Now and again, Blue­print mag­a­zine pub­lishes one of my monthly columns on their web­site. This is the Novem­ber column.

ONCE I KNOW what topic I want to (or have to) write about, the most crit­i­cal deci­sion becomes inevitable: how to begin? No evening class in Cre­ative Writ­ing, no jour­nal­ism course fails to men­tion how impor­tant the first sen­tence is for the impres­sion a text makes upon the unpre­pared reader. Nor­bert Miller, a Ger­man lit­er­ary his­to­rian, pub­lished a col­lec­tion of essays about what he called this ‘rad­i­cal deci­sion’. The first sen­tence com­presses the infi­nite space for reflec­tion into a finite object, set­tling on one ver­sion out of a mul­ti­tude of vari­a­tions and pos­si­ble strategies.

Con­sider these alter­na­tives: ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ and ‘One morn­ing, as Gre­gor Samsa was wak­ing up from anx­ious dreams, he dis­cov­ered that in his bed he had been changed into a mon­strous ver­minous bug.’
Read the rest of this entry »

This is a piece I orig­i­nally wrote for my Achtung col­umn in Blue­print mag­a­zine. When John Board­ley asked me to con­tribute to his forth­com­ing mag­a­zine Codex, I was too busy to write any­thing from scratch. As, how­ever, I con­sid­ered the over­lap between Blueprint’s and Codex’s read­er­ship to be neg­li­gi­ble, I offered this arti­cle. John sug­gested send­ing him a pho­tog­ra­phy of my infa­mous book­shelf that runs over two floors in our house in Berlin, where the top shelves can only be reached by strap­ping one­self into a climber’s har­ness which is moved up and down by an elec­tri­cally oper­ated winch.

I don’t think John edited my piece very much, but I did notice that he changed my British alu­minium to the US alu­minum. As you can see below, I would have insisted on my orig­i­nal spelling. No idea why one would ever change that word in the first place – in Ger­man word we also write (and say) Alu­minium. John did me a favour though: he found the source for the Ovink quote below. Thank you, John, for that and for Codex.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have just returned from the OFFF fes­ti­val in Barcelona. Ear­lier this year, they asked me for a state­ment about the future. They announced this the Year Zero, a restart. Go back to zero, wipe out the past, etc. Not sure I agree with that, but that’ll be the topic for another comment.

Usu­ally, I deny these requests because I don’t like mak­ing pre­dic­tions about sub­jects I don’t know. But they insisted, and in the end I sent them this lit­tle piece:


Rethink Design, Redesign Think­ing.
As a designer, I like the future.

After cen­turies of being dom­i­nated by tech­nol­ogy – from cut­ting wood to print­ing neg­a­tives, from bak­ing mud bricks to rein­forc­ing con­crete – design­ers of all dis­ci­plines now have the tools to present and make any­thing imag­in­able. There is no excuse for not com­ing up with new con­cepts. Design­ers and archi­tects can no longer blame their short­com­ings on the lim­its of tech­nol­ogy. There will always be clients to blame –  that has not changed since the Pope asked Michelan­gelo to paint the ceil­ing of that lit­tle chapel in the Vatican.

The best thing, how­ever, is the fact that we are begin­ning to real­ize some­thing else: we have tal­ents that go beyond mak­ing things work well and look good. We can also take apart ideas, look at them, throw away what is not needed and put them back together again. Design­ers can redesign think­ing. And we need to, because nobody else will.

Every day I get emails from stu­dents who have a project to fin­ish. They ask me about my work, my opin­ions and often want me to send them my fonts as that would make the design of their the­sis much eas­ier. More often than not they ask about things they could have found out about if they had only spent a bit more time look­ing around or by going to a library, instead of just check­ing the first page of a Google query. So I tell them that I will answer proper ques­tions that are directed at me and that con­cern my work, my expe­ri­ence or even my opin­ions, but that I will only do so once they’ve done their home­work.
Just the other day I got a request from a stu­dent who is inter­ested in the typog­ra­phy on foot­ball shirts. Great topic, and one that has been writ­ten about a lot. But he obvi­ously hadn’t looked any­where before writ­ing to me. He even asks me why this »infor­ma­tion is lim­ited and dif­fi­cult to get hold of?«.
But read our cor­re­spon­dence for yourselves.

***

Dear Mr Spiek­er­mann,
My name is Rajeev Saroy and I am cur­rently study­ing Graphic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Wolver­hamp­ton. The final year of my degree requires me to write a dis­ser­ta­tion on a topic of inter­est related to a major sub­ject within my degree. Foot­ball is a very big part of my life and I have always ques­tioned the typog­ra­phy on foot­ball t-shirts. This is the sub­ject that I have cho­sen to explore and inves­ti­gate.
I am hav­ing great dif­fi­cul­ties in gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion around my cho­sen sub­ject and I have put together a few ques­tions that I would like you to answer in as much detail as you pos­si­bly can.

1.     Who designs the type­faces that are employed on foot­ball t-shirts?

2.     Why is this infor­ma­tion lim­ited and very dif­fi­cult to get hold of?

3.     Why is it that many foot­ball teams can­not choose their own shirt num­bers and fonts?

4.     In the Eng­lish Pre­mier League, all teams are obliged to obtain the same type­face. Who autho­rises this?

5.     Type­faces and the arrange­ment on foot­ball t-shirts is spe­cial job for graphic design­ers. How many design­ers have con­tributed towards this that you are aware of?

6.     If type­faces are not designed by Graphic design­ers, who has cre­ated them in the past and who has it been approved by?

7.     Do FIFA, UEFA and the FA have a set of rules and reg­u­la­tions, which restrict the true form of type? Is it due to these rules that type is deformed, chopped and changed?

8.     Once a type­face is cre­ated, who approves it?

9.     Is typog­ra­phy neglected on foot­ball t-shirts? If the answer is yes, why is this? Is it down to mega cor­po­ra­tions or is it due to the lack of typo­graphic knowl­edge by foot­ball organisations?

10. Are there any con­tem­po­rary typog­ra­phers that can con­tribute their skills towards type on foot­ball t-shirts?

11. Can new/existing type­faces replace ones that have been manip­u­lated?
If there are any issues or views that you would like to men­tion, please feel free to do so.
May I thank you for your time and co-operation.

RAJEEV SAROY.

***

Dear Rajeev,
most of your ques­tions can only be answered by the peo­ple in the foot­ball busi­ness. How should I know who approves the design? Why do you ask me why this infor­ma­tion is dif­fi­cult to get hold of? Aren’t you the stu­dent who is sup­posed to do the assignment?

Could it be that you haven’t done your home­work? Surely this is some­thing the FA or FIFA will answer. Those are scary bureau­cra­cies, but I’m not going to tackle them on your behalf.

There is plenty of infor­ma­tion out there, on the blogs, on typophile.com. The mak­ers of kit, like Puma, Umbro, Adi­das et al com­mis­sion this stuff, of course, because they make it.
One designer in Lon­don has actu­ally designed type for foot­ball shirts (Puma?): Bruno Maag, of Dal­ton Maag.

Ask him, but do more of your home­work first. If foot­ball is a very big part of your life, then get off your arse and look around. Of course it’s dif­fi­cult, but it is also dif­fi­cult for me to spend part of my spare time on a sat­ur­day answer­ing emails from kids who haven’t even looked at the infor­ma­tion from the asso­ci­a­tions, the mak­ers of kit.

Being a stu­dent means learn­ing to learn, not sim­ply writ­ing an email and hop­ing that some­body else will do the work for you. There was a world before Google.

My col­umn in Blue­print mag­a­zine always cov­ers the main topic of the issue. This time they asked me to write about Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is a car­toon of itself, a stand­ing joke, but with­out the slight­est hint of irony, or self-distance. It is per­haps the most Amer­i­can of US cities, built evi­dence to the fact that big­ger is bet­ter and that bet­ter is big­ger. Noth­ing in Las Vegas started as an orig­i­nal idea, and noth­ing seems older than 10 years, but the sheer amount of bor­rowed images makes the whole totally incom­pa­ra­ble.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another col­umn from Blue­print mag­a­zine. I think it appeared in the novem­ber issue.
Read the rest of this entry »

While avoid­ing writ­ing my next col­umn for Blue­print mag­a­zine, I found the piece I wrote last year about the same topic, Japan. There is no other rea­son to pub­lish it here and now except the fact that I have it right in front of me now, an unfor­mat­ted text file.
Read the rest of this entry »

The new web­site for Eden­spiek­er­mann is up. A lot of the projects are fairly main­stream and a lot of the copy sounds rather “cor­po­rate” to me. That is the result of hav­ing to agree on every sen­tence between nine part­ners and 100 col­leagues. My per­sonal take is rep­re­sented by the text I wrote about the HOW.

We run our busi­ness by shar­ing respon­si­bil­ity among nine part­ners. Each of us run project teams. We do not take money from face­less net­works and don’t have to be account­able to their con­trollers. We alone decide who we work for and how we orga­nize our­selves. And we put our money where our mouths are: we are share­hold­ers and inter­ested in the long view.
Most design con­sul­tan­cies or brand­ing agen­cies (pick your own name) offer pretty much the same type of work. It is how they go about their work that makes the dif­fer­ence. It is a ques­tion of atti­tude, per­son­al­ity, even morals.

The cur­rent cri­sis is also a cri­sis of val­ues: are peo­ple account­able for what they do? Is suc­cess rewarded with fat pre­mi­ums but fail­ure paid for by soci­ety? Can we carry on ask­ing for growth as the only way for­ward? Do we need new values?

Even design­ers are not only judged by the vis­i­ble results of their work, but more and more so by how they achieved them. Orig­i­nal­ity, per­son­al­ity, account­abil­ity are new buzz­words. Atti­tude is more inter­est­ing than cleverness.

Brands are suc­cess­ful when they when they are authen­tic, when they show atti­tude. They show how they make prod­ucts, how they treat their peo­ple, how they look at the future. Cheap stuff – the What – will still be made in China and else­where. Com­plex processes – the How – are designed here.

Achtung! is the title of my monthly col­umn in Blue­print mag­a­zine that I have been writ­ing since Octo­ber 2008. That head­line has to do with the Brits’ con­tin­u­ing stereo­typ­ing of us Ger­mans as heel-clicking, orders-shouting men in jack­boots. I have long since learned that the best way to live with that pre­oc­cu­pa­tion is to go along with it, even bring it up before they do. So when the edi­tors came up with the title, I rolled my eyes but agreed. This was writ­ten in Sep­tem­ber, before the size of the finan­cial cri­sis became to be fully known. My con­dem­na­tion of peo­ple pro­duc­ing “invis­i­ble earn­ings” could have been much harsher.

THESE DAYS, even cities and coun­tries are branded like wash­ing pow­der. When I hear a line like ‘Lon­don is the cre­ative cap­i­tal of Europe,’ (or was it ‘the World’?), the first thing I ask myself is whether this is the result of objec­tive research, a tabloid inven­tion or another gov­ern­ment cam­paign to take peo­ples’ minds off increas­ing infla­tion, pro­hib­i­tive prop­erty prices, ter­ri­ble traf­fic and weird weather. Yet there is some truth behind the slo­gan. I live and work in Berlin, San Fran­cisco and Lon­don, and there is some­thing dif­fer­ent about the British capital.

Read the rest of this entry »

On May 24^th Adrian Frutiger cel­e­brated his 80^th birth­day. To mark the occa­sion I wrote a short piece for the Swiss mag­a­zine Hoch­parterre. At the time, this blog was not very active and I only got the Ger­man ver­sion pub­lished. In the mean­time, my son, Dylan, has trans­lated the arti­cle into English.

Adrian Frutiger: Mr. Univers
When you get to a cer­tain age, like myself, you often gets asked who your influ­ences were and are. An easy response is to name nation­ally or inter­na­tion­ally renowned favourites such as Gandhi or Albert Schweitzer. Ones own par­ents tend to score high on the list, at least if they’re still liv­ing and able to read the acco­lades. As far as I’m con­cerned my choice has been a sim­ple one for over 30 years: I first met Adrian Frutiger in 1976, and to this day he remains my idol.

Read the rest of this entry »