The Communication Power Station: Erik Spiekermann
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Someone who thinks a lower-case “a” is the most beautiful, important and friendly of all the letters, and is as actively engaged in the service of communication as font designer, typographer, communication designer and entrepreneur Erik Spiekermann has tirelessly been for more than 30 years, must like both a great deal: letters and people.
January 2010. There’s a commotion. “Look at this splendid sweep! The curve at the top!” Someone looks around the corner in irritation. “And here, this perfect descender! It’s truly fantastic!”. Erik Spiekermann is standing in front of some editorials that are on display for a contest committee – and giving his opinions on a lower-case “g”. He speaks loudly and fast. A sonorous staccato. And at the same time he raves about this letter with the kind of love and dedication with which you hear other men talking about women or cars at the most. Wearing his heart on his tongue.
This form of expression seems to have been invented for Erik Spiekermann, a font designer, typographer, communication designer, entrepreneur and globetrotter. He says what he thinks. Spontaneous, direct, usually fairly loud, sometimes almost unbearably honest. You have to be able to handle it when Spiekermann is discussing, opposing or polemicising something. And it isn’t always immediately apparent what his point is when he’s blustering again. But sooner or later you discover his master plan behind all the communicative set pieces on a large and small scale.
Nothing works without communication
If communication was a person, it would be a Spiekermann. If communication was a sport, it would be a world champion. Spiekermann’s main message is: nothing works without communication! He believes it to be the bread that nourishes societies, and writing to be the grain, in other words the most important ingredient. And because the quality of this bread is essentially important to him, he provides the ingredients personally and of the best quality, perfectly tailored to the requirements and tastes of the time. Here are a few examples to illustrate this.
When Spiekermann started work on one of the company fonts for the Deutsche Post to substitute the omnipresent Helvetica back in 1984, he was at least 10 years ahead of his time. The thing is, “FF Meta”, as this font was later to be called – after the post office had of course rejected it – is the prototype of a new generation of sans serif fonts that bring the infinite potential of digital font design together with the requirements of modern utility fonts resilient enough for multimedia use. Meta, which was published in1991 and has since undergone continuous expansion to become a large font family, is now a symbol and a turning point in the history of typography: it shows the way into the digital future for fonts at an early stage, and at the same time it illustrates through the example of the post office’s attitude the extent to which companies and institutions struggle with changes in the so-called communication society, which may be capable of doing anything from a technology point of view, but is still a long way off understanding the versatile uses of many innovations. Its success proves Spiekermann right: Meta is one of the best-selling fonts in the world over the past 20 years. |
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Orientated to the zeitgeist
“ITC Officina” was released as early as 1989, another example of how cleverly Spiekermann orientates his designs on the zeitgeist. The thing is, the good old typewriter fonts such as Letter Gothic or Courier (both dating back to 1956) had in practice become obsolete as the triumphant success of the personal computer was starting, bearing in mind that they were based on the technical shortcomings of standardised typeface widths on typewriters. Spiekermann realised this and with Officina he has supplied a font that combines the character of personal mail correspondence learnt from the typewriter with the capabilities of a PC. The Officina font was also to become a great success. His experiences with the post office helped Spiekermann with another information font in 2005: the corporate font for Deutsche Bahn. The rail company had of course been using Helvetica for decades as well, however it was now reaching its limits against the backdrop of a need for information that was becoming more and more complex. Anyone with a Deutsche Bahn information folder in their hands nowadays will immediately understand the cleverness of Spiekermann fonts. |
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The fact is, even in tiny type sizes this font is clear and easy to read, not only in printed material but also on the screen. It’s a real masterpiece, which ranks even higher once you know how much effort it took to have this font approved by the board of directors at Deutsche Bahn.
The latest addition
Finally there is Axel, the latest addition to Spiekermann’s font clan. At this point in his tireless search for contemporary themes he discovered the group of controllers and secretaries, the secret rulers of every company, who repeatedly manage to devise entire corporate design processes quietly and without a fuss using their favourite tool Excel (cf: Axel). You see, Excel is a product for engineers that does not take typography into consideration. And that’s why these same controllers and secretaries believe the typographical declaration of bankruptcy that is Arial is the pinnacle of font creation, because – well, it just works in columns of figures on-screen and in digital exchange formats. Axel shows a considerably better way forward here. It is more economical on space, easier to read, and as one of the first fonts to have integrated web font technology it can be seen on any computer without the font having to be installed. Yet another idea that was to have far-reaching influence.
His works are completed with a whole range of other fonts that are always created in cooperation with established font designers (for instance Just van Rossum, Erik van Blokland, Lucas de Groot, Ole Schäfer and Christian Schwartz), which ensures that Spiekermann has long been a part of the tradition of major German-speaking typographers such as Jan Tschichold, Hermann Zapf or Adrian Frutiger. However in contrast to Tschichold for example, who underwent a metamorphosis from revolutionary (Ivan Tschichold and constructivism) to preserver (the Sabon font as a citation from Renaissanceantiqua Garamond) during the course of his typographic career, Spiekermann is becoming increasingly modern with advancing age. Right in the turmoil of the digital revolution he is fighting loudly and audibly, with spirit and courage, for the font’s culture. There is no end in sight. Spiekermann the entrepreneur
At this point the story would actually be over already. But it isn’t, because true skill doesn’t only reveal itself where good ideas are being created, it is also particularly obvious where these ideas are being implemented as well.
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Which brings us back to Erik Spiekermann the entrepreneur and his significance for German and international graphic design. And last but not least to the media phenomenon @espiekermann.
The British design magazine Eye successfully visualised Spiekermann’s influence in February 2010 with the aid of a detailed diagram. The reader sees a work that starts in 1979 and shows four colour-coded success criteria: his own companies with clients, spin-offs, publications and design achievements. Indeed the diagram, which is similar to a spine, shows the backbone of German graphic design over the past 30 years. And there is possibly no other comparable design personality in the world whose scholars and former employees have cultivated such a comprehensive and successful company tree. Eye counts over 50 design offices and independent graphic designers who are in a direct professional relationship with Spiekermann and his companies. Even MetaDesign 1.0 – founded in 1979 by Erik Spiekermann, Florian Fischer and Dieter Heil – anchors the significance of visual communication, typography and graphic brand management in the executive floors of large and medium-sized companies. The demand was soon to become greater than the products available, so that MetaDesign was able to lose its most creative minds when they went freelance without damage. The fact that this breaking of ties usually happens respectfully is proved by the RealMeta annual reunion, to which over 400 “old boys” subscribe. In 2001 Spiekermann broke away from MetaDesign, which at this point had offices in Berlin, San Francisco, London and Zurich. And many people thought this was the end – of Spiekermann and MetaDesign. The opposite was true: Spiekermann’s brand MetaDesign continues to be strong even today without him. And his new office EdenSpiekermann is looking after international clients again from three subsidiaries. Digital fonts
Spiekermann also committed himself to establishing typography in the digital market in an entrepreneurial capacity: in 1988 he founded the FontShop with his first wife Joan, which he expanded together with Neville Brody into FontShop International, which is currently the leading provider of digital fonts with branches in six countries. Spiekermann founded the typeface label FontFont in 1990 with Brody as well, which was used to publish many of the fonts he created, as well as the legendary Typo experiment FUSE, originally the name-giver of the first FUSE conference in Berlin, which still attracts more than 1000 designers from all over the world to the German capital under the name TypoBerlin.
@espiekermann
So, Spiekermann on every channel, always on the go and full of ideas. He knows exactly how to do that: bringing ideas and people together. And if there is one characteristic that absolutely everyone in his immediate environment mentions first, then it’s this impressive ability to network.
So it’s no wonder that the new digital network Twitter, to which Barack Obama can supposedly attribute his election success and on which there are already thousands of designers strutting their stuff (including significant brands such as Interbrand or Pentagram and all the major design magazines), knows somebody who already has 75 000 followers, and by the end of the year this figure should easily reach 100 000. His Twitter name is: @espiekermann.
The author would like to thank Jürgen Siebert, Marketing Director of FontShop, which he co-founded with Erik Spiekermann and one of his closest confidants for many years, for his collaboration on this article. Siebert, who is probably the best-known design blogger in Germany today with his FontBlog, contributed in particular to the passages about Erik Spiekermann’s significance, as well as providing many useful pieces of information.
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Johannes Erler
first met Erik Spiekermann in 1992 during his work experience at MetaDesign, and since then has come across him repeatedly, for instance at congresses and on design juries. Erler is himself a communication designer and typographer, although he has so far not been bold enough to create his own font because he has not yet found a good reason to do so. However he has been one of the most successful communication designers in Germany over the past 17 years with his office Factor Design. Erler’s personal favourite of Erik Spiekermann’s fonts is “Unit”.
This text is the abridged version of an article for the German Design Council yearbook to commemorate the award of the Design Prize of the Federal Republic of Germany 2011 to Erik Spiekermann in the Personality category. With kind permission of the author and the German Design Council.
Translation: Jo Beckett Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion
March 2011
Any questions about this article?
Please write to us!
online-redaktion@goethe.de
first met Erik Spiekermann in 1992 during his work experience at MetaDesign, and since then has come across him repeatedly, for instance at congresses and on design juries. Erler is himself a communication designer and typographer, although he has so far not been bold enough to create his own font because he has not yet found a good reason to do so. However he has been one of the most successful communication designers in Germany over the past 17 years with his office Factor Design. Erler’s personal favourite of Erik Spiekermann’s fonts is “Unit”.
This text is the abridged version of an article for the German Design Council yearbook to commemorate the award of the Design Prize of the Federal Republic of Germany 2011 to Erik Spiekermann in the Personality category. With kind permission of the author and the German Design Council.
Translation: Jo Beckett Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion
March 2011
Any questions about this article?
Please write to us!
online-redaktion@goethe.de
