Erik Spiekermann
Erik Spiekermann is a German type designer born in 1947. He
founded MetaDesign in 1979, which is based in Berlin and went on to create a
system of typefaces for the Deutsche Bahn (the German Railways), that being one
of his/the company’s most notable work, effectively putting him on the map to
larger corporations. He also designed MetaDesign’s typeface, FF Meta. Aside
from FF Meta, his other famous typefaces are ITC Officina Sans and Serif and FF
Unit. His company now has offices in London and San Francisco, which have
gained notable clientele as the years have gone on. Some of these top profile
clients are: Nokia, Audi, The Economist, Ferrari and smaller technology
companies in California.
On top of all this, Spiekermann also co-founded the first
ever online font retailer called FontShop; FontShop.com is a place where you
can easily search for typefaces of many categories and purchase them without
hassle. FontShop also annually sponsors a conference in Berlin called
TypoBerlin.
In 2007, he wont the German Federal Design Prize, the most
prestigious award in Germany.
FF Meta and FF Unit are similar fonts, san serif but with
serif elements such as the bowls in the lowercase Gs for some of its fonts and
both having a nice variety of font weights per family. Both typefaces are clear
and stylish, great for signs and headings.
What Spiekermann likes to do when he is designing a typeface
and is having a bit of an art block, he looks at other typefaces that are
already created that he likes, or the client likes, looks at it for a long time
and then ‘”puts it away”. The next day he would sketch the letters from memory,
assumedly in that typeface, but it always turns out different, and that’s what
he works from. He related it to reading a story and then writing it in his
language; it’s the same story, but it’s going to be told differently –
“it’s influenced by it, but not a copy and I think that’s how everybody works”
- (from this video).
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