Just caught on online interview about webfonts and copied this snippet which mentions the fact that preparing fonts for the web is a lot of work.
typekit_on_fontfont
Here is the whole interview:
https://5by5.tv/bigwebshow
Learning from La Vegas
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.
Continue reading
Glasgow ’99 Typeface
A colleague wanted a copy of the logo for Glasgow ’99 that we designed at MetaDesign London back in 1997. When I looked for it, I found the movie that we made for the presentation at the time. Made in Director, not Flash, it is already a historical document.
Glasgow Typeface from erik spiekermann on Vimeo.
An interview with Erik Spiekermann by Adrian Shaughnessy — Part 2
This is the second part of the interview with Adrian Shaughnessy. The first part was here.
What sort of designer had you become at this point?
Well, I’m not a very good designer; I’m an OK designer. I’m OK when it comes to complex things like grids. I like maths. I like geometry. I like multiples. How things are arranged on the page. I like that because it’s all about discipline. I learnt about type through doing hot-metal typesetting. So I know that what is between the black marks is as important as the black marks themselves. With metal typesetting you have to touch it, it’s not just the return key. So that’s my discipline. I’m an art historian by trade; I’m slightly intellectual, maybe too intellectual. When it comes to visualizing things I’m too intellectual, it becomes too obvious. Neville Brody’s the exact opposite of me. We’ve worked together successfully. Neville’s a digital painter. He just throws it on the page and it looks great, but he can’t repeat it. I’m the other way round. I provide the skeleton, I make sure things don’t fall down. And he makes it look good, and I’m very happy with that.
Continue reading
From EYE magazine
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.
You can download the timeline here.
The article is online at eyemagazine.
Treble-trouble
Human capacity to make mistakes is unlimited, as Murphy formulates in the eponymous law. Bill Hill sent me this picture from California. The figure 3 appears six times. Why are the bottom figures upside down while all the others are the proper way round? Does the person who put the figures on that sign know something we type designers don’t know?
German Rail, before/after
This comparison is a little unfair. The locomotives of the former Bundesbahn (Federal Railways) were painted in a raspberry colour which obviously didn’t age too well. The new engines are painted bright red. We don’t know what this colour will look like in 20 years’ time. But the Bundesbahn’s Helvetica type hasn’t aged well either. It is far too tightly spaced and anything but specific. Using DB Type, Deutsche Bahn’s exclusive typeface, signifies ownership so clearly that there is no need for a logo. Red and type are enough to brand the locomotive.
The science of chocolate
I’ve been involved with TCHO, chocolate makers in San Francisco, as a designer and an investor, for a few years now. Susanna Dulkinys, my wife and business partner, has won several prizes for her work on the TCHO brand and packaging. We have been interviewed about the design aspects, shown the project at conferences and talked to other clients about it. The story of how this amazing chocolate is actually made and why it’s different from other chocolates is told in a feature in WIRED magazine’s UK edition. As it happens, Louis Rossetto, CEO of TCHO, was co-founder of WIRED way back in the early 90s.
For better reading enjoyment, here is a pdf of the article to download:
Wired_022010_Tcho