Interview with Type Designer Erik Spiekermann(johannesippen.com)
johannesippen.com
Interview with Type Designer Erik Spiekermann
https://johannesippen.com/2019/erik-spiekermann/
3 comments
“I want to die as the person with the most letterpresses” - an insightful, personable, and inspiring interview that illustrates Spiekermann's views on design but also his personality in an awesome way!
Awww thank you! blush
Stopped listening to this guy after this fiasco.. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/erik-spiekermann-laura-kalb...
Why? He’s a typographer, of course he’s pedantic. Paired with his eccentricities it’s quite entertaining to listen to him.
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, the tweeter was technically correct when she said that she had written a book. She said neither that she edited, typeset, printed, bound, distributed, shelved, loaned, sold, nor solely forged a book out of the edifice of the void.
Pedantically-speaking, Spiekermann dropped the ball on this one.
Pedantically-speaking, Spiekermann dropped the ball on this one.
> The narrower a typeface gets, the less legible it becomes. We do also know that we have long words in Austria, like “Gumpersdorfer Straße” in Vienna – so now they only use the compressed version, even for short words, because it’s easier for them. Then I get blamed because it’s not legible, but that is not my fault. Maybe it is because I should have said no. When you’re supposed to work for a bad company, like weapons or tobacco, the argument is: “If I don’t do it, somebody else will, so I might as well do it.” If I wouldn’t have done the compressed version, somebody else would have done it, maybe even worse.
> “Shit, Spiekermann, you are right – you make us look better!” – that was my big lesson here: You make them look better, that is your job. We have the skill of showing them, not just complaining about things that don’t work.
> My Dutch friend Lucas de Groot put it nicely when he was learning German: “We have to verglücklichen our clients”, we have to make them happy.