Erik Spiekermann

Erik Spiekermann

Part A:

Erik Spikermann, the German-born typographer, graphic designer, and author, has not only made a name for himself, he has sufficiently built a multi-national design empire practically unrivaled today. Clients repeatedly look to him for clean, clear, and functional type design, an aspect that Spiekermann shows through his excruciating attention to detail. Spiekermann himself admits that his fonts would be better classified simply as solutions. “Identify a problem – like space saving, bad paper, low resolution, on-screen use – then find typefaces that almost work but could be improved,” he explains. “Study them. Note the approaches and failings. Sleep on it, then start sketching without looking at anything else.”

Spiekermann's career as a typographer spawned from an interest in design from a very young age. Born May 30, 1947 in Stadthagen, Germany, his first explorations in type involved his very own printing press. “I had a little printing press and taught myself to set type when I was twelve,” he recalls. “Years later, when I went to university to study art history, I made a living as a letterpress printer and hot metal typesetter.” This same printing press was also used design and create his school's magazine. Spiekermann also attributes some of his interests in type to his surroundings, noting that he lived next to a neighbor with a letterpress in Stadthagen and nearby the University Press when he and his family moved to Bonn, Germany.

Seeking to further his young career as a designer, Spiekermann elected to move to Berlin and study art history at the Berlin Free University in 1967. Spiekermann recalls this time in his life as “very influential” to his progression as a designer. While studying art history, his efforts were funded by his first work as a freelance designer. Using only a letterpress and hot metal typesetter, Spiekermann used the minimal tools to force himself to perfect his craft. He began obsessing over line and letter spacing, a detail even today he calls “as important the characters themselves.” This attention-to-detail in his early practices led him to his current philosophy. “Each solution has to funciton in every small detail, while at the same be seen as part of a larger total. Nothing is irrelevant; a picture chosen arbitrarily, sloppy printing, inappropriate choice of paper or messy typography can destroy even the most profound design concept.”

By 1973, Spiekermann was a freelance artist living in London with his wife Joan and young son. His skills in typography and graphic design landed him several jobs with large companies, including Wolf Ollons, Henrion Design, Berthold, and Letraset. During this period in his career, Spiekermann looked within himself and affirmed that while he had prolific skills in graphic design, typography was his true passion. In a video interview Spiekermann admits his love for type: “I'm obviously a typo-maniac,” he states. “I can't explain it, I just love looking at type. I get a total kick out it – they are my friends. Other people like looking at bottles of wine or girl's bottom's – I get a kick out of looking at type.”

Spiekermann's love for type would also lead him to teaching, a profession he still practices today. During his time in London, he took a position at the London College of Printing while continuing to work with large design firms. Eventually, Spiekermann's time in London had run out, and he desired to return to Germany and launch his own business. With more than six years of corporate experience, Spiekermann returned to Berlin to start what would later become the largest design firm in Germany: MetaDesign.

Though Spiekermann had done several projects for firms in Berlin, including commissions to redraw and digitize classic typefaces for Berthold AG, he expressed a love for working full-time in the city he loved. Thus, in 1979, MetaDesign was born. With partners Dieter Hall and Florian Fischer, the company had a fairly successful first five years of business, but was bought out by Sedley Place Design in 1984. It was not until 1990 that the company would be reborn, this time with the help of Uli Mayer and Hans Christian Kruger. The company was a huge success and soon grew too expansive for Berlin only. An international network, consisting of offices in San Francisco (opened in 1992) and London (opened in 1995), was established. Major contractors have included Adobe, Apple, AT&T, Audi, BVG, the City of Berlin, the German Green Party, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nike, Springer Verlag, Texas Instruments, and Volkswagen. Much of the company's success has been attributed the divisional foucs of each office. In this way, Spiekermann believed that each branch would gain knowledge from the other two, with the San Francisco branch focusing on digital technology and interface design, and the London office focusing on product development and management consultancy.

By the time MetaDesign was re-incarnated in 1990, digital type had become a phenomenon in the way typographer's worked. Spiekermann embraced the new technology, but remained true to many of his old ways of designing typefaces. In an interview, he spoke about drawing out typefaces by hand. “It's the difference between thinking and drawing. I draw an idea, an expression, a spirit or whatever you wanna call it, a feeling - and that doesn’t make a difference, whether that’s half a millimeter wider or narrower. If you start with the artwork right away on the screen, it all tends to become a little more mechanical. If I design a typeface, I just look if it needs to be thicker or thinner or softer or harder and that’s so easily done with a pencil. It’s very very quick! I spend about 2 hours sketching to develop the basic essence of it and then it becomes technical. All good type designers I know sit down with a pencil first, no matter how fast they are on the screen.” Spiekermann continued to say that even though technology has revolutionized the work of designers, he believes it actually makes the process somewhat slower. “There is much less time for creativity today, because our work also has to incorporate all the production issues, all the documentation, all the templates and shit, which used to be delegated before. Now, we have to do it all ourselves, from thinking right through to printing. Whatever you do it has to look really great. You can’t set up a rough sketch any more. Now it needs to be a fairly perfect looking color PDF from a color print out. It looks like it’s almost “ready”, but it isn’t.”

Despite the rise of digital type, the primitive practices of hot metal typesetting and hand-drawing fonts from Spiekermann's youth still give him an edge over the competition. His attention-to-detail and ability to create rhythm within type are model design methods for many. Spikermann's design methods also speak to the readability of his type, something he is widely known for. In his own words, “a real type-face needs, rhythm and contrast – it comes from handwriting. That's why I can read your handwriting and you can read mine. Handwriting is miles away from Helvetica, or anything that would be considered legible, but we can read it because there is a rhythm to it.”

Eventually, Spiekermann left MetaDesign and, in 2000, started the United Designer's Network with Susanna Dulkinys. One of his prominent accomplishments associated with this firm is the corporate identity of Deutsch Bahn (German Railways), which also included their very own family of typefaces. When asked why a whole new set of typefaces were necessary, Spiekermann respnded, “Well, that’s very simple: in theory they had Helvetica as a family of typefaces. In theory meaning, they were officially using it for brochures and advertising, but in fact they used about 30 typefaces, different ones for their annual reports, magazines… since Helvetica is just not appropriate for that kind of different work, people were using all kinds of fonts even those that didn’t look like Helvetica at all (Garamond and other traditional typefaces). We started designing a serif typeface for their newspapers and magazines and then we developed a sans type out of that one. Now they can use the appropriate typeface for long or short copy, for advertising, for tables,… there is a condensed and a compressed version, but everything still looks related. It’s a family rather than before, when everything was just kind of junked together.”
As a type designer, Spiekermann's accomplishments continue to expand. His most famous typeface, FF Meta, is now approaching a Helvetica-like ubiquity. In fact, the typeface was designed in an attempt to try to “end the choas” associated with having so many versions of Helvetica within a family.

Spikermann is also credited with founding the digital type foundry FontShop, an international distributor of thousands of fonts. He currently teaches at the University of Arts Bremen, heads the International Society of Typographic Designer's and speaks at nearly every major typographic conference. His ability to communicate through humor and bilingual articulation has made him an international face of typography today.

Part B:

Spiekermann's Fonts:

Berliner Grotesk BQ
FF Govan Dingbats One
FF Govan Dingbats Two
FF Govan One
FF Govan Three
FF Govan Two
FF Info Display
FF Info Office
FF Info Office Numbers One
FF Info Office Numbers Two
FF Info Text
FF Meta
FF Meta Boiled
FF Meta Condensed
FF Meta Condensed LF
FF Meta Correspondence
FF Meta Hairline
FF Meta Headline
FF Meta Headline Compressed
FF Meta Headline Condensed
FF Meta LF
FF Meta Serif
FF Meta Serif Black
FF Meta Serif LF
FF Meta Serif LF Black
FF Meta Subnormal
ITC Officina Display
ITC Officina Display Arrows
ITC Officina Sans
ITC Officina Sans (EF)
ITC Officina Serif
ITC Officina Serif (EF)
FF Unit
FF Unit Black
FF Unit Black LF
FF Unit LF
FF Unit Rounded
FF Unit Rounded At
FF Unit Rounded Black
FF Unit Rounded LF
FF Unit Rounded Ultra
FF Unit Ultra

FF Meta:

FF Meta is a humanistic sans serif font. It was developed in 1984 as a response to the “chaos” created by having such a large family as Helvetica. The company who commissioned the design, Deutsche Bundespost, never actually used the font. They instead returned to using Helvetica.


Characteristics:
1)Mono-weight
2)Numbers receed below baseline
3)Very large counters
4)X-height slightly taller
5)No connection of loop on lowercase g
6)Ends of lowercase letters are rounded

Part C:

Events of 1984

Jesse Jackson runs for President
Ronald Reagan calls for international ban on chemical weapons
Soviet Union boycotts Summer Olympics in Los Angeles
First Macintosh computer goes on sale
Astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk

Bibliography:

"1984." Wikipedia. 7 November 2008. 5 November 2008 .

"Erik Spiekermann." Wikipedia. 9 Aug. 2008. 5 November 2008
.

Uleshka. "Erik Spiekermann - typography and design today." PingMag. 31 Oct. 2005. 12
Oct. 2008 .

Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger, Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works. Adobe Press, 2002 (2nd Edition).

Fay Sweet, Meta Design: From the Word Up. Thames and Hudson, 1999.

Alan Pipes, Production for Graphic Designers. Overlook Hardcover, September 10, 2001 (3rd Edition)