Helvetica can be nice

Every typeface needs its own layout that will make it look good and appropriate. An Italian producer of plastic furniture with a showroom in an old industrial building in San Francisco could do worse than displaying its name in large Helvetica letters. Rotis or Meta would have been totally wrong there.

Typographic detail, handmade

Applications like Indesign and fonts in Open Type format provide tools for making great stuff that older generations of typographically interested designers could have only dreamed about.

As we all know and can witness every day, these tools, however, are no guarantee for great design – not even for good craft. I find it even more gratifying and pleasant to behold when I see someone pulling all the stops to achieve typographic detail even when those tools are not all available.

The van for this company that sells grilled chickens and other goodies on San Francisco’s Farmers’ Market has been carefully lettered, even though those letters may be a little worn by now. The designer had to use Frutiger for reasons I don’t know. But that didn’t prevent him or her from wanting to apply old style figures which are not available for that particular typeface. The simple solution for this problem is to simply move ordinary figures down below the baseline to achieve the effect. The 1 can just be cut off at the bottom as long as it doesn’t have a serif to lose. Figures 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 look almost like the real thing when shifted down. The only problem is presented by the 2, as that should be redrawn to the size of the x-height and have no ascender.

As seen in Bodoni’s Manuale Tipografico, the master took liberties when it came to designing his old style figures. He does draw a short 2, but doesn’t give descenders to 3, 4, 5 or 7.

Conventions are not necessarily rules, just habits.

Dublin Type 2

The art of writing or carving elaborate signs is all but dying out. Self-adhesive plots on vinyl have replaced painting signs with drop-shadows in fantasy typefaces that didn’t come from the FontBook or any other “proper” source.

It may only be a matter of time until these handmade signs will have disappeared from buildings in Dublin as well. These are a few that I found on a recent trip.

Uncial type has been the style of Irish writing since before Gutenberg. It doesn’t, however, look very convincing today when applied to everything in order to achieve that “Irish” look. (By the way: This version of Quay Sans looks weird indeed.) Perhaps time for a workshop on Irish typographic identity?

Save space!

This typeface can save a lot of space because it ignores vowels when entering text. If at all needed, you can type a capital letter by using the shift key. That will insert one of the small capitals which also exist for vowels.

You can download FF Mt for free here.

Character set for FF Mt.

Complete forgery

For years I had imagined how cool our German Autobahn-signage could look if set in a better typeface than our boring, predictable, stiff old DIN. I never thought that one day I might actually iss that typeface.
When I first got the numberplates for my NSU 22 years ago, those were also set in DIN. Cars that are older than 30 years can get Oldtimer status and an H for historic on the plates. As the Ro80 had first been registered in 1977, that time had just come up.

The official typeface for our license plates is now called FE-Mittelschrift, with FE meaning it is Fälschungs-Erschwert, i.e. difficult to forge. Apparently car thieves, terrorists and notorious law-breakers had been exploiting DIN’s geometric construction principle and turning E into F or 3 into 8 etc by simply using a bit of black tape or white paint.

Karlgeorg Hoefer, the designer of FE-Mittelschrift, did a good job. Now every character is so unique that there is no formal relationship between them. Unfortunately this relationship is a condition for something we may consider a typeface. Without it we just see a collection of unrelated glyphs. While nobody could simply turn one of them into another one, now they all look totally forged in the first place. No policeman would notice if you invented new characters instead.

Just as well that those perpetrators obviously do not possess the typographic wherewithall to make their own alphabets for their license plates.

Rotis am Ende?

Die heimliche Hoffnung jedes Schriftentwerfers ist es, seine Schriften jeden Tag und überall in Gebrauch zu sehen. Immerhin ist damit gelegentlich auch der finanzielle Erfolg verbunden, denn hin und wieder zahlen Gestalter und Agenturen doch Lizenzgebühren für Fonts.

Nun ist es mit einer Schrift wie mit einem Popsong: einmal veröffentlicht, darf jede(r) damit umgehen. Wie es ein Schlager aushalten muss, in der Badewanne (oder ihrer öffentlichen Version, dem Karaoke-Club) von jedem gesungen zu werden, so kann sich auch keine Schrift gegen irgendeine Verwendung wehren. Der Vorteil von Allerweltsschriften wie Helvetica ist es, dass sie einerseits wenige besondere Merkmale haben, die sie auffällig machen, aber andererseits so robust, dass sie einigen Missbrauch aushalten.

Anders steht es mit Schriften, die von ihrem Entwerfer mit einem gestalterischen Mehrwert ausgestattet worden sind. Dadurch sind sie auffälliger, schwieriger im Gebrauch und natürlich auch leichter zu beschädigen. Wenn zu diesen Auffälligkeiten noch ein ideologischer Überbau kommt, das Versprechen eines gewissermaßen eingebauten ästhetischen Vorsprungs also, dann ist die Fallhöhe sehr groß.

Otl Aicher formulierte für seine Rotis nicht nur einen formalen Anspruch jenseits aller bestehenden Schriften, sondern er behauptete gleichzeitig auch höhere Lesbarkeit. Im vorauseilenden Gehorsam nehmen seitdem viele Gestalter und Architekten – von Baumann & Baumann bis Foster und weiter – Rotis für alles und hoffen, dem Gegenstand ihrer Gestaltung allein dadurch einen erhöhten intellektuellen Anspruch zu verleihen. Die meisten Schriftgestalter hingegen halten Rotis für eine Ansammlung schöner Buchstaben, die aber noch keine richtige Textschrift ausmacht.

Wenn nun ein Laden für „gehobene“ Kücheneinrichtungen sich den Schriftzug in Rotis an die Fassade hängt, soll beim Betrachter eine Nähe zu Herstellern wie Bulthaup provoziert werden, obwohl keine der angebotenen Küchen je in einem der hervorragend gestalteten (und in Rotis gesetzten) Kataloge dieser Firma erscheinen dürfte. Der Auftritt des Schriftzuges ist ziemlich genau das Gegenteil dessen, was ein Gestalter aus der Rotis-Fraktion machen würde: dunkelrote Plastikbuchstaben mit Messingumleimer. Dazu eine kühne und inhaltlich völlig unmotivierte Unterstreichung, die sich ausgerechnet aus dem X nach links und rechts erstreckt. Das alles aus der schrecklichsten Version, der Rotis SemiSerif. Hinter dieser Anordnung und Materialität verschwindet jede Ideologie; es sieht einfach nur scheußlich aus. Endlich ist Rotis in der Normalität angekommen.

Helvetica 50

On March 24, Lars Müller organised an event at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich as a birthday celebration. The typeface was born Neue Haas Grotesk and only got re-christened years later. (see wie-helvetica-zu-ihrem-namen-kam, in German only).

It was a great pleasure to meet Alfred Hoffmann whom I hand’t seen in more than fifteen years. Alfred is Edouard Hoffmann’s son, the man who briefed Max Miedinger for the design of Neue Haas Grotesk. The success of the typeface owes a lot to Hoffmann’s original idea and his detailed corrections during the design process.

After a podium discussion (with David Carson!) we saw the European premiere of Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica movie: helveticafilm. At the Typo conference in Berlin later in May the movie will have its German premiere. It is worth seeing even for people who have not beein infected with the typomania virus.

All Greek to me...

Apart from working on new typefaces, I have to keep expanding the existing families. OpenType not only represents the Latin alphabet, but can also include other character sets. Meta has long since had Greek and Cyrillic versions. MetaHeadline and MetaLight have not, however, been expanded to include those character sets.
Now, finally, two type designers in Athens have finished the first weight, MetaLight Greek. Thin and Hairline will follow.

MetaSerif

This is the first public showing of the new Antiqua. Lots of details will still change, but the overall impression stays. A solid working serif which matches MetaSans in weight and x-height.

Amazing type

Go to amaztype and type in an author’s name or any other word. The engine then finds mentions of that word on Amazon and assembles icons of the book covers into the name you originally entered into the search box! Also works for CDs and DVDs.

Ivo Gabrowitsch fontwerk told me about it.

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.

ITC Officina Display

ITC Officina Display und ihre Herkunft.
When we (Ben Acornley and myself at MetaLondon) redesigned The Economist magazine in London in 2000/2001 (the new magazine was launched in May 2001,) we picked ITC Officina Sans as the “information” face. All text is set in the Economist’s own typeface, which Ole Schäfer and myself redesigned for the relaunch. But all the graphs, tables, sidebars and captions are set in ITC Officina Sans for contrast and clarity. When it came to using that face on the cover in fairly large sizes, the client deemed it a little too “goofy”. Officina’s blunt edges, its explicit pseudo-serifs and oblique terminals were indeed very noticeable in the Bold and Black weights they were using for the cover.

The display version I sketched out had sharp corners, the terminals are not as oblique, and the swings at the top left of the characters have all but gone. This allows the face to be set much more tightly and doesn’t draw too much attention to individual letters. Ole Schäfer had already expanded the original family of Book and Bold while at college and presented me his designs for comments and corrections. Out of or collaboration came the extended family with Medium, ExtraBold and Black weights, plus Small Caps and Italics, Old Style figures – the works.
Ole also did the initial digital work on the new Officina Display for The Economist. After two years’ exclusive use by that magazine, I decided to update the display family to include a Light version. The digital work was carried out by Christian Schwartz who used an extrapolated version that FontBureau had previously done for a client. Christian then improved the overall appearance of the Regular, Bold and Black weights and added a new Dingbat font. Officina Display now has the same x-height across all 4 weights. Ascenders, descenders and cap height have also been harmonized. In text faces, that would constitute a cardinal sin, as bolder weights tend to look smaller because of their reduced counter spaces. In display use, however, it is important to be able to compose word-sets and headlines with mixed weights. Nothing would be sillier than having to fix individual sizes in order to achieve maximum impact.

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.

New numbers please!

Here in the USA streets can be quite long, and housenumbers often run into five digits. The choice of numbers for this purpose, however, is pretty limited. What you see attached to most walls would not pass for professionally designed figures. This is how Rob Forbes, the founder of Design within Reach, also saw it. So he asked me whether I could do anything about that and design numbers that would work in three dimensions. An interview between Rob and myself is at The Type that wouldn’t steal Sheep

DWR have been listing the first four different housenumbers in their catalogue since the end of 2006 now. They are named for popular appeal, not necessarily after proper historical or typographical conventions.
Classic is my own adaption of Bodoni; for Contemporary I somewhat rearranged Meta Bold, Industrial is a generic industrial typeface as negative stencils, and Tech is my attempt at designing numbers without any diagonal strokes. The materials are laser-cut, enamelled steel, extruded and anodized aluminium, laser-cut, painted steel and water-cut, polished stainless steel.

The Tech numbers have no diagonal shapes. This could eventually turn into a complete typeface.


Even an accomplished face like Meta needs to be adapted to the production process. The routing tool for the aluminium extrusion can never achieve a finely pointed inner corner. Rather than leave the shape of these details to mechanical coincidence, I drew radii that would not present any problems in the tooling process. They do look somewhat exaggerated in the drawings, but work well in metal. The slighly bolder housenumbers are shown on top, with figures from FF Meta Bold below.

You need no typographic training to fix these housenumbers to the wall. The drilling templates are printed in yellow on clear acetate in order to be visible against any background, and they also provide proper spacing for the numbers.

PT 55/1986

Just found this article from Baseline 7, 1986. It describes the making of PT 55, the typeface which later became FF Meta.

MetaHeadline

FF Meta's lively shapes make it look good in small sizes and certainly give it character. Often too much so for headlines. Enter MetaHeadline: three widths with four weights each. For extra tight setting, some characters have alternative shapes.

FF MetaHeadline is now available from your local FontShop.

The sincerest form of flattery?

It's flattering to know that some of my typefaces have influenced other designers. Except...

.. now and again I see a new face that feels uncomfortable. I still draw letters, but most of the younger designers go straight to the screen. More often than not, they open an existing font and play around with an outline. Which is a good exercise, very much like me tracing over a print in a specimen book, as I did when I first started drawing type 30 years ago. Through constant sketching, eventually without the old original in view, you acquire your own shapes. Working on screen, however, you can hardly ever get rid of the original. Even if you touch every point, the feel of the underlying data will always be there. They ensuing 'new' typeface may look different, but anybody with a bit of experience will know what it was based on. Check this specimen and judge for yourself.





This is Textra, released by Linotype.




And this is good old FF Meta, designed almost 20 years ago by myself. I've been accused of having put too many silly details into it, like an oblique top terminal on some of the caps, like the E. Now look at Textra's E.

Meta International

Over the last decade more and more Non-Western versions of FF Meta have been designed. If you need to set Baltic languages, Romanian, Turkish, Central European languages, Greek or Cyrillic, you can now get all of these in a package (with their Western cousins) in two basic weights, Book and Bold with their Italics. Go to Read More and see the PDF.

The PDF shows all the international Metas.
FF_MetaInternational.pdf

Futura - the perfect geometric typeface?

I have often found that supposedly perfect typefaces turn out to be less so on close inspection. Consider these examples for Futura: the version from Adobe (top in both examples) is clearly badly digitized. Early days, they were still learning -- it's not about blaming anybody, but about getting our client -- Volkswagen -- a decent typeface. If Futura's O is supposed to look like a perfect circle, why does it look like an egg? And look at the counters in a, g, and e! Those are also supposed to be circular, not egg-shaped. So we took the typeface apart and reassembled it. If your VW had egg-shaped wheels, wouldn't you complain? Or excuse it as an expression of the designer's creativity?

type specimens

Back in the 80s, foundries spent a lot of money printing specimen booklets. I recently found some of the brochures we designed back then.

I scanned 23 brochures and put them into one document. For the purpose of this blog, I made low-res PDFs (still 2.2 MB): While you cannot appreciate typographic details at that resolution, you’ll still discover some faces you’ve probably never heard of. A lof of designers at MetaDesign had a go at these specimen brochures. I don’t remember who did which one, so I cannot credit individuals for fear of forgetting some of them. They could write and remind me.

bertholdtypes_brosch.pdf

Type for a purpose

What makes a good typeface?
Here are some answers.

1. What makes a good typeface is decided by the users, not the designer.

2. Most good typefaces have been designed for one purpose, they do not come from a designer’s whim. Bodoni designed all his faces for specific books, Times was
designed for the newspaper, Frutiger for signage at Charles de Gaulle airport, Helvetica to appeal to certain graphic designers, Bell Gothic for the American telephone books, Gill for a shopfront, Century for a magazine, Meta for the German post office.

3. there are certain laws of perception as well as cultural traditions which a typeface has to adhere to.

4. it has to look almost like all the others, but...

5. just be a little different

my favourite typefaces

Here's my list of favourite typefaces. Not the ones I use most, but the ones I love because they have influenced me or because I wish I had designed them.

1. Reklameschrift Block; the staple diet of pre-war jobbing printing in Germany, and the one typeface I had from 8pt through to 96pt (plus larger sizes in wood type) in my metal typeshop (which burnt down in 1977). I redrew some of the versions for Berthold in the 70s, making Block Halbfett into Berliner Grotesk Medium.

2. Akzidenz Grotesk Mager. The first font i bought from the Berthold foundry as brand new type; 8pt, half a minimum, which meant about 8 a, 9e, 2c, etc. 3.5kg of type which cost me half a month’s wages, except as a freelancer, I didn't earn any.

3. Concorde. The first typeface whose design process (in 1968) i followed. GGL’s answer to Times, and much better.
4. FF Clifford by Akira Kobayashi (now type director at Linotype). Amazing book face by a Japanese designer. Not a revival, but in the baroque tradition. Only regular weight, but for 3 sizes plus great Italics and Small Caps. Try it!

5. Arnhem by Fred Smeijers (great website). Love it for newspapers, magazines, etc. Not so keen on the headline weights, they look too Dutch for my use (perhaps too Ungerish, but then Fred is also from Arnhem). But the text weights are a superb modern interpretation of a legible serif with an edge.

In real life, however, I use my own faces ( mainly Meta, Officina and Unit – I don't have to pay for them) and corporate type like Frutiger, FF Transit, News Gothic, Minion (very versatile), Univers, Myriad et al and even Helvetica (for DB, the German railways, but that's going to change).

typefaces

I am often asked about my typefaces. It isn’t easy for everybody to get full showings for them all, so i’ll try and provide PDFs for all of them. It’ll take a while, but here’s a start.

FF Unit characterset

unitcharacters.pdf

FF Meta Specimen

meta_muster.pdf

ITC Officina poster

officina.poster.pdf

Some Spiekertypes

spiekertypes.pdf