San Francisco walks, 6.

There are a lot of places in California named after saints. And since the Spanish missionaries were here well before any English-speaking Americans (or the Russians, who came down from Alaska and left their mark on place-names like Russian River), these towns start with San or Santa, depending on the saint’s gender. As in San Jose, Santa Barbara, San Rafael, Santa Clara, and, of course San Francisco. This one I found on a shop sign near Washington Square.

Never heard of that Saint.

Gutenberg, the movie

The BBC movie by Stephen Fry has finally arrived on YouTube. It was broadcast last week but is only available online in the UK. This is the link to the first part:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91smRXrEPRs

34th Williams A. Dwiggins Lecture

It’s already a week ago that I held a lecture at the Boston Public Library. It was the 34th. William A. Dwiggins Lecture. As lectures go, it wasn’t all that special (apart from it being a great honour to be asked to speak in front of all those dignified printers and historians), but it was the first time that I had a lecture interrupted by a fire alarm. I just had the first slide up (see small picture) when the alarm went off.

We actually all had to move out into the street. There was the usual display of emergency hardware (I always find that on those occasions in the US they really like to show everything they have) – big trucks with and without ladders, ambulances, patrol cars, dozens of firemen (who like to be called Firefighters these days) with helmets and axes – until it transpired that it had only been a malfunctioning microwave somewhere that caused all this fuss!

Nick Sherman had the presence of mind to film the moment when the alarm went off. He also took the little picture here that I just downloaded from his flickr site. I designed a poster and an invitation for the evening. The card is shown below.

I’ve also added a download for the pdf that was sent to the printers: dwiggins_sheet.pdf.

New Euros, old system.

Two countries will introduce the Euro as currency on January 1, 2008, Cyprus and Malta. The fronts of the coins look the same as that of all other countries, while national symbols are displayed on the back.

This reminded me of the occasion when I got asked by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, back in 1999, to design my own version of the yet to be introduced new European coins. They also asked a few other designers whose solutions I cannot show as I have no data for them.

I noticed back then how little systematic thought had gone into designing the new coins. While there were and still are three different types of metal and several separate sizes and bevels, It would be pushing it to talk of a comprehensive design system. Much worse, however, is the fact that one still can only distinguish some of the coins by looking very closely – not a good idea for money that needs to be available at – dare I say it – the flick of a coin. One ought to be able to sort one’s change inside a pocket and count it even in the dark.

As you can see, the coins are all of slightly different sizes, albeit not different enough to distinguish by touch only. The 2-Euro piece has a diameter of 25.75 mm, the 50-Cent coin is hardly smaller at 24.25 mm, while, strangely, the 1 Euro is smaller than the one half its value, 23.25 mm. The 21.25 mm 5-Cent piece is also larger than the 10-Cent coin, which is worth more but only 19.75 mm in diameter. The different metals can only be told apart in good light.
The 20-Cent piece is the only one with a different bevel, but still hardly distinguishable from the 5-Cent piece of almost the same size. Embossed lines are to be found on the right and on the left or at an angle, but too thin and closely together as to offer any hints for probing fingers. The outline of Europe is more of a political statement than useful for identification.

The backs of the coins are look different from country to country. That offers some interesting choices but doesn’t help keep different nominations apart.

I first distinguished the groups: Ones, Twos and Fives.
The Ones, i. e. the 1-Euro coin, the 10 Cent and the 1 Cent piece, are simply round and each one approx. 20% smaller than each other. If my Euro were 23.25 mm – as is the present one – then my 10 Cent would be 18.50 mm in diameter (about the size of the present 2-Cent piece) and 1 Cent would be 16.50 mm – instead of 16.25 now.

The Twos, that is 2 Euro, 20 Cent and 2 Cent, are octagonal with very round corners, making them distinguishable in the hand. They are of the same diameter as the round coins, but appear a little larger and weigh heavier, while of the same thickness as the Ones.

The Fives are as round as the Ones, but a little thicker and with a hole in the middle, like some Scandinavian coins have been forever. There is no 5-Euro coin as yet, but the system allows for it because it makes sense. The hole in the coin can be felt with the fingers and also looks quite distinct.

Apart from these distinctions if shape and size, the nomination is also symbolized by horizontal lines, of which there are one, two and five (!) The three Euro coins are made from silverm the 50, 20, and 10 Cent pieces from “Nordic Gold” and the three smallest nominations are coined from copper, as they are now.

At first these coins may appear a little sparse and empty. The present design is another one of these compromise as with the design of the Euro banknotes. Nothing was to be recognized as a national symbol of any country. The map of Europe is really quite contradictory in these circumstances. It is incorrect gepgraphically, as Europe is not an island with clear contours. And it is politically touchy as the map includes countries that are not part of the European Union. And where does Europe end? There are big chunks of land missing in the north and the east, and the smaller Balearic islands have been sacrificed to small scale.
Clear figures and letters are not only less ambivalent, but also help when counting. And I could always incorporate Greek and Cyrillic letters if required.

I’ll show my proposals for the backs of the coins some other time. For now, here are two renderings from my 1999 proposal.

Viva España or what?

Alexis from Spain just wrote to me about a competition the Spanish government ran to get a new logo. They just published the winning entry (out of 320) which was rewarded 12,000 euros. On the left you can see the new logo for the govenment of Spain. It is supposed to be built into a complete identity system by professionell studios. If you read Spanish, check this link.

Alexis immediately knew where he’d seen that logo before. It looks exactly like the one for the German government that also came out of a competition, but more than ten years ago. It was designed by Jürgen Huber and Lisa Eidt who won an internship at MetaDesign as part of the reward. There the logo was extended into a Corporate Design programme for all the government departments. The original typeface, by the way, was FF Transit, but later got changed to Univers Condensed by another agency working for the government.
Alexis took the German original and the Spanish clone and built his own logo for German-Spanish cooperation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

100 best typefaces, final result.

Jürgen Siebert of FontShop Germany has just announced the result of the search for the 100 best typefaces. The website, 100besteschriften, will be online very soon. The brochure in pdf form is already available for download at 100besteschriften. So far, there is only a German version, but with plenty of pictures.

I can proudly announce that three of my faces made it: ITC Officina at number 8, FF Meta at 18 and FF Info at 53. This occasion seemed appropriate to republish a few remarks about the history behind Officina Display.

Internet Explorer is not so broken anymore

It certainly seems that way if you look at this site using IE 7 or even IE 6 (!), as a some people still may be doing. I use a Mac, of course, wirh Safari and Firefox, and in both browsers I see things exactly the way my very limited HTML and CSS knowledge allow me to build them. Under IE, however, images either disappear or turn up in the wrong position.
Joely and I have been working on improving this. I have removed a lot of old tags from the import of my previous blog and a few days ago, the site validated under the w3 validator. As, however, I do not have IE installed and have no access to a Windows machine, I still cannot see what it really looks like for the rest of you.
Now that the comment function has been turned on in my blog, I’ve already got quite a few useful hints. You can also email me directly, see contact.

Real Meta Numbers

Yesterday I saw the first housenumbers in Real Life, on Jane and Louis’ office in Berkeley. The numbers are generously spaced to allow for conditions here in the USA, where people tend to sit in cars, looking for numbers quite far away. The number combination here presents a worst case scenario: two Ones which don’t need a lot of space and have a strong horizontal bar at the bottom, next to a 6 and a 9 that have to overshoot at top and bottom in order to look right.
Louis didn’t have a hammer drill, which made it very difficult to drill into a hard brick wall. That is why not all the holes are as precisely positioned as the templates would have allowed for. The 9 hangs too low. On paper, one would have to individually adjust the space between 1, 6, 1, 9. That, however, would be asking too much of your regular DIY homemaker, so I was not allowed to include kerning tables in the packages. Louis, on the other hand, is a journalist with more design savvy than a lot of designers I know, and he would have managed.

Normally, electric drills are not tools that type designers consider when planning for application of type on media.

These are the Contemporary numbers, made from grey anodised aluminium, based on FF Meta Bold.

The 100 best typefaces

Jürgen Siebert’s Fontblog shows the countdown for the 100 best typefaces of all time. The criteria are discussed there – if you read German, that is. I can proudly announce that my ITC Officina came in at number 8, ahead of Gill and Univers, no less. There’s a new announcement every day, so in a week’s time we’ll know all the winners. The picture shows me in 1989, holding the first print of what was still called ITC Correspondence.

San Francisco

This may sound unfair when seen from Europe, but winter here in SF can be quite pleasant. The occasional rain makes sure there’ll be enough water next summer, but most of the time the sky is as blue as the picture shows.

SpiekerBlog 2.0

At long last: only a few days into ’007, and my new blog goes online. The itinerary is up-to-date and now has its own page. The contact page is also new, and for good reason: my design studio moved to a new address last year. As of this week, it has also changed its name. UDN | United Designers Network is now SpiekermannPartners. The button on the top of this page goes right to the new homepage. Which, however, will not be online for a few days yet. You know how that goes: deadlines in the online world are as flexible as CSS stylesheets.
The new name is our answer to a recurring problem. After more than five years, clients and colleagues alike still think that I am with MetaDesign, the company I founded back in 1979. The studio appearing under my own name should send a clear message to everybody that I am out of Meta.
The new blog runs under Movable Type. We haven’t found any software that runs two versions parallel with just the text part being different. Seems there aren’t many blogs in two languages, if any. So we have to run two entire blogs on the server and I have to edit everything twice. Spiekermann.com/mt is German, spiekermann.com/mten sends you straight to the English language site. Joely Hegarty, friend and colleague in London, built the templates, learning blogging as he went along. Piece of cake for a proper coder like him. Thanks anyway.

DBType wins German Design Prize.

The system of typefaces designed by myself and Christian Schwartz for Deutsche Bahn, the German state railways, just won the most prestigious design prize in the country.
You don’t submit to this competition, you get proposed by one of the official design institutions in Germany. The actual medals will be handed out by the Federal Secretary for the Economy on 9 February, and officially we don’t know that we may have won the top prize in the communication category. Only 25 prizes were awarded out of 950 submissions. This, apparently, is The Prize of Prizes. It is as much an award for the political achievement of persuading a large bureaucratic institution to even commission their own typefaces, as it is for the design work.

And here is some evidence of our work: an ad before and after, i.e. Helvetica on the left, DB Type Head on the right.

realmao

This crazy piece of work should be seen large.

ERIK_MAO_PRINT.pdf