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Erik Spiekermann
is the Master of Ceremonies at Typo Berlin :
Erik Spiekermann (born 1947) is a typographic designer and font developer. In fact, some of his latest fonts, including FF Meta and ITC Officina, have received expert acclaim as modern classics.
He studied history of art in Berlin, though unsuccessfully, financing his studies by running a basement printing company. He then moved with wife and child to London where he worked as a consultant to some big design companies as well as lecturing at various establishments including the London College of Printing. On his return to Berlin (1981) he ran a design studio with a succession of partners working chiefly for the graphics sector, his clients including Berthold, Scangraphic, Linotype, Adobe and Apple.
Along with his wife, Joan Spiekermann, he formed FontShop in 1989, the first mail order company for computer fonts. In 1990, he and two partners, Uli Mayer and Hannes Kruger, set up MetaDesign plus.
Today, MetaDesign has over 200 employees at its offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco, and is Germany`s largest design company. MetaDesign Berlin handles such projects as the new passenger information system for the Berlin public transport corporations and the control system at Düsseldorf Airport. It is the lead agency world-wide for the corporate design of Volkswagen and Audi and MetaDesign has also developed and is still developing strategic design systems for Boehringer Ingelheim, HEWI, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German Broadcasting Company) and the scientific division of the Springer publishing house. Its clients around the world include the cream of the computer and software industry, from Apple to Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, Netscape and IBM down to Texas Instruments.
Erik Spiekermann is an honorary professor at the College of Art in Bremen and vice-president of the International Institute for Information Design. He is also the author of a number of academic books on fonts and typography. His travels to seminars, lectures and educational events take him all over the world.
Erik Spiekermann will be introducing the programme at TYPO 98 Berlin.
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