Good things really do come to those who wait. I didn’t discover Erik Spiekermann and his clean, versatile Meta font family from FontFont (FF) type foundry until after I graduated from University of Georgia’s School of Graphic Design in 1996. I first came across Spiekermann’s sans-serif FF Meta family consisting of Roman and small caps (SC) in Normal, Medium, Bold, and Black font weights while working at The Weather Channel (TWC) in the mid-1990s. One of the weather.com designers shared FF Meta Bold with me during a collaboration while we were designing new navigational icons for TWC’s website. I found FF Meta’s sans-serif form both functional and visually flattering when combined with contrasting ITC Legacy’s serif variations. Spiekermann’s FF Meta sans-serif family was released in 1991. Ron Arnholm, my typography professor at University of Georgia released ITC Legacy a year later in 1992.
— Erik Spiekermann, Founder of MetaDesign in 1979, Art Historian, Printer, Type Designer, Information Architect, and Author
Our first assignment in Typography class was to render a letterform freehand. Ron chose a Legacy Sans Medium Italic lowercase G noting it was one of the most challenging letters he designed for Legacy. He generously gifted us his ITC Legacy Sans and Serif Roman and SC superfamily after completing his Typography and Advanced Typography courses. While I was a graphic design intern at Georgia Museum of Art (GMOA) I incorporated ITC Legacy Sans Medium Italic for my first assignment. I designed a simple exhibition checklist for Art and Margo Rosenbaum’s “ShOut!” exhibition. I played pirate for a moment when I decided to double-italicize it to give it more energy thus bastardizing the font, but it was worth the gamble. Sometimes breaking the rules is worth its weight in Spades. The exhibit’s logotype immediately caught Bonnie Ramsey’s eye. She was The Director of Publications and Public Relations at GMOA, my boss, and my mentor.
A couple of years later as a freelance graphic designer for GMOA, I utilized FF Meta mixed with ITC Legacy Serif for a Down Under Aboriginal exhibition. This pairing won me a Gold award at Southeastern Museums Conference for “Artists of Utopia: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art.” Aboriginal adventures followed me as I connected my dots looking forward. Not only did I design an international Australian backpacking trail company called Outpack Aboriginal Adventures for my senior Graphic Design Portfolio project, but I also owned a boomerang, eventually owned two Subaru Outbacks, brought video production to the Mac at The Weather Channel with the D1 Desktop from Victoria, Australia, and I worked as the international technical support for the Australian digital video hardware company, Digital Voodoo. Let’s steer this sidetrack back to my nearly two decades with my family at GMOA.
While working alongside GMOA’s Bonnie Ramsey, Editor Jennifer DePrima, and Museum Director, William U. Eiland, lightning struck nearly a dozen times. I paired FF Meta and ITC Legacy Sans and Serif Roman and SC for nearly all of my exhibition checklists and texts for GMOA. When placed together they formed a rich visual contrast that gave my designs a particularly unique quality. A few years later I added Centaur MT to the mix. Centaur, a serif typeface by book and typeface designer Bruce Rogers, was based on Nicolas Jenson’s 1470 Renaissance-period printings. Combining Centaur MT with Legacy led to winning not only Gold, but Best in Show at SEMC. Now let’s pause on that note and get back to Erik Spiekermann’s influence on my early print and broadcast career. He designed ITC Officina Sans and ITC Officina Serif that I incorporated into the 1998 Weather Calendar for The Weather Channel. FF Meta Medium SC and FF Meta Bold made its way into new morning show launches including “First Outlook” and “Your Weather Today.”
Spiekermann, born in 1947, is a highly prolific graphic designer, typographer, and writer. Known for designing FF Meta, ITC Officina Sans and Serif, FF Unit, FF Info, FF Govan, Fira Sans with Ralph du Carrois for Firefox OS, among others, his humble design roots run deep. He paid his own way during his art history studies at Free University in Berlin, Germany, with a letterpress printing press in his basement. His freelance career began in 1972, the year I was born, and MetaDesign came into fruition when he officially founded it in 1979 in Berlin, Germany. A decade later, in 1989, he co-founded the first mail-order publisher offering digital fonts to the masses with his wife, Joan, called FontShop. It was eventually noted as one of the largest digital type foundries during its time. Its FontFont library touted 160 type designers including the talents of Peter Biľak, Evert Bloemsma, Erik van Blokland, Neville Brody, Martin Majoor, Albert-Jan Pool, Hans Reichel, Just van Rossum, Fred Smeijers, and Erik Spiekermann (from the FontShop International Wiki).
FontFont was founded by Erik Spiekermann and Neville Brody in 1990, the year I graduated high school. The pair’s mission for the newly formed foundry was to design typography offerings that were specifically “made for designers, by designers” (MyFonts.com).
They pursued their mission of providing a wide variety of designs allowing for artists and graphic designers to both bend and break the boundaries casting aside the rules with a series of “contemporary, experimental, unorthodox, and radical” (MyFonts.com) solutions. During his early years at MetaDesign Spiekermann’s clients ranged from Berlin Transit system, BVG, the Düsseldorf Airport, and Heidelberg Printing company. Spiekermann also worked closely with automakers Volkswagen and Audi.
Spikermann authored numerous books about typography including Rhyme & Reason, A Typographic Novel in 1987 (originally released in 1982 in Germany). In 1993 his Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works was published by Adobe Press. After a dispute in 2001 Spiekermann left MetaDesign and started United Designers Network. He was named as Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal British Society of Arts in 2007. He received the German National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement and the TDC Medal, and a Lifetime Award from the German Art Directors Club in 2011. Erik served as creative director and the managing partner at the aptly named EdenSpiekermann, a merger with the Dutch design agency Eden Design & Communication, with offices in Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Los Angeles beginning in 2009 through 2014. In June his involvement migrated to their advisory board giving him time to pursue a new venture, p98a, self-described as “an experimental letterpress workshop in Berlin dedicated to letters, printing and paper. We explore how letterpress can be redefined in the 21st century through research, printing, collecting, publishing and making things.”
Erik’s passion for metal type found a new dream to realize with his collaboration with Neue for Akzidenz-Grotesk® Serie 57. Neue, founded by Alexander Roth, partnered with Erik Spiekermann to bring the youngest orphan of the Akzidenz-Grotesk® Serie 57 metal type family into the digital realm. They’ve branded it as neue Serie57®. When I received my Type Specimen for Neue Serie57® from Germany signed and numbered I pinched myself. Christmas came early. Another link to The Weather Channel lies in Akzidenz Grotesk. We used this entire family including narrow and extended variations across the entire TWC network redesign from 1996–1999.
“If we want to speak to people, we need to know their language. In order to design for understanding, we need to understand design.”
— Erik Spiekermann, Art Historian, Printer, Type Designer, Information Architect, and Author