| Date: 1991 Designer:
Erik Spiekermann Foundry:
FontShop International Location:
Berlin, Germany Current equivalent:
FF Meta See also:
Officina Sans and Officina Serif, by the same designer
Technologies:
Postscript
Opentype | | Famous for:
Ubiquitous postmodern sans serif type. Applications: Business and Corporate Ubiquity:
Very widely used Category:
Sans Serif Humanist
Stress: Vertical
Serifs: Sans Serif | | Design history:
Highly influential humanist sans serif font, optimised for low resolution laser printing, and originally designed as an alternative to the house typeface of the German post office. Spiekermann redrew the typeface for commercial release with a number of character sets and European language features. Shortly before the release of Meta, Spiekermann founded Fontshop to supply a new brand of typefaces called FontFonts (FF). Meta is now available in eight weights with condensed, compressed and headline variants. It has matched small capitals, italics, lining and non-lining numerals, as well as Greek and Cyrillic versions. The ubiquitous Meta has rightfully been called 'the Helvetica of the 1990s'. | |  |
