Just found this illustration of some of the work we did for apple in 1992. That was just after we started MetaDesign in San Francisco and it involved a complete design system for the Mac OS. All flat.
Mac OS design system 1992. All flat.
Better screens
Discussing the quality of type on a smartphone screen is difficult without the actual object at hand. I posted screenshots, but they were reduced, changed in resolution, uploaded and rendered in a browser. Far removed from the real thing.
While that remains elusive, here’s another try at doing our work and that of the Firefox OS team justice. This is an attempt at uploading one of the screens at the same size and resolution it was sent to me. Who knows what WordPress and the browsers will do to it…
Then again, if our typeface survives this, it’ll be well suited for even modest resolution on a small screen. The original screenshot is 320x480px at 165ppi.
Fira for Firefox OS
The UX team at Firefox has just sent me some screengrabs from their work on a smartphone using the new OS. The Fira typeface will be available under and Open Source license. The version currently on GitHub is not the final one. We made some small changes before we officially shipped our final fonts. Those should be available soon.
These are small reproductions of reproductions. The real screens are much sharper, of course.
Fira specimen uploaded
You can now download the first specimen pages for Firefox OS’ new typeface from here: https://spiekermann.com/en/downloads/
Printing letterpress at Typo Berlin 2013
For TYPO Berlin 2013 Erik Spiekermann, Axel Nagel, Thomas Maier and Ferdinand Ulrich organized a printing press, wood type letters and stamps to print posters and t-shirts with the attendees. Thanks to Opposition Studios for making this video.
See more at: https://typotalks.com/video/category/image-video/#sthash.9oJDPBKC.dpuf
Printing letterpress
After my friends at the Point conference prematurely uploaded a video that had neither been filmed professionally, nor edited at all, Frerk Lintz, a colleague who actually makes films for a living, came to my studio and shot a few sequences. We decided not to make a voice-over because if you don’t get what’s going on, this video isn’t for you in the first place.
Frerk runs a website with great video interviews. Most of them are in German, but all of them are fun to watch.
Printing on my old Korrex in Berlin from erik spiekermann on Vimeo.
A spot of ink
Just finished printing a short run, 2-colour poster for the POINT conference in London with Thomas Maier pointing a camera at me.
Spiekermann Poster Film from POINT on Vimeo.
The state of typography
Not sure whether I agree with all the facts or the figures in this chart, but it still makes interesting reading:
Source: static.colourlovers.com via FontShop on Pinterest
Another Lifetime Achievement
It could be a signal to quit: this is my fourth lifetime award since the German Design Council gave me their award in 2011, followed by SoTA (Society of Typographic Afficionados) and the TDC (TypeDirectors Club New York). The German Art Directors gave me their award last friday here in Berlin. It is a golden nail. Honi soit qui mal y pense…
Thank you.
Vandercool II
My first Vandercook proof press in the US is a Universal I, all electric. The press is in our garage here in Belvedere, which was built for the big cars of the 50s. The press was so filthy that I have spent the past two weeks cleaning it. Now the rust and the grime are gone, as are my fingernails. The paint is partly gone and the blank metal looks uneven, so I had to submit these photographs to quite a bit of Photoshop treatment in order to make them at least look nostalgic, if not technically precise.
