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FF Meta is a
humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humani ...
sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...
family designed by
Erik Spiekermann Erik Spiekermann (born 30 May 1947 in Stadthagen, Lower Saxony) is a German typographer, designer and writer. He is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and ArtCenter College of Design. Biography Spiekermann studied art his ...
and released in 1991 through his
FontFont FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces ( fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renow ...
library. According to Spiekermann, FF Meta was intended to be a "complete antithesis of
Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
", which he found "boring and bland". It originated from an unused commission for the
Deutsche Bundespost The Deutsche Bundespost (German federal post office) was a German state-run postal service and telecommunications business founded in 1947. It was initially the second largest federal employer during its time. After staff reductions in the 198 ...
(German Federal Post Office). Throughout the 1990s, FF Meta was embraced by the international design community 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. These include
Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
,
The Weather Channel The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel broadcasts weather forecas ...
,
Free Tibet Free Tibet (FT) is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation, founded in 1987 and based in London, England. According to their mission statement, Free Tibet advocates for "a free Tibet in which Tibetans are able to determine their own futur ...
, the television stations
WSYR-TV WSYR-TV (channel 9) is a television station in Syracuse, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station maintains studios on Bridge Street (off NY 290) in East Syracuse (a village of DeWitt), and it ...
,
WIVT WIVT (channel 34) is a television station in Binghamton, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside low-power, Class A NBC affiliate WBGH-CD (channel 20). Both stations share studios on Ingra ...
and
WUTR WUTR (channel 20) is a television station in Utica, New York, United States, serving the Mohawk Valley as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Nexst ...
in upstate New York,
Herman Miller Herman Miller, officially MillerKnoll, Inc., is an American company that produces office furniture, equipment, and home furnishings, including the Aeron chair, Noguchi table, Marshmallow sofa, and the Eames Lounge Chair. Herman Miller is al ...
,
Zimmer Holdings Zimmer Biomet is a publicly traded medical device company. It was founded in 1927 to produce aluminum splints. The firm is headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana, where it is part of the medical devices business cluster. In 2001, Zimmer was spun off f ...
,
Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of ope ...
,
Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation (stylized as moz://a) is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...
,
Schaeffler Group Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG, also known as Schaeffler Group (''Schaeffler-Gruppe'' in German), is a German manufacturer of rolling element bearings for automotive, aerospace and industrial uses. It was founded in 1946 by brothers Dr. ...
,
Endemol Endemol B.V. was a Dutch-based media company that produced and distributed multiplatform entertainment content. The company annually produced more than 15,000 hours of programming across scripted and non-scripted genres, including drama, reality ...
,
Greggs Greggs plc is a British bakery chain. It specialises in savoury products such as bakes, sausage rolls, sandwiches and sweet items including doughnuts and vanilla slices. It is headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is listed on t ...
,
Digital UK Digital UK is a British television communications company owned by the BBC (1922), ITV (TV network), ITV (1955), Channel 4 (1982) and Channel 5 (British TV channel), Channel 5 (1997) which supports Freeview (UK), Freeview viewers and channels. ...
, Liberal Democrats,
Mumsnet Mumsnet is a London-based internet forum, created in 2000 by Justine Roberts for discussion between parents of children and teenagers. History and finances Mumsnet was created in 2000 by Justine Roberts, who came up with the idea of a we ...
and
Fort Wayne International Airport Fort Wayne International Airport is eight miles southwest of Fort Wayne, in Allen County, Indiana, United States. It is owned by the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority. The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015 ...
. The
University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hull ...
uses FF Meta Serif alongside FF Meta. The
Government of Greece Government of Greece (officially: Government of the Hellenic Republic; also Greek Government or Hellenic Government)
has used FF Meta Greek as the official government typeface since 2010.
New York Review Books New York Review Books (NYRB) is the publishing division of ''The New York Review of Books''. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, N ...
uses FF Meta for their covers.


Visually distinctive characteristics

Characteristics of this typeface are: ;Lower case *Round dot over the letter ''i'' and ''j''. *Ends of the letter ''s'' are nearly horizontal *Curved bottom of ''l'', making it clearly different from a 1 or upper-case ''i''. *Double-storey ''a'' with a very open aperture at the top. *Not fully closed bottom loop in binocular ''g''. *Bend to the left at the top of the letters ''b'', ''h'', ''k'', ''l''. *Bend to the right at the top of the letter ''d''. *A very distinctive ''y'' where the two strokes do not join smoothly. ;Upper case *Angled letter ''M'', more resembling Futura or an upturned ''W'' than Helvetica or Gill Sans *Slanted upper terminal on the top right of ''E'', ''T'' and ''F''. E and T are not symmetrical. A general feature of FF Meta is relatively open
apertures In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An ...
, in contrast to the more folded-up appearance of Helvetica. This is believed to promote legibility and make the letterforms more clearly different from one another.


Development

Development began in February 1985 when Deutsche Bundespost approached Sedley Place Design, where Spiekermann was working at the time, and commissioned a comprehensive corporate design program. As the typeface would be used repeatedly in small sizes, for identification (rather than
copy Copy may refer to: *Copying or the product of copying (including the plural "copies"); the duplication of information or an artifact **Cut, copy and paste, a method of reproducing text or other data in computing **File copying **Photocopying, a pr ...
), 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. Taking into account research done on six font families and the constraints of the brief, the characteristics of what would become FF Meta began to take shape. The typeface would have to be a sans-serif to match the client,
narrow Narrow may refer to: * The Narrow, rock band from South Africa * Narrow banking, proposed banking system that would eliminate bank runs and the need for a deposit insurance * narrow gauge railway, a railway that has a track gauge narrower than th ...
(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 glyphs for similarly 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. The typeface is particularly similar to
Syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
, one of Spiekermann's candidate typefaces. After completing and digitizing the typesetting font,
mockup In manufacturing and design, a mockup, or mock-up, is a scale or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching, demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes. A mockup may be a ''prototype'' if it provides at leas ...
s were generated for Bundespost's new forms and publication. However, despite positive interest from the German Minister of Telecommunications among others, Bundespost decided not to implement the new exclusive typeface for fear it would "cause unrest". Bundespost, despite funding the project, continued instead to use a variety of different versions of Helvetica (before changing them to Frutiger). Spiekermann wrote an article on the abandoned design for Baseline magazine in 1986. At this time Meta was called PT55 (for the regular weight) and PT75 (bold).


Releases

Years later, realizing that Bundespost and Sedley Place Design would never utilize the typeface, Spiekermann with his company
MetaDesign Metadesign (or meta-design) is an emerging conceptual framework aimed at defining and creating social, economic and technical infrastructures in which new forms of collaborative design can take place. It consists of a series of practical design-r ...
decided to continue work on the typeface and eventually published it—along with other orphaned typefaces—under his newly formed publishing label
FontFont FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces ( fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renow ...
resulting in the release of FF Meta in 1991. This version of FF Meta was created by re-digitizing the original outlines and digitizing them in
Fontographer Fontographer (FOG) is a font editor for Windows and macOS; it is used to create digital fonts. It was originally developed by Altsys but is now owned by FontLab Ltd. History Altsys Corporation In December 1984, James R. Von Ehr II founded the ...
on a
Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
, work which was done by Spiekermann's interns Just van Rossum and
Erik van Blokland Erik van Blokland (born 29 August 1967 in Gouda) is a Dutch typeface designer, educator and computer programmer. He is the head of the Type Media Master of Design program in Typeface Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague in the Netherland ...
between 1988 and 1989. * 1991 FF Meta family released containing normal, normal small caps, and bold. * 1992 FF Meta 2 released as an expansion adding an italics weight, and small caps for bold. * 1993 FF MetaPlus released featuring some fine tuning of characters, spacing, and kerning along with the introducing three new weights: book, medium, and black in roman, italics, roman small caps, and roman small caps italics except for black which lacked small caps. * 1998 FF Meta reorganized and released with the following families: FF Meta Normal, FF Meta Book, FF Meta Medium, FF Meta Bold and FF Meta Black, all in roman, italic, small caps and italic small caps, which came with their respective expert and lining figures. * Sometime before 2005 foreign language versions by Tagir Safayev and Olga Chayeva, a condensed family, and additional light weights were added as: FF Meta Light, FF Meta Thin, and FF Meta Hairline. * 2005 FF Meta Headline * 2007 A serif companion, entitled FF Meta Serif, was completed and released. * 2011 A Hebrew version was released. * 2013
Fira Sans Fira Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Erik Spiekermann, Ralph du Carrois, Anja Meiners, Botio Nikoltchev of Carrois Type Design and Patryk Adamczyk of Mozilla Corporation. Originally commissioned by Telefónica and Mozilla Corpora ...
, a free derivative for
Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...
's
Firefox OS Firefox OS (project name: ''Boot to Gecko'', also known as ''B2G'') is a discontinued open-source operating system made for smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, and dongles designed by Mozilla and external contributors. It is based on th ...
.


Personnel

Writing in 1987, Spiekermann gave these credits for Meta as originally designed for the Bundespost. * Original sketches, concept, and research for FF Meta by Erik Spiekermann and Michael Bitter at Sedley Place Design, Berlin. * Design of the completed alphabets by
Gerry Barney Gerald Lawrence Barney (born ) is a British designer, best known for his 1965 British Rail Double Arrow, which is still in use in the UK. In 1960, aged 21, Barney started his career at the Design Research Unit (DRU) as a lettering artist, a ...
and Mike Pratley at Sedley Place, London.


Notes


References

* * * * * * * *


External links


Further information and in use examples

Website about FF Meta Serif
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ff Meta
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...
Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...