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Erik Spiekermann was born in 1947 in Stadthagen, Germany.
He's a typographer, a designer, a University professor and author of several books about typography.
He studied Art History at the Free University of Berlin.
In the 70's he moved to London, where he worked as a freelance designer
and became acquainted with typography when commissioned by
Berthold AG to redesign the typeface LoType, and later, Berliner Grotesk.
Years later he returned to Berlin where he co-founded the design firm, MetaDesign.
In 2000 he resigns from MetaDesign and creates his own firm, nowadays known as Edenspiekermann.
Spiekermann was trained as an artist in the decades previous to the proliferation
of personal computing, learning to design manually.
This structured knowledge became an advantage when applied to digital media.
His importance in the field of typography comes from both the types he created
as well as the company he created, FontShop Intl.,
the first company to sell digital typefaces by mail.
FontShop Intl. is composed by four independent subsidiaries
located across the globe. Each FontShop sells the company's catalogue
and at the same time creates new designs.
FontShop specializes in distributing type created by designers for other designers to use.
Their catalogue is known as FontFont
and their typefaces may be identified by the prefix FF.
They've published over 700 typographical families (60 of them exclusive designs).
Amongst these is the famous FF Beowolf, one of the first "living fonts"
that generates random variations of its characters when printed.
They also published two of the first digital calligraphic fonts:
FF Erikrighthand and FFJustlefthand.
FontShop is also known for their printed catalogue known as FontBook,
published since 1991.
This catalogue has been revised and updated frequently. In 2006, it's fourth edition
was released, including over 32,000 typefaces created by over 90 companies.
It is the biggest and most complete publication of its kind.
It includes information about the creation of each type, its category,
its variations in each language and references to similar typefaces.
Since 2011 this catalogue has been distributed digitally
as an iPad app, including over 620,000 typefaces created by over 110 companies.
Some of Spiekermann's best-known typefaces are:
Berliner Grotesk, Lo-Type
ITC Officina Sans, ITC Officina Serif, FF Meta, FF Meta Serif, FF Govan,
FF Info, FF Unit, FF Unit Slab and Deutsche Bahn.
Erik Spiekermann
History of Typography 2013-1
Erika Vargas Juan Camilo Reyes