Erik Spiekermann: Typographer, Designer, Entrepreneur
Erik Spiekermann is one of the best-known typographers and graphic designers in the world. As a teacher and critic who is loved and feared in equal measure, his influence on contemporary graphic design is unparalleled. Spiekermann also represents German typeface and corporate design like no other.

The founder of MetaDesign, FontShop, and EdenSpiekermann has been a successful entrepreneur and impulse generator for decades. When Erik Spiekermann founded FontShop International with his wife Joan and Neville Brody, he helped establish the internet as a source for buying fonts. His typefaces FF Meta and ITC Officina have been bestsellers for years and are already considered modern classics by typographers worldwide. Spiekermann now likes to comment on current developments in the world of design via Twitter, where he has more than 250,000 followers. In 2011, he received the German Design Award for lifetime achievement.

Spiekermann is a highly sought after public speaker and regularly gives lectures at leading design conferences and universities around the world. He is, for example, an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and holds an honorary doctorate from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. In his classes and his companies, such as MetaDesign and EdenSpiekermann, he has helped train many of today’s top designers.

The book Hello, I am Erik was edited, written, and designed by Johannes Erler and his office in close cooperation with Erik Spiekermann. It is the first-ever visual biography of Erik Spiekermann’s work. The book documents his projects, traces milestones in his life, and offers his personal perspectives on design. Essays by notable designers and authors provide a framework and further context for this vivid presentation of his body of work.

Johannes Erler is one of Germany’s top designers. Until the end of 2010, he created and managed the corporate identities of some of the country’s leading brands and institutions with his agency Factor Design including Wempe, Deutsches Theater, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. In addition to his work in corporate design, Erler is an expert in editorial design. Since 2011, he has served as the art director of the magazine Stern, one of Germany’s most widely read weeklies, and was responsible for its recent redesign. Erler is a board member of the German chapter of the Art Directors Club, with a focus on editorial design.

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