This is all of my info that will be on the next poster...it's not entirely organized yet, but this is what it will look like somewhat! :)
FF META AND
THE HUMANIST SANS-SERIF CLASSIFICATION
FF Meta is a humanist
sans-serif typeface family designed
by Erik
Spiekermann originally as a commission for the Deutsche Bundespost
(West German Post Office), but later released by Spiekermann himself in 1991
through his FontFont
library. According to Spiekermann, FF Meta was intended to be a "complete
antithesis of Helvetica,"
which he found "boring and bland." Throughout the nineties, FF Meta was
embraced by the international design community[3] with
Spiekermann and E. M. Ginger
writing that it had been dubiously praised as the "Helvetica of the
1990s."
FF Meta has been
adopted by numerous corporations and other organizations as a corporate
typeface, for signage or in their logo.
As the typeface
would be used repeatedly in small sizes, for identification (rather than copy), require two
different weights,
and printed quickly on potentially poor paper stock, the brief called for a
very legible, neutral, space-saving, and distinguishable (in regards to weight)
typeface with special attention to producing unmistakable characters. Whereas
traditionally, typefaces are designed to be viewed beautifully large, the goal
with this particular typeface was to produce a typeface which worked well for
its primary application.
The typeface
would have to be a sans-serif to match the client, narrow (but not condensed) to save space,
feature strokes thick enough to withstand uneven printing but also light so
that individual characters do not run together, contain clearly distinguishable
characters for similar shaped characters, versatile capitals and figures that
are clear but not obtrusive, and curves, indentations, flares, and open joins
to combat poor definition, optical illusions, and over-inking. In addition to
these demands, to meet Bundespost's needs, the family would also contain three
fonts: regular, regular italic, and bold.
FF Meta was originally conceived as a sturdy, basic sans
serif typeface, very legible for text at small sizes, with angled terminals and
other visual “noise” to give the face a pleasing, slight informality.
In FF
Meta, strokes have slightly varying width as the Spiekermann’s goal was
that in small sizes, thinner strokes should not “drop out” but, on the
contrary, become undistinguishable from the thicker ones.
On the other hand,
in compensation for the missing serifs, it has vigorously bent-off tips of
vertical strokes in letters like ‘d’ or ‘m’.
Both uppercase
and lowercase characters are narrower than in most other sans serif fonts. It
is an excellent example of how far it is possible to “humanize” sans serifs and
borrowing serif-specific features, while remaining within the sans serif
paradigm. Finally launched under the FF Meta brand name, it was one of
the most popular typefaces of the last decade, often referred as "the Helvetica
of the 90’s”.
In the
period 1991 to 1998 a larger typeface family was developed, adding small
capitals.
The Post Office,
who was using Helvetica
at that time, cancelled their commission at the last minute. Spiekermann's design
went into hibernation. Interestingly enough, the post office did eventually
change their corporate face—to Frutiger,
which they still use today.
Around the same
time as the founding of FontShop,
Spiekermann and several of his colleagues revived their dormant design,
creating FF Meta, whose first weights were released in 1991. Over the next 15
years, numerous more weights would be devised.
FF Meta is named
after the studio which Spiekermann headed at the time, MetaDesign. Meta is proud
of the face, calling it the Helvetica
of the '90s (quote attributed to Robin Kinross). Meta was designed for use at
smallish sizes, but became more widely used by designers looking for a
workhorse typeface with range.
One of the
defining characteristics of FF Meta — and FontFonts in general — was the
presence of hanging (or oldstyle) figures and additional ff-ligatures in the “regular”
Normal and Bold weights, while lining figures were found in the Small Caps
weight. The distinctive Meta arrow occupied the slots for the lesser-than and
greater-than symbols.
A very readable typeface
in smaller point sizes but also with enough detail to display in large
point sizes.
This category
contains typefaces in the humanist sans-serif classification. They first
appeared in the early twentieth century. Humanist sans-serif typefaces are
characterized by the presence of the hand, an uppercase similar in proportion
to the monumental Roman capitals, a lowercase similar in form to the Carolingian script, and an
overall more organic structure. Humanist sans-serif typefaces frequently have a
true italic rather than a sloped roman. This is most
often seen in a single-story lowercase italic a.
Traditional view
about sans serif fonts was they are not a good choice for body text because it
is very hard to read in a large block of type. Sans-serif was preferable
choice for headings and headlines only. Using them in paragraphs was not
considered as a good choice. But nowadays, as you all have noticed, the use of
sans serif fonts for text is trend. This is because they are getting more and
more readable and legible.
The Humanist types
(sometimes referred to as Venetian) appeared during the 1460s and 1470s, and
were modelled not on the dark gothic scripts like textura, but on the
lighter, more open forms of the Italian humanist writers. The Humanist types
were at the same time the first roman types. So what makes Humanist,
Humanist? What distinguishes it from other styles? What are its main
characteristics?
1 Sloping cross-bar
on the lowercase “e”;
2 Relatively small x-height;3 Low contrast between “thick”
and “thin” strokes (basically that means that there is little variation in the
stroke width);
4 Dark colour (not a reference to colour in the traditional
sense, but the overall lightness or darkness of the page). To get a better
impression of a page’s colour look at it through half-closed eyes.
Although the
influence of Humanist types is far reaching, they aren’t often seen these days.
Despite a brief revival during the early twentieth century, their relatively
dark color and small x-heights have fallen out of favor. However, they do
deserve our attention — our admiration even — because they are, in a sense, the great grand parents of today’s types.
ABOUT THE INVENTOR
Erik Spiekermann,
born 1947, studied History of Art and English in Berlin. He is an information
architect, type designer, and author of books and articles on type and
typography. He was founder (1979) of MetaDesign, Germany's largest design firm.
Projects included corporate design programmes for Audi, Skoda, Volkswagen,
Lexus, Heidelberg Printing and wayfinding projects like Berlin Transit, Düsseldorf
Airport and many others.
In 1988 he started
FontShop, a company for production and distribution of electronic fonts. Erik
is board member of ATypI and the German Design Council and Past President of
the istd, International Society of Typographic Designers, as well as the iiid.
In 2001 he left MetaDesign and is now managing partner and creative director of
Edenspiekermann with offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, London and San Francisco.
He redesigned The
Economist magazine in London for its relaunch in 2001. His book for Adobe
Press, "Stop Stealing Sheep" is in its second edition as well as
published in German and in Russian. His corporate font family for Nokia was
released in 2002. In 2003 he received the Gerrit Noordzij Award from the Royal
Academy in Den Haag. His type system DB Type for Deutsche Bahn was awarded the
Federal German Design Prize in Gold for 2006. In May 2007 he was the first
designer to be elected into the Hall of Fame by the European Design Awards for
Communication Design.
Erik is Honorary
Professor at the University of the Arts in Bremen and in 2006 received an
honorary doctorship from Pasadena Art Center. He was made an Honorary Royal
Designer for Industry by the RSA in Britain in 2007 and Ambassador for the
European Year of Creativity and Innovation by the European Union for 2009.
Throughout his
illustrious career as a designer and typographer, Erik Spiekermann has
created dozens of commercial typefaces (FF Meta, FF MetaSerif, ITC Officina, FF
Govan, FF Info, FF Unit, LoType, Berliner Grotesk) and many custom typefaces
for world-renowned corporations.
Erik and his wife
Joan, revolutionized the world of digital fonts twenty-two years ago when they
started FontShop—the first
mail-order distributor for digital fonts.
This year, he was
awarded the Federal Republic of Germany’s 2011 Design Prize for Lifetime
Achievements— a most noble accomplishment. The exhibition, Erik Spiekermann,
The Face of Type recently took place at the Bauhaus-Archive Museum of
Design in Berlin.
Spiekermann is an
Honorary Professor at the University of the Arts in Bremen, the author of the
Adobe Press title, Stop Stealing Sheep, and the originator of the colorful map
for the Berlin metro system.
During the 1970s, Spiekermann
wdeosrikgenderasinaLfroenedloance before returning to Berlin in 1979 where,
with two partners, he founded MetaDesign. In 2001 he left MetaDesign and started UDN (United Designers Network), with offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco. Since January 2009 he has been a director of Edenspiekermann, which has offices in Berlin and Amsterdam.
HISTORY OF THE
WORLD DURING THE 90’S
The 1990s,
also known as "the Nineteen Nineties" or abbreviated as "the
Nineties" or "the '90s", was the decade that started on January
1, 1990, and ended on December 31, 1999. It was the last full decade of both
the 20th century
and the 2nd
millennium.
The '90s is
often considered the true dawn of the Information Age. Though
info-age technologies predate the 1980s,
it was not until the late 1980s and the 1990s that they became widely used by
the general public. A combination of factors, including the mass mobilization
of capital markets through neoliberalism,
the beginning of the widespread proliferation of new media such as the Internet, and the dissolution
of the Soviet Union led to a realignment and reconsolidation of
economic and political power across the world, and within countries.
The 1990s is
often considered the end of Modernity
and the dawn of the current Postmodern age, even
though the first traces of postmodernity takes places as far back as the 1940s.[1] Living standards and democratic governance generally improved in
many areas of the world, notably East Asia, much of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Africa. The
economies and living standards of some countries such as South Korea and Ireland improved to such
an extent that they were considered 1st World nations by the decades end.
New ethnic
conflicts emerged in Africa, the Caucasus
and the Balkans, and signs of any resolution of tensions in the Middle East
remained elusive.[2]
The Congo wars
break out in the 1990s:
The Chechen wars
break out in the 1990s:
In 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) led by the United States launched air attacks
against Yugoslavia
(then composed of only Serbia
and Montenegro) to pressure
the Yugoslav government to end its military operations against ethnic Albanian
separatists in Kosovo
due to accusations of war crimes being committed by Yugoslav military forces
working alongside nationalist Serb paramilitary groups. After weeks of bombing,
Yugoslavia submits to NATO's demands and NATO forces occupy Kosovo and later UN
peacekeeping forces to take control of Kosovo.
Many countries,
institutions, companies, and organizations were prosperous during the 1990s.
High-income countries such as the United States, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, South Korea, and those in Western Europe experienced
steady economic growth for much of the decade. However, in the former Soviet Union GDP
decreased as their economies restructured to produce goods they needed and some
capital flight occurred.
SOURCES
