Founded by Erik Spiekermann, Joan Spiekermann and Neville Brody in 1989, FontShop is a child of the digital revolution in the font industry. The basic principle for the past 25 years has been to offer fonts by designers, for designers, and to build a font library with a kind of magical character. From the beginning, the foundry has pushed the typographical limits and broken a rule or two along the way. The freedom gained was used for typographic creativity and a library that is contemporary, experimental, unorthodox and radical. The result of this approach was countless well-known and popular fonts.
The takeover by Monotype in the summer of 2014 does not represent an end to this success story, but a new chapter, one with added competence and strength. As a result, you can look forward not only to exciting and trendy new releases from the FontFont library, but now also access all previously published FontFont fonts directly on Linotype.com.
One of the most famous and popular typefaces of the FontFont library is Meta®, designed by Erik Spiekermann. Since 1991, when the first styles were published, the font has developed into a super family with numerous variants.
The basic shape of FF Meta is based on Renaissance Antiqua and has a corresponding, slight variation in the stroke width. Beveled stroke ends and the partially curved lines in particular lend Meta a distinctive, lively and friendly character, which is further supported by the round points. The two-story “g”, which is very striking and has become a kind of trademark of the font, was adapted from the Antiqua. Meta is also perfectly legible in the small font sizes, not in the least because of the large x-height and open letter forms. FF Meta is now available in two widths with six condensed weights and eight normal weights. All styles have a true italic with their own letter forms and are perfectly equipped typographically. You have the option of small capitals, different number sets, numerous and in some cases very particular ligatures and alternate characters.
If the vivid and detailed structures of FF Meta prove to be a little too dominant in headlines and larger font sizes,
FF Meta® Headline is the ideal choice. Under the direction of Erik Spiekermann and Christian Schwartz, Joshua Darden designed three widths, each with four weights for the compact font, optimizing it for larger sizes. To this end, he not only cut back the curved lines, but also shortened slightly the descenders and reduced the letter-spacing. Alternate characters with a reduced form for “a”, “g” and “l” offer you more leeway.
FF Meta® Correspondence is designed specifically for the requirements of the office environment. Not only did a few letters get a more solid form, such as the lowercase “i” and “j” or the uppercase “I” and “Q”, but other characters, such as “f”, “E” and “F”, have been optimized for better screen display, dispensing with the oblique ends. The small “g” is available in the single-story form, although the two-story version, typical to the Meta font, is also included. FF Meta Correspondence also contains numerous symbols and pictograms for everyday office work.
It took Erik Spiekermann, collaborating with Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby, three years to design
FF Meta® Serif. The approach was not to cling obsessively to the basic shape of FF Meta, but rather to create a serif that was fitting for the font. As a result, the Renaissance Antiqua FF Meta Serif is in perfect harmony with FF Meta in terms of its weights and x-height. It embraces the style of its sister font so as to be optically perfect, not mathematically exact. All six weights of FF Meta Serif Italic feature real italic styles and can be combined with the FF Meta on the same page or in the same line.
