ff Meta specimen

Iago Barreiro Vicente2º Graphic Design

Erik SpiekermannMetaDesign Studio

> Origin

> Development

> The type in practice

> Spiekermann

ff MetaNO POSTAGE NECESSARY

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Concept and propostal

> Origin> Development

> The type in practice> Spiekermann

Deutsche Bundespost building

Deutsche Bundespost stamps

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> Spiekermann

In 1984, I persuaded the german post office (Bundespost) to commission an exclusive typeface for all their printed materials. We had begun a comprehensive design programme for the state-owned agency, which had been using a plethora of typefaces including dozens of dissimilar fonts from the Helvetica family. An exclusive typeface could end this chaos and give a coherent look to thousands of forms, brochures, advertisements and phone books.

In 1985, we started the project by defining targets. It was supposed to be: legible in small sizes; neutral, with a non-fashionable design; available on all systems; available from all suppliers; economical (space-saving); available in several, clearly distinguishable weights; unmistakable and characteristic; and technologi-cally up to date. Some of these parameters may sound strange today, but back in 1985, each typesetting system had its own, exclusive fonts which couldn’t be used on other systems. After careful analysis, we looked at existing typefaces as possi-ble candidates for redesign as well as sketching some alternatives. We assessed what makes a typeface legible under certain conditions, and developed what still appears to be a coherent theory. Having presented this to the client, we drew two weights, regular and bold, which were then digitized at Linotype in Frankfurt on large mainframe computers. By late summer we had set a few forms, pages from a telephone book and brochures. They were tested and approved. But before the new typefaces were officially accepted, the whole project was cancelled. It appea-red to be a political decision. And despite my protests that Postscript and desktop computers were the future of typesetting, the people in Bonn never believed the work could be done using hundreds of typesetters and printers across Germany. They continued to use Helvetica in all its variations, until they finally switched over to Frutiger in 1999.

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Sketches and process



Sketches of ff Meta

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By 1988, desktop software had become available to digitize typefaces. We took the original drawings and developed the typeface for use by our own studio, Meta-Design, and named the font Meta. It took ‘real’ type designers to finish it: Just van Rossum, our first resident type designer, and later Lucas de Groot, who added new weights to the family. When we set a catalogue for FontShop, they liked it and persuaded me to license it. They released it as ff Meta and it quickly became a bestseller. The ff Meta family now has 81 members, including the condensed version and Meta Serif Pro, Meta Correspondence, plus Turkish, Baltic and Central European versions. Every weight (except Meta Correspondence) has an expert set and a version with lining figures. Designers around the world use it for all sorts of projects, none as prosaic as the job that first prompted it.

Most well-used typefaces today owe their existence not to designer’s whim, but to having been designed for a specific purpose. Times New Roman was Stanley Morison’s and Monotype’s solution to the problem of a daily paper being printed on a high-speed cylinder press in 1931 and to the challenge of fitting more words into a line than traditional newspaper faces had done previously. Bell Gothic was designed for telephone books, Frutiger for signage at Charles de Gaulle airport in 1976. Giambattista Bodoni designed and cut a new typeface for every printing commission he had, each size separately. Din has been seen on every German road sign since the thirties and Letter Gothic was designed to withstand both the physical and aesthetic constraints of the golfball typewriter.

ff Meta started its life intended to be set in small sizes and printed on bad paper, mostly on forms for the German Post Office, the Bundespost, and its design was based on well-known facts about legibility and recognition.

Sketches of ff Meta

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We know that when we read, our eyes scan along the top of the x-height, so making the shapes along that line more explicit would help that process. The oblique pseudo-serifs lead the eye into the letter as well as from one to the other. They also help to open up close angles between vertical and horizontal strokes, avoiding dark spots. In larger sizes, these deliberate in-terventions might create too much noise, but at small sizes - those between 7 and 10 point - they actually add warmth.

We need to precisely distinguish one letter from another only when we are looking for detailed information, as in telephone books or instructional ma-terial. In books and even magazines, we tend to quickly glance over whole groups of letters, even words, as we read what we expect to read. To work for both tasks, ff Meta has very explicit lettershapes to facilitate recogni-tion of individual characters in small sizes (like the curvy end on the bottom of the), while the design makes long-distance reading just as comfortable as a prope serif face. Its construction is based on contrast between outer

and inner (counter) shapes. These are rounded-off rectangles, while the outer shapes are ovals, creating not only contrast between horizontal and vertical strokes, but also one between outer and inner shapes. Contrast and rhythm (as provided by the oblique terminals and pseudo-serifs at the be-ginnings and endings of letters) are more important for continuous reading than explicit letterforms.

Sketches of ff Meta

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Sketches of ff Meta

Erik Spiekermannbased on well-known facts about legibility and recognition

A sans serif humanist typeface family with 81 weights

Deustche Bundespost

legibility86 pt MetaPlusNormal-Caps

204 pt MetaPlusNormal-CapsItalic

75 pt MetaPlusNormal-Italic

Economy and space-saving The new Helvetica

Erik Spiekermannbased on well-known facts about legibility and recognition

A sans serif humanist typeface family with 81 weights

Deustche Bundespost

legibilityEconomy and space-saving The new Helvetica

35 ptMetaPlusNormal-Roman

105 ptMetaPlusBlack-Roman

34 ptMetaPlusNormal-Caps

113 ptMetaPlusBold-Roman

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Sketches of ff Meta Serif

ff Meta Condensedff Meta also shows its origin as a well-researched rather than creatively inventeded typeface by the fact that it runs about 12% narrower than, say, Helvetica. The condensed version manages to get even more characters into a line, increasing usefulness without sacrificing legibility. As the stroke width on the condensed weights has to be a little lighter than on the regular ones, a gap opened up between the bold and black for an extrabold weight. ff Meta Condensed therefore has six weights, while ff Meta only has five.

Figures When ff Meta was first conceived in 1985, there were very few sans serif faces with old style figures. As, however, there are still plenty of applica-tions which need monospaced, full size figures, all weights of ff Meta now have both lining figures for tables etc, as well as old style figures for text.

Small Caps ff Meta is not a geometric sans face, but rather a serifless roman and thus perfectly suited for setting long copy in magazines and books. The normal weight is a little too light for classic text setting and therefore the book weight has been added. All weights (even the italics) have small caps, so one can set traditional styles for proper names, abbreviations or short headings.

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ArrowsThe arrow is one of the most useful non-alphabetic glyphs. I have been using an arrow on my personal stationery since letterpress days, and I designed the special dotted arrow for ff Meta. There are small and big arrows in eight directions. On top of the subtle lettershapes and a good range of weights, it is these arrows that ff Meta make very suitable for signage and wayfinding systems.

ff Meta CorrespondenceOffice correspondence does not have to use a typewriter face anymore, nor do let-ters on a pc always have to be set in Times Roman. The Correspondence version of ff Meta is slightly more openly spaced than the typesetting version which makes the face more suitable for printing on lowresolution printers. Business applica-tions like Microsoft Word do not offer the same subtle spacing that professional layout applications do, and more generous space between characters avoids clashes and dark spots on the page. Four weights are sufficient for business correspondence, and the figures are monospaced for tabular matter like invoices or spreadsheets.

ff Meta SerifIt took three years and three designers to develop ff Meta Serif. All through the ’90s, Erik Spiekermann made several attempts at designing a counterpart for his groundbreaking ff Meta. Fans of Meta frequently asked him which serif face would best complement it. He recommended Swift™, Minion™, ff Clifford™, and others, until he realized that he should just buckle down and draw his own serif Meta. True to his principle of collaboration, Spiekermann enlisted the help of accomplished type designers Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby.ff Meta Serif is one of the more challenging projects I’ve worked on. Erik Spiekermann’s original ff Meta is one of the most ubiquitous (and recognizable) sans serifs of the past 20 years, and has already been in and out of style a couple of times. We knew its seriffed sibling needed to be more than just Meta with slab serifs slapped onto it - it needed to be 100% compatible with the sans, but still able to stand on its own as a legitimate text typeface.

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Fig 4Fig 1

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ff Meta is everywhere

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Fig 3

ff Meta is everywhere

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> Spiekermann

Well according to Spiekermann, Meta was intended to be a “complete antithesis of Helvetica,” which he found “boring and bland.”. Throughout the nineties, Meta was embraced by the international design community with Spiekermann and E. M. Ginger writing that it had been dubiously praised as the “Helvetica of the 1990’s”.

FF Meta has been adopted by numerous corporations and other organizations as a corporate typeface, for signage or in their logo. It is the typeface used by Connex in the Stockholm Metro. In the US it has been used for I.D. and Reason magazines. In Australia, the ANZ Bank has adopted the font as its corporate type, as has the Queensland Government. It is also the official print typeface for Imperial College London and for all publications for the U.K.‘s.

Some imagenes of example uses of this typeface are: Fig 1 European Commission for Tempus Program EinfahrtFig 2 Avery Surface CleanerFig 3 A Real Estate Signes from LunshofFig 4 Netherlands lotteryFig 5 University of Bordeaux Fig 6 Endemol Media Contents ProducersFig 7 Mozilla Foundation

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Thinker and designer



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Erik Spiekermann (born 1947) calls himself a typographic designer as wella as a typedesigner. He financied his studies in Art Hitory at Berlin’s Free University by running a printing press and setting metal type in the basement of his house. After spending seven years as a freelance designer in London, he retuned to Berlin in 1979, where - together with two partners - he founded MetaDesign. MetaDesign Berlin now employs more than 200 people, which makes in the largest design studio in Germany. MetaDesign San Francisco opened in 1992 (now 60) and MetaDesign London (50 employees) started in 1995. Worldwide clientes range from Adobe, Apple, Audi, hewlett Packard, IBM and Nike to Texas Instru-mentes and Volkswagen. metaDesign specialize in comples, often large, corporate design programas and information systems, incluidng new media, online and offline; all with strong emphasis on typography.

In 1989, Erik founded FontShop International, publishers of the FontFont library, including one of his own designs, FF Meta, which has become one of the most po-pular typefaces in the USA and Europe. One of his other typefaces, ITC Officinam seems to be on every other webpage these days and FF Infor (designed with Ole Schäfer), his lastes effort, has been chosen for the wayfinding system of a major European airport. HE started designing type back in th e70s, by redrawing LoType and Berliner Grotesk - twoold hot metal faces from the Berthold library.

Erik has witten numerous articles and foru books about type and typography, which have appeared both in Europe and in th eUSA, including ‘Stop Sealing Sheep’ for Adobe Press. He is a memeber of the board of directors of the ATypl, member of the Type Directors Club New York, member of The Arts Directors Club, honorary member of the Typographic Circle London, D & AD, Fellow of the Society of Typographic Designers UK, Vice-President of the German Design Council, Pre-sident of the IIID, Internacional Institute of Information Design, and may more. He holds and Honorary Professorship at the Academy of Arts in bremen and teaches workshops at design schools across the world. His entertaining lectures and often controversial participation in judging competitions have gained him an interna-tional reputation as one of Germany’s leading communication designers. Erik’s work and that of MetaDesign have been credited as offering a blend of Teutonic efficiency and Anglosaxon sense of humour.

In August 2000, Erik left MetaDesign Berlin. He has no active involvement in the Berlin office anymore, but continues a working relationship whit MetaLondon and MetaDesign North America.

Erik Spiekermann

ff Meta specimen

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