TYPO Talks » Blog Archiv » Celebrating 15 years of TYPO Berlin moments (6)

Type Design at MoMA’s Collection (2/2):

2004: Tobias Frere-Jones at TYPO Berlin 2004, honored by MoMA for Interstate (1993-95), Mercury (with Jonathan Hoefler, 1996), Retina (with Jonathan Hoefler, 1999) and Gotham (with Jonathan Hoefler, 2000)

2004: Jonathan Hoefler at TYPO Berlin 2004, honored by MoMA for HTF Didot (1991), Mercury (with Tobias Frere-Jones, 1996), Retina (with Tobias Frere-Jones, 1999) and Gotham (with Tobias Frere-Jones, 2000)

2005: Albert-Jan Pool at TYPO Berlin 2005, honored by MoMA for FF DIN (1995)

2006: Jonathan Barnbrook at TYPO Berlin 2006, honored by MoMA for Mason (1992)

2008: Erik Spiekermann at TYPO Berlin 2008, honored by MoMA for FF Meta (1984-1991)

All images: © Marc Eckardt for TYPO

Tobias Frere-Jones

Type Designer (New York)

Over 25 years, Tobias Frere-Jones has established himself as one of the world’s leading typeface designers, creating some of the world’s most widely used typefaces, including Interstate, Poynter Oldstyle, Whitney, Gotham, Surveyor, Tungsten and Retina. Frere-Jones received a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. He joined the faculty of the Yale University School of Art in 1996 and has lectured throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. His work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2006, The Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague (KABK) awarded him the Gerrit Noordzij Prijs, for his contributions to typographic design, writing and education. In 2013 he received the AIGA Medal, in recognition of exceptional achievements in the field of design. Tobias launched his new type design practice, Frere-Jones Type, in January 2015.

Jonathan Hoefler

For fifteen years, Jonathan Hoefler has specialized in the design of original typefaces for editorial, corporate, and institutional clients. His New York studio has developed more than 500 typefaces, including Knockout, Mercury, Requiem, and Hoefler Text. His work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (Smithsonian Institution) in New York. In 2002, The Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) presented Hoefler with its most prestigious award, the Prix Charles Peignot for outstanding contributions to type design.

Albert-Jan Pool

Albert-Jan Pool was born in Amsterdam in 1960, and studied Graphic Design and Typography at KABK in The Hague. He has lived and worked in Hamburg since 1987, first with Scangraphic and URW, later self-employed. He was a co-owner of FarbTon design agency for some time. But being a typographer is what Pool loves best: FF OCR-F, FF DIN, JET, Freenet, C&A, HEM, and other fonts. He has been teaching type design at the Muthesius School of Art in Kiel since 1995.

Jonathan Barnbrook

Graphic Designer (London)

Jonathan Barnbrook is one of the most well-known graphic designers in Britain. Since 1990 he has chosen to work with a mixture of cultural institutions, activist groups and charities as well as completing a steady stream of personal posters. He is also know for his collaborations with Adbusters, Damien Hirst, his work for David Bowie and his ubiquitous fonts designs released through Emigre and his company Virusfonts. His contribution to graphic design was recognised by a major exhibition at the Design Museum, London in 2007.

Erik Spiekermann

Art Historian, Information Architect, Type Designer, Author (Berlin, San Francisco, London)

Erik Spiekermann is information architect, type designer and author. Two of his typefaces, FF Meta and ITC Officina, are considered to be modern classics. He founded MetaDesign (1979) and FontShop (1988). He is behind the design of well-know brands such as Audi, Bosch, VW, German Railways and Heidelberg Printing, among others; information systems for Berlin Transit and Düsseldorf Airport and for publications like The Economist. He designed exclusive typefaces for corporations like Deutsche Bahn, Bosch, ZDF (German TV), Cisco, Mozilla and many others. Erik is Honorary Professor at the University of the Arts in Bremen and in 2003 received the Gerrit Noordzij Award from the Royal Academy in The Hague. In 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorship from Pasadena Art Center. He was made an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA in Britain in 2007 and Ambassador for the European Year of Creativity and Innovation by the European Union for 2009. In 2011 he received the German National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement and the TDC Medal as well as a Lifetime Award from the German Art Directors Club. He was managing partner and creative director of Edenspiekermann with offices in Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco and Los Angeles until June 2014 when he moved from that position to the supervisory board. He now runs galerie p98a, an experimental letterpress workshop in Berlin. Erik splits his time between Berlin and San Francisco and London, where his son Dylan lives. A book about his life and work “Hello I am Erik” was published by Gestalten Verlag in 2014. Photo: Dennis Letbetter