Craft Is Not Culture

A time, a place, and humans. Let’s take a moment to consider the font, Instrument Serif. Created by the Portland-based design agency Instrument for their own use — along with Instrument Sans — they open-sourced it on GitHub, where it made its way to Google Fonts, in a generous act. And, guess where LLMs love to get fonts? There is something deeply ironic about the sample text on Google Fonts. Instrument Serif went from a cool nod to the condensed serif type beloved by direct-to-consumer brands on Instagram — inspired by the way New Balance, Nike, and Apple approached branding — to the default output of LLM-assisted and vibe-coded web work. Today it’s everywhere. The White House uses it. In all caps, natch. “It’s the fascism font.” Condensed serifs were all the rage back then. The embrace of typefaces like this, and the slurping up of what’s been hot and trendy results in the tell-tale sign of the manufacturer. “Craft will no longer be a moat. The LLMs are getting very good at craft.”…