27.06.07

Complete forgery

For years I had imagined how cool our German Autobahn-signage could look if set in a better typeface than our boring, predictable, stiff old DIN. I never thought that one day I might actually iss that typeface.

When I first got the numberplates for my NSU 22 years ago, those were also set in DIN. Cars that are older than 30 years can get Oldtimer status and an H for historic on the plates. As the Ro80 had first been registered in 1977, that time had just come up.
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The official typeface for our license plates is now called FE-Mittelschrift, with FE meaning it is Fälschungs-Erschwert, i.e. difficult to forge. Apparently car thieves, terrorists and notorious law-breakers had been exploiting DIN’s geometric construction principle and turning E into F or 3 into 8 etc by simply using a bit of black tape or white paint.
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Just as well that those perpetrators obviously do not possess the typographic wherewithall to make their own alphabets for their license plates.

25.06.07

Information Design Woodstock

Next month, communications professionals from all over the world will be “heading for the hills” – the beautiful hills of Austria. That’s where the information design action begins this summer.

FIRST: The International Institute for Information Design (IIID) proudly presents

Vision Plus 12: “Information Design – Achieving Measurable Results,” July 5-7 in Schwarzenberg (Austria). This is THE EVENT to attend if you are serious about informational communications. Our keynote speaker, David Sless, Director of the Communication Research Institute (Melbourne) will present what he says are “spectacular results” from a client engagement that “very clearly demonstrate the economic benefits of information design for the largest multinational company in a-high profile industry.” And that’s just for starters! To see the incredible agenda,
visit visionplus

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NEXT: The Special Interest Group for Information Design Educators will be launched at VisonPlus 12. This initiative has the active backing of several prominent academics at universities in Europe and the USA.

AFTER THAT: The Information Design Exchange – idX (Development of International Core Competencies and Student and Faculty Exchange in Information Design) will meet on July 8, right after VP12 in Bezau, which is just a few miles from the conference venue.

THERE IS STILL MORE: The IIID Summer Academy meets July 28 to August 10 in Calheta de São Miguel, Santiago, Cabo Verde. The theme for this practical field workshop will be “Experiencing Cape Verde: Information design enhancing sustainable tourism.” For more information,
visit iiid.net.

AND IN THE FALL: The IIID Expert Forum in Traffic Guiding Systems presents “Customer Information Services for Public Transport,” September 21-22 in Vienna. The IIIID has been commissioned by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Science and Technology (BMVIT) to carry out a study on “Barrier free information in the transport system.” For more information, including the Call for Speakers, please contact Peter Simlinger, the IIID Director, at peter.simlinger@iiid.net.

Add it all up: high-powered programs, international participants, spectacular settings, and the perfect jumping off point for a different kind of European vacation. Yes, the Euro is still strong, but to make this even more attractive, the IIID is offering a special deal: register now and invite a friend along at a substantial discount. Click here now:
iiid-visionplus.

24.06.07

Rotis am Ende?

Die heimliche Hoffnung jedes Schriftentwerfers ist es, seine Schriften jeden Tag und überall in Gebrauch zu sehen. Immerhin ist damit gelegentlich auch der finanzielle Erfolg verbunden, denn hin und wieder zahlen Gestalter und Agenturen doch Lizenzgebühren für Fonts.

Nun ist es mit einer Schrift wie mit einem Popsong: einmal veröffentlicht, darf jede(r) damit umgehen. Wie es ein Schlager aushalten muss, in der Badewanne (oder ihrer öffentlichen Version, dem Karaoke-Club) von jedem gesungen zu werden, so kann sich auch keine Schrift gegen irgendeine Verwendung wehren. Der Vorteil von Allerweltsschriften wie Helvetica ist es, dass sie einerseits wenige besondere Merkmale haben, die sie auffällig machen, aber andererseits so robust, dass sie einigen Missbrauch aushalten.

Anders steht es mit Schriften, die von ihrem Entwerfer mit einem gestalterischen Mehrwert ausgestattet worden sind. Dadurch sind sie auffälliger, schwieriger im Gebrauch und natürlich auch leichter zu beschädigen. Wenn zu diesen Auffälligkeiten noch ein ideologischer Überbau kommt, das Versprechen eines gewissermaßen eingebauten ästhetischen Vorsprungs also, dann ist die Fallhöhe sehr groß.

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Otl Aicher formulierte für seine Rotis nicht nur einen formalen Anspruch jenseits aller bestehenden Schriften, sondern er behauptete gleichzeitig auch höhere Lesbarkeit. Im vorauseilenden Gehorsam nehmen seitdem viele Gestalter und Architekten – von Baumann & Baumann bis Foster und weiter – Rotis für alles und hoffen, dem Gegenstand ihrer Gestaltung allein dadurch einen erhöhten intellektuellen Anspruch zu verleihen. Die meisten Schriftgestalter hingegen halten Rotis für eine Ansammlung schöner Buchstaben, die aber noch keine richtige Textschrift ausmacht.

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Wenn nun ein Laden für „gehobene“ Kücheneinrichtungen sich den Schriftzug in Rotis an die Fassade hängt, soll beim Betrachter eine Nähe zu Herstellern wie Bulthaup provoziert werden, obwohl keine der angebotenen Küchen je in einem der hervorragend gestalteten (und in Rotis gesetzten) Kataloge dieser Firma erscheinen dürfte. Der Auftritt des Schriftzuges ist ziemlich genau das Gegenteil dessen, was ein Gestalter aus der Rotis-Fraktion machen würde: dunkelrote Plastikbuchstaben mit Messingumleimer. Dazu eine kühne und inhaltlich völlig unmotivierte Unterstreichung, die sich ausgerechnet aus dem X nach links und rechts erstreckt. Das alles aus der schrecklichsten Version, der Rotis SemiSerif. Hinter dieser Anordnung und Materialität verschwindet jede Ideologie; es sieht einfach nur scheußlich aus. Endlich ist Rotis in der Normalität angekommen.

17.06.07

Friedrichstrasse 126

When SpiekermannPartners moved into a listed building in Berlin-Mitte last October, our landlords, Ullstein Publishers, let us use a photo of the building for the announcement. Monika Molin took our 256-colour motif to highlight the windows of the 3rd floor where our offices are.

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Part of SpiekermannPartners’ new address card

Ullstein’s recently redesigned homepage shows the same picture, but this time as a navigational device to lead to their separate publishing labels that are, of course, not hidden behind our windows.
We had nothing to do with the redesign. The tree in front of the building is still there – it just got retouched out of the picture.

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Homepage of Ullstein Buchverlage

End of vacation

After almost two weeks, my birthday vacations are over. The terrible weather has resulted in Tuscany looking incredibly green even this time of year. The main reason I do come back here every now and again are the cyprus trees, the typographical plants. They provide vertical emphasis along the horizontal lines of the landscape – black lines on the horizon.

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03.06.07

Work more efficiently

Now and again, there’s something that solves a problem so effectively that we wonder how we ever managed to work without this solution. Gabriel Kornreich is a German-Argentinian designer in Barcelona. He designed Linea to make it easier to read your laptop screen, work better on the keyboard and ventilate it to prevent if from running too hot. All this with a simple piece of wire, bent into shape and sheathed in plastic at the angles.

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Gabriel makes Linea at home in his kitchen and sells it via gabrielkornreich. It only costs 18 Euros plus postage.

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As my colleagues Johannes, Matthias and Ali at Bremen University demonstrate, it even looks cool.

01.06.07

Birthday greetings

I cannot possibly even start to share all the personal, original, funny, analog, digital greetings, postcards, phone-calls, text messages, letters and packages. Two of them have to be enough to show how ingenious my friends can be.

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Markus Hanzer reminds me that twins (i.e. gemini) have two lives at any rate, so that I am really only 30, if twice.

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Kristin Laufer sent the picture we all know: a yellow sticker on the screen. Analog meets digital!

Thank you both, and all the others who obviously are better at keeping their data in order than I am. I miss most birthdays, even those of other gemini. Markus, by the way, celebrated his on May 31st.

28.05.07

Birthday

Some of my friends know this:
I’ll be 60 on May 30th this year. To avoid military parades, public addresses and medals from the wrong institutions, I’ll be in Italy for that day and then some. Back in Berlin on June 9th. There will be a proper party, but a little later. And those that need to know about it will find out.

26.03.07

Helvetica 50

On March 24, Lars Müller organised an event at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich as a birthday celebration. The typeface was born Neue Haas Grotesk and only got re-christened years later. (see wie-helvetica-zu-ihrem-namen-kam, in German only).

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It was a great pleasure to meet Alfred Hoffmann whom I hand’t seen in more than fifteen years. Alfred is Edouard Hoffmann’s son, the man who briefed Max Miedinger for the design of Neue Haas Grotesk. The success of the typeface owes a lot to Hoffmann’s original idea and his detailed corrections during the design process.

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After a podium discussion (with David Carson!) we saw the European premiere of Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica movie: helveticafilm. At the Typo conference in Berlin later in May the movie will have its German premiere. It is worth seeing even for people who have not beein infected with the typomania virus.