Erik Spiekermann
Erik Spiekermann, born in 1947, studied Art History and English at the Free University of Berlin. He is an information architect, type designer (FF Meta, ITC Officina, FF Info, FF Unit, LoType, and Berliner Grotesk plus many exclusive corporate typefaces), and the author of books, articles, and regularly appearing columns on type, typography, and other cultural issues for magazines such as Blueprint in the UK and Form in Germany.
After spending the 1970s in London, teaching at the London College of Printing, and working for Filmcomposition, Wolff Olins, and other consultancies, he returned to Berlin in 1979 and started MetaDesign, Germany’s largest design firm, with offices in Berlin, London, and San Francisco. Projects included corporate design programs for Audi, Skoda, Volkswagen, Heidelberg Printing, Berlin Transit, The City of Berlin, Düsseldorf Airport, and many other clients. In 1988 he started FontShop, a company for the production and distribution of electronic fonts. He holds an honorary professorship at the Academy of Arts in Bremen, is a board member of the German Design Council, and past president of the International Society of Typographic Designers as well as the International Institute for Information Design. In 2003 he received the Gerrit Noordzij Award from the Royal Academy in The Hague and an honorary doctorate from the Pasadena Art Center. He is Honorary Royal Designer for Industry in Britain. In 2009 he was Ambassador for the European Year of Creativity and Innovation for the European Union.
In 2001, Spiekermann redesigned the magazine The Economist (London). His book for Adobe Press, Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, was issued in a second edition in 2002, as well as in German, Russian, and Portuguese versions. About his FontBook (with Mai-Linh Thi Truong and Jürgen Siebert), issued in its fourth edition in 2006, he says: “If I do say so myself—I helped compile and design it—it’s the largest and best-researched printed compendium of digital type. I use it every day.” His corporate font family for Nokia was released in 2002 and a large system of exclusive typefaces for Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) was introduced in 2005. DB Type was awarded the 2006 Gold Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany. The award jury praised the company’s new type system as a “masterpiece to further information culture in Germany,” saying that the type system enables both an “updated, refined brand image” as well as “easier intake of information for customers, due to the different usage of the many weights, from signage to advertising.” Its “excellent functionality and refined appearance are a welcome improvement to everyday German culture.”
Spiekermann left MetaDesign in 2001 over policy disagreements and started SpiekermannPartners with offices in Berlin, London, and San Francisco. Clients include Bosch, Deutsche Bahn, The Economist, Pioneer Investment, Cisco Systems, Gravis, Messe Frankfurt, Nokia, ZDF German TV, Berlin Philharmonic, The American Academy Berlin, Tcho Chocolate San Francisco, and Birkhäuser Verlag Basel.
SpiekermannPartners merged with Eden Design in Amsterdam in 2009 and the combined company is now called Edenspiekermann.
In June 2011, Erik Spiekermann received the 25th Type Directors Club Medal, given to those who have made significant contributions to the life, art, and craft of typography. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2011 from the German Design Council, the highest design award in Germany.
Contributed Articles
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
.jpg)
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
.png)
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
Popular NowWeekMonth
- One Book and Why: Steven Heller Recommends . . .
- A Year in Design Books: Holiday Gift List 2022
- Baseball, Architecture, Time, and Creativity
- Quote of the Day: Emanuela Frattini Magnusson and Towards a New Architecture
- Imagining Information: Symbols, Isotype, and Book Design
Recent Articles
