Sunday Reads: How Aptos inspired the next big font, lessons from jail poetry and a Live Oak gem

From topography to typography: How a graphic designer’s love of Aptos inspired the next ubiquitous commercial typeface

(Via Steven Matteson)

Steven Matteson’s font Aptos, named for an area of Santa Cruz County he came to appreciate deeply as an escape during a stint over the hill, will be the default for the hundreds of millions who use Microsoft products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. “This is kind of like a holy grail situation for people in my line of work,” the 58-year-old says. Wallace Baine explores Matteson’s work in his Sunday column.

➤ MORE: Aptos, Microsoft’s new default font, chosen for the community’s ‘widely ranging landscape and climate’

I teach poetry in the Santa Cruz jail, but it’s ‘my guys’ who are teaching me

(Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)

Renee Winter started teaching poetry in the Santa Cruz Main Jail seven years ago, after retiring from her law practice. Now, once a week, she sits in a locked room with about 15 incarcerated men. She often marvels at how her “big-knuckled, burly male students can grip such tiny tools and write. But they do.” Not once in all her years, she says, has she had to press the panic button. Instead, she has found inspiration and shed her “one-dimensional” view of incarceration. Read her Community Voices opinion piece here.

➤ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Read what Santa Cruzans are saying about local issues and make your voice heard

New partnership re-envisions Lago di Como restaurant, turning a hidden gem into a diamond

(Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)

Seafood, homemade pasta and steaks aged in-house are now the focus at Live Oak Italian spot Lago di Como for Giovanbattista Spanu and Matteo Robecchi, both from northern Italy, after Robecchi and wife/partner Lindsay Rodriguez made the move following years at Seabright’s Tramonti. Lily Belli has the review.

➤ MORE FOOD NEWS: Soif Wine Shop changes hands, closes Walnut Avenue location

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(United Way of Santa Cruz County)