Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Designers
Erik Spiekermann was born May 30, 1947. Gerard Unger January 22, 1942  Just van Rossum July 13, 1966.

Release Year
1990

Classification
Sans serif, Humanist sans, Slab serif

Foundry
International Typeface Corporation

ITC Officina is what Erik Spiekernann called it. The san serif typeface catered to
office documents and business correspondence. Reminiscing the typewriter faces letter
gothic and courier with its legibility; Officina utilizes its negative space to give it a more economical look. [1] This typeface worked great with the low-resolution laser printers business used at the time. Years latter a slab serif version was introduced with the help of a friend named Gerard Unger.[2]

Spiekermann is one of the biggest type designers to come out of Germany. He is the creator of FontShop International and The United Designers Network. He is also co-funder of the biggest design firm in the country, MetaDesign. Spiekermann designed a number of typefaces that’s used for business documents and company branding such as: Officina sans, Officina, serif, Govan, Meta and Berliner Grotesk.[3]

The typeface has characteristic that are unique to it and they are displayed easily in certain letterforms. On the lowercase “y” the arm is slightly touching the stem. The “k’s” arm and leg slightly touches the stem as well. The lowercase “i,j,I and J” are the only letterforms that are serif. Certain letterforms share a barb slant ending the stroke. The characters that have ears or feet—have curved ears and feet. This typeface is perfect for low-resolution output devices and monitor output.


“I love to be a graphic designer, but could we get rid of clients somehow please?”

“I had had enough of the sleek, ‘pretty’ fonts that all the manufacturers were releasing, and the other was that there was a need for a modern correspondence font.”



[1] Santa Maria, Jason. typedia.com. N.p., 2006. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
[2] http://www.100besttypefaces.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
[3] Issuu.com. Ed. Bess Mclaughlin. N.p., 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.

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