Design is the art of communicating visually. In order to communicate you need to have people to communicate with. Eric Spiekermann first off is a genius and I’m sure he knows it [rightly so]. In an interview with gestalten.tv he shares ideas on new visual languages, design processes, the analogies of music and typography, and why we need better client culture. I think my favorite quote from the entire interview is:
You can’t become a good designer by staying at home and looking at one book. You’ve got be out and talk to other people. Travel, because there is nothing better than realizing that 200km from you door things are different. Whether you live in Berlin, New York or in the middle of no-where things are different when you move out. When you’re twenty one and realize; oh my god! It doesn’t have to be blue. It doesn’t have to be square. It can be different. Read as much as you can. Travel as much as you can. Listen to as many people as you can. Meet as many people as you can. Just gather all this shit for years and years and when your head feels like it’s full then you start over because your head is empty. My head is empty even through it feels full at times. — Erik Spiekermann
Typographer, graphic designer and businessman Erik Spiekermann has created timeless, influential and, yes, Meta-physical work over the past three decades. Next to founding MetaDesign and FontShop, the latter being the first ever digital distributor of fonts, and designing more instant classic typefaces than any other, he has been recognized as an outstanding expert internationally as a lecturer and professor.
via Erik Spiekermann – Putting Back the Face into Typeface on Vimeo.