Erik Spiekermann Interview…

So here I am, now 34 posts into this blog, and although I usually have no trouble ranting and raving about the current events surrounding design and design education, I find that I am looking for some more meaningful content to post on this site. This past weekend it came to me. Why not come up with a short list of questions and email interview some of the bigger names working in graphic design today? Well, that’s what I did and it has actually started to work. (For those of you who are wondering, the Internet has finally kicked the “poo” out of sliced bread on the “all-time greatest things” list.)

The first person to respond to my list of questions was Erik Spiekermann (by the way, he responded from Berlin in less than an hour—take that sliced bread!). Erik is probably best known for his book: “Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works”, but his fastidious work ethic has also allowed him to achieve a level of success in design that most others have not. Originally from Hanover, Germany, Spiekermann founded the companies MetaDesign and FontShop International. Some of his more famous typeface designs include FF Meta, ITC Officina, and FF Info. He has a list of many other contributions to the field of graphic design far too long to post but more than that he is a citizen and steward of design as evidenced by his responses below:

TOBIAS:
What is graphic design? How would you define it?

ERIK:
visual communication

TOBIAS:
Who in your opinion is making good design work right now?

ERIK:
anybody who thinks before they start working; anybody who considers design an intellectual activity; I wouldn't like to name individuals: that list would be very long and still incomplete.

These people do not do good work:
Designers who don't challenge themselves and their clients; designers who cannot work in teams; designers who have no idea about their place in society.

TOBIAS:
Who are your design heroes?

ERIK:
Heroes are dangerous. They obscure our critical faculties, they replace our critical faculties with admiration, they take our eyes off the ball. I admire a lot of colleagues, mainly the ones I have worked with who are better than me. Graphic design is too mundane a field to achieve hero status. I leave that to people who save lives by giving their own.

TOBIAS:
What (book/magazine/blog/whatever…) should every graphic designer read?

ERIK:
Design Writing Research by Ellen Lupton; Technische Grundlagen der Satzherstellung and Mathematische Grundlagen der Satzherstellung by Rudolf Bosshard (German only); Tschichold's essays on typography; Mark Twain's works; as many old type specimens as possible; FontBook (new one coming out before the end of 2005); The New York Times (every day), The Economist (i redesigned it in 2001), EYE; typophile.com; designobserver.com, (I won't mention any sites in languages other than English that I frequent)

TOBIAS:
What advice do you have for design students and design educators?

ERIK:
Read.
Travel.
Read.
Ask.
Read.
Learn.
Read.
Connect.
Read.

TOBIAS:
Do you think designers will hold a different place in our culture in the future? If yes; in what ways?

ERIK:
yes. Design as a way of visualizing problems and answers will become very important in all businesses, not just in Graphic Design. Design as a process of problem-solving is already being taken up by people in other fields. Graphic Designers will have to become more active intellectually to play a role. We need to know enough about culture, society, industry and business to take part in conversations beyond layouts and pantone swatches.

Thanks very much to Erik for responding.

I am going to keep pursuing others in this same format. If you have someone in particular you would like to hear from, or any other questions you would like to see asked please leave a comment and I will try to address them.