tools. Apollo.io is hiring for a wide range of remote roles primarily across sales (account executives, solutions engineers, sales-development representatives), engineering (various specializations), product management, marketing, customer success, and operations. Halcyon: 26 Halcyon provides a platform for cybersecurity, focusing on end-point protection and threat intelligence to help organizations defend against advanced cyberattacks and ransomware. Halcyon is hiring for remote roles primarily in engineering (software, security), sales (account executives, sales engineers), marketing, and customer success. Phantom: 26 Phantom is a cryptocurrency wallet offering a user-friendly interface for managing digital assets, staking, and interacting with decentralized applications. Phantom is hiring for a variety of remote roles including engineering (mobile, back-end, security), product, design, marketing, and customer support. Hightouch: 26 Hightouch is a platform that syncs data from data warehouses directly to business tools to arm marketing, sales, and customer-success teams with accurate data in real time. Hightouch is hiring across a variety of remote roles including engineering (back-end, front-end, DevOps), product management, sales, marketing, customer success, and operations. Cyera: 21 Cyera provides a cloud data-security platform that helps organizations discover, classify, and manage data-security risks across their cloud environments, enabling businesses to comply with regulations and prevent data breaches. Cyera is hiring for remote positions primarily in engineering (back-end, front-end, data science, security), product management, sales, customer success, marketing, and operations. Arize: 20 Arize provides a machine learning observability platform that helps organizations monitor, debug, and improve the performance of their machine learning models to ensure the models are accurate and reliable. Arize is hiring remotely across various departments, including engineering (back-end, front-end, machine learning ops), product, customer success, sales, and marketing. 1Password: 19 1Password is a password manager that helps individuals, teams, and businesses securely store and manage passwords, credit cards, and other sensitive information. The company is hiring for various remote roles across the U.S. and Canada, with a focus on engineering (software, security), product management, design, marketing, sales, customer support, and operations. Runway: 15 Runway builds creativity-based AI tools and infrastructure to generate images, videos, and other media using machine learning models. Runway is hiring for a variety of remote roles, primarily in engineering (machine learning, software), product, design, and research. Fingerprint: 13 Fingerprint provides a device intelligence platform that enables businesses to accurately identify website visitors, prevent fraud, and improve user experiences. Fingerprint is hiring remotely across a variety of departments, including engineering (front-end, back-end, security), product, sales, marketing, customer success, and operations.
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