4 Design Lessons From Mastermind Erik Spiekermann
Erik Spiekermann is one of the most well-known and creative thinkers in design. He revolutionized the industry back in the ’80s by being the first to distribute fonts, and he was one of the first designers to start working with computers. He’s helped brands like VW and Audi become household names as well as designed fonts for Apple, Adobe and other big players. And he’s still going, at design house Edenspiekermann.
So what can you learn from this living legend? Here are four lessons from his mouth to your eyes.
Thrive on Disruptive Technology
“When I saw my first Photoshop demonstration, in ’87 at Adobe someplace, I thought my world had just opened up. You could put pictures on the screen and manipulate them. I remember that picture so well. There was a guy in a raincoat on some square in Italy with pigeons around him. They took this guy and gave him a motion blur so it looked like he was walking on the computer in real time. I thought I’d died. I knew that this would not only change my world but also expand it tremendously. It’s a threat, but disruptive technology’s what we thrive on.
“Even today, things are in flux. A lot of things haven’t found their final form yet. The book took a few hundred years to find its final shape, which hasn’t been improved on since the 1600s: The binding is still the same. The printing is still the same. It’s gotten better, but the principle hasn’t changed.
I knew that this would not only change my world but also expand it tremendously.
“The same is true for the computer: The interface is there to stay. But we’ll have a flat screen that’s backlit. Tablets haven’t found their final form, our intelligent phones haven’t found their final form. But all these things will coexist, and they’ll also be developed until they have found 100 percent of what they’re good at.
“Right now, we’re doing things on certain machines that we shouldn’t be doing. We shouldn’t be reading long text on a standard phone. It’s stupid. We do it because it’s there, but that’s going to go away. The iPad already moved that over. None of these things have matured yet, but they all give a promise. Some of them will disappear.”
Give In to Happenstance
“Whether it’s The New York Times or especially the Frankfurt paper, a big, large format, twice the size of this, I open [the paper version] and I find things that I wasn’t looking for. On the screen, you have to have a hierarchy, because you can’t fit so much. You have to look for something. Whereas I open the [printed] page and I will find something I wasn’t looking for, I would have never looked for. I wouldn’t know what to look for. I find things that I wasn’t expecting, and that is enriching. I only need a couple headlines to know it says Ukraine or it says Sochi and I’m done, but the stuff that enriches me is the stuff that I wasn’t expecting.”
“[Designers] are the interface, we interpret what the machine says into visible language.”
Waste Not, Want Not
“I have great hopes that whatever equipment we use will be more accessible and therefore more cleverly used. People get stuck in two hours of traffic jams and stuff; it’s horrible. One guy sitting in a car crossing the bridge is stupid. It could be four people in there, right? And the same goes for buildings. The same goes for anything that 90 percent of the time isn’t being used.
“It also means that, of course, the industry will be selling less of those things. Not everybody needs a car anymore. What’s going to happen to the car industry? Which my country totally depends on. The younger people in Germany don’t buy anymore; they use Zipcars or Car2Go or bicycle, trams, taxis. They are pragmatic about transport. There’s going to be a big revolution in transportation in America.
“There’s going to be a big revolution in transportation in America.”
“I think we are going to see a lot of change in the next 10 years there. You have an app; you know when you can get on the bus or in a car or bicycle. You don’t have to chance it. So you can plan your day without having to have your own car. That’s a great promise.
“The same goes for the waste of energy that happens in our houses every moment. All day we are heating up water that we use once a day. The issue is with the stupid tanks here, which we don’t have back home, heating a whole house. Then there’s lighting streets, lighting bridges, lighting stations when there is nobody there. All that stuff will go away — that’s my great hope. It’s going to take at least 25 years, another generation.”
Learn How Everything Works
“Learn as much about our culture as you possibly can, by reading, by traveling, by involving yourself in things that go on. But don’t become an artist. Don’t think, “I’ll do it intuitively.” You have to learn if not to code at least to appreciate code, to understand code. Because code is what nuts and bolts were a hundred years ago.
“Learn as much about our culture as you possibly can, by reading, by traveling, by involving yourself in things that go on.
“If you don’t know anything about mechanics, you can’t survive in this world. If you don’t know anything about how a computer works or code works, as a communicator, which is what a designer is — the interface between machines and man, that’s what we are. We are the interface, we interpret what the machine says into visible language. If you don’t understand how the machine works, you’re going to be laughed out of the room by the engineering guys, because you can’t communicate with them.”
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