Monday 20 January 2014

An Interview with Erik Spiekermann




Here's a great interview I've spotted with Erik Spiekermann on a couple of his thoughts about some of the issues that come with being a Type Designer; there's a quote in there that I really love:

"All my Typefaces have been designed for a specific purpose, either a project or a client or a situation, you know Meta was first designed for small type on forms and paper way back in the 80s, but I can't stop anyone using it as a large poster or on a bilboard. More often than not I am totally pleasantly surprised how good it may look, not because I designed such an incredible typeface, but because somebody has the guts; I would never do it, but if you're good at it, you can take something out of it's context and put it into a new context, somebody doesn't care what Spiekermann thought, because you know if you design a typeface it's very much like writing a pop song, you can't stop anybody from singing it in their bathroom out of tune, it's a pop song, it's out there, it's popular. And when you design a popular typeface, I should always feel flattered when people even use it in the first place."

That's a really great metaphor he uses there. 

I'm going to anaylse Meta as part of my Type Journal:


Name: FF Meta
Released: 1991
Designer: Erik Spiekermann
Style: Gothic
Classification: Humanist
Suggested Origin: Lead

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