Designers think for a living, but nobody is interested in our thoughts. All they want is the physical manifestations of our thought process. Sketches, dummies, layouts, mark-ups, pilots, presentations, print-outs, soft proofs, touch-and-feel, wireframes – whatever it takes to show what the ‘real’ piece may look like.
As a typographer in the 60s and 70s, we had to prepare our ideas for other people: typesetters, printers, programmers, colleagues, client. Exact instructions, pasted-up elements or ‘original art’ were our final product.

This will be a trip down memory lane and onto the shop floor of forgotten techniques and technology that may offer insights in how we work and what could perhaps be improved. And an attempt at suggesting how to use our brains better – still the most powerful tool around.

Erik Spiekermann is author, information designer and typographer. He founded MetaDesign and FontShop, is Honorary Professor at the University of the Arts in Bremen and has an honorary doctorship from Pasadena Art Center. In 2003 he received the Gerrit Noordzij Award from the Royal Academy in Den Haag and in 2007 he was the first designer to be elected into the Hall of Fame by the European Design Awards for Communication Design. Later that year he was named Honorary Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA in Britain. Some of his typefaces, among them FF Meta and ITC Officina, are considered modern classics. He lives and works in Berlin, London and San Francisco. His studio, SpiekermannPartners, presently employs some 30 designers.