Next week I have to fly to China, and I’m already dreading the 12 hours or more on the plane. I can only hope that this man won’t sit next to me. He was photographed by a Stewardess aboard a flight in the US. These days, we’re charged for every kilogram (or pounds or ounce) of extra luggage. Sometimes I long for the days at the beginning of air-travel when every passenger – including women – would be weighed. The pilot had to know the exact weight of the plane in order to guarantee lift-off. Even with my post-christmassy 164 pounds I would qualify for a bonus compared to some folks…

Taken from the book – Studio Culture: the Secret Life of the Graphic Design Studio. This is a shortened version of an interview with Erik Spiekermann. During the 1970s Spiekermann worked as a freelance designer in London before returning to Berlin in 1979 where, with two partners, he founded MetaDesign. In 2001 he left MetaDesign and started UDN (United Designers Network), with offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco. Since January 2009 he has been a director of Edenspiekermann, which employs over 100 people and has offices in Berlin and Amsterdam.

Unusually among contemporary designers, Spiekermann has a sophisticated set of theories relating to the layout, structure and management of design studios. His theories have been extensively road-tested in the various creative enterprises he has founded and run during a long career.

The interview was conducted in the offices of AIG, London.

Adrian Shaughnessy: You have a vision of your perfect studio. You’ve even got a name for it – The ‘Rundbuero’ Studio (see diagram). Can you describe it?
Erik Spiekermann: Ideally it’s a round space. It’s made up of three or four concentric circles. At the centre is a reception area. This is where everybody enters. It is linked to the rest of the studio by a corridor. In the central reception area are the people who answer the telephones, do the emails and make the photocopies. It’s where all the machinery is – the printers, the espresso machine. Everybody has to go in here several times a day to pick up printouts, pick up mail, get coffee and so on. Now, the further you go from the centre the quieter it gets. People in the outer rings have windows, others don’t. The walls are maybe only shoulder height. If a secretary wants to see if I’m in the outer ring, she can get up and look across and see if I’m actually there.
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The previous post showed that blogging from a phone still leaves a lot to be desired. But I still want to make the point that technology shapes design. In this case it created a Clarendon (ca. 15mm tall) that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Similar effects can be seen with type that was produced for other methods of reproduction, from transfer type à la Letraset to wood type made for small presses that printed labels and signs for shops.

I’ve had a new platen press (the previous one burnt down in 1977) and a Korrex proofing press for a while now (see Proofing press upstairs). There is also quite a bit of type and everything else I need to start work; but I still haven’t printed anything. Meanwhile, as reminder and inspiration, here is a lovely video from the US showing business cards being printed on a platen press.

Keegan Meegan Press & Bindery from :::: MAGNETIC ARCHIVES :::: kiva on Vimeo.

TiltShift photos make every picture look like a scene from a toy train catalogue. As the iPhone will not take really good “real” photographs, I prefer to apply effects like TiltShift, even with an app that fakes the effect by applying artificial focus to over-saturated images. At least that generates cool-looking pictures for on-screen use. This one shows the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

Somebody has taken the trouble and uploaded some extra material from the Helvetica DVD to You Tube: