Charles Berret
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Portfolio / career

Researcher, Data Journalist  & Content Engineer

A writer who understands computers.

Currently

Google Fonts

Research, data analysis, writing, and editorial work on type, global languages, and the technical infrastructure of the web.

Dev Projects

Building a local review desk where agents prepare the work and I read, edit, and decide. View →

Writing

Book project on cryptographic culture and ongoing essays and investigations covering data, media, and software. View →

Selected Projects

[ all projects → ]

Kettle

A local review desk for agent-prepared work: files arrive, a person reads, edits, and decides before anything is accepted. View →

Knowing Together

A collaborative photogrammetry experiment that preserved distortion as evidence of the people and process behind a 3D image. View →

Content Engineering

Content engineering for type and the web: research, tooling, and editorial systems that scale with language and infrastructure. View →

Selected Writing

[ all writing → ]
forthcoming Cryptographic Amnesia MIT Press A cultural history of how codes and ciphers moved from the margins of everyday life to its infrastructure. read → 2025 Web Almanac: Fonts (2025) Web Almanac · HTTP Archive How the web actually uses type, measured across millions of sites: what fonts get loaded, in what formats, and at what cost to the page. read → 2025 Iceberg Sensemaking: A Process Model for Critical Data Analysis and Visualization IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (IEEE VIS) A process model for the hidden, below-the-waterline work of critical data analysis, reframed through an interpretivist lens. read → 2016 Guide to SecureDrop: An Emerging Platform for Secure and Anonymous Communication in Newsrooms Tow Center for Digital Journalism The first published study of how newsrooms adopted SecureDrop for secure communication with anonymous sources. read →

Full Index

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Publications, talks, software, teaching, press, awards, and support.