Erik Spiekermann – galerie p98a

As “birthday gift” for the first 25 years (1995–2020), Tipoteca Italiana asked 25 designers and printers, from all over the world, to design and print a poster. The project 25×25. Tipoteca 25 was conceived in this way. Maximum freedom of creation was left, except for a few rules: the size (50 × 70 cm), the colors (maximum 4 colors), and the printing technique (letterpress). Over half of the posters were made directly in the printshops of the invited designers; instead, those who had no way of printing the poster in their studio were sent a Type-Kit, consisting of the digital scan of twenty typefaces from the Tipoteca archive with which they could design the posters. The print would have been performed by the Tipoteca Stamperia on the basis of the indications of colors, fonts, and layout established by each graphic designer. And so it was.

Erik Spiekermann is art historian, information architect, type designer and author. He founded MetaDesign (1979) and FontShop (1988). He 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. He now runs galerie p98a, an experimental letterpress workshop in Berlin.