When it comes to German design, one of the contemporary key figures internationally known and famous is with no doubt Mr. Erik Spiekermann. He and his style, using humanistic grotesque and so called ‘analytic approach’ is hard to avoid and to see everywhere along Germany. He founded Meta Design and Fontshop, designed a list of almost same looking typefaces and did (and still does) almost every important (re-)design of corporates in this country—plus almost everyone seems to use fontshop font-designs which, at least to me, seem to be repetitive in style and impression (mostly humanistic grotesque) and therefore is Spiekermann referring, which designed successful Meta sometime around the mid 90th’s that became the raw model for most of the following fontshop released designs.

This domination seems to paralyse every different approach and practise around. I doubt Spiekermann is an idealistic person and wants graphic design to move on. It seems that he got cosy and therefore using always the same dress to success, which seems to be a typical attitude for Germans anyhow.

I recently saw a documentation on Otl Aicher, which would be the analogy comparison to Spiekermann a few decades before. Aicher carried the burden of the famous early modernist from a highly abstract, reduced style to an engineer like and attitude driven approach and became something like an intellectual sparing partner and consultant to the companies he was working with. An apparently widely appreciated attitude (to be seen in the documentary) which got companies queuing to get him to work on their Identity, in which Aichers’ way of thinking included not only design but also the company products and actions in total and became therefore something like the pathfinder for Spiekermann and Meta Design. He even designed the first ever existing humanistic grotesque which was named after his swabian residence Rotis.

It seemed that Spiekermann wasted that truly honest design, consulting driven and intellectual way of working Aichers’ to commercial sell out nowadays. One of his latest redesigns was the corporate design of the german railway company ‘Die Bahn’, which was a simple, honest and well working identity, designed by Kurt Weidemann, not so long ago—who is mainly famous for the Redesign of ‘Mercedes Benz’ Identity in the early 80th’s. Spiekermann turned it into a design which is exchangeable and again Spiekerman referring, instead of an independent, content driven and ‘Die Bahn’ referring Identity.

It does cause me physical pain when I walk around the city and see work by Spiekermann and his now idependent child Meta Design almost everywhere—he got mobbed out a few years ago by Uli Mayer-Johanssen and the rest of the managers. For his excuse it must be admitted that he seemed to be a young, truly driven designer himself almost 30 years ago (see picture) but now turned into something like Darth Vader, an Imperator, who lost his faith into the force.

Top: Remarkable Spiekermann font designs. Great variety in concept and style.

DotDotDot #7, page 77, winter 2003.

PS: Spiekermann also knows how to push the right buttons media wise. He was the only professional designer who actually claimed the British Olympia 2012 Logo to be “not so bad at all” which got him a lot of quotes in the press (even ‘Der Spiegel’ quoted his notes)… Easy, of course. If you are the only one who claims to be pro of something everyone’s contra, you’ll get a lot of attention…

Documentation ‘Otl Aicher, Der Denker am Objekt’ by Angelika and Peter Schubert, SDR – Süddeutscher Rudfunk Stuttgart. Sometime around early 90th’s.