Text by Liz Far­relly
Visit Berlin, and it won’t belong before you encounter Erik Spiek­er­mann. His graphic fin­ger­prints are every­where – in the type­faces for the Ger­man Rail­ways, the Berlin Under­ground, and the myr­iad organ­i­sa­tions that make use of com­mu­ni­ca­tions designed by his prac­tices over the years.

But there’s a web of con­nec­tions that reaches far beyond Berlin, where it can seem that every other designer has a link to the ‘Meta­man’ – whether they’ve been hired, fired, taught, crit­i­cized or cham­pi­oned by him. Many more are linked by human (‘Six degrees of sep­a­ra­tion’) net­works. Spiek­er­mann reigned at the helm of MetaDesign’s inter­na­tional net­work of stu­dios and affil­i­ates for two decades, and has taught and lec­tured through­out the world. Wher­ever you go you can see the fruits of Spiekermann’s ongo­ing work for inter­na­tional brands that adorn the hoods of auto­mo­biles, the fas­cias of domes­tic elec­tron­ics, cul­tural insti­tu­tions and books.

Yet his role as a high-ranking mover and shaker, an éminence grise within cor­po­rate design cul­ture, is only one string to his bow. No analy­sis of his work would be com­plete with­out not­ing his role in the evo­lu­tion of type design. Not only as a designer, but also as an entre­pre­neur, who estab­lished a new model for doing busi­ness, which he grew into a sep­a­rate world­wide net­work in the shape of FontShopIn­ter­na­tional. In that role, he is a prodi­gious talent-spotter, who has helped to nur­ture two gen­er­a­tions of new type­design­ers by pro­vid­ing cre­ative and com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties for an ever-widening dias­pora of collaborators.

Inside this gate­fold, our time­line plots a net­work of design­ers, type­faces, pub­li­ca­tions and events linked to Spiek­er­mann (ES) over the past three decades. It is far from com­plete – we didn’t begin to list the ex-MetaDesign pro­fes­sors, nor the mul­ti­ple awards – but that’s in the nature of net­works. We’ll watch with fas­ci­na­tion as his con­nec­tions con­tinue to expand by degrees.

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Online kann man den Artikel lesen bei eye­magazine.