I don’t use the font, FF Meta, very much, in part because Apple uses it so beautifully and consistently that it’s hard to compete. (Apparently, Apple actually uses a customized version of the font.) Meta Sans has been around since 1984, and was designed by the inimitable Erik Spiekermann, the founder of Font Shop, one of the most important companies selling fonts today. (One more aside: Spikermann, who teaches in Bremen, Germany, also designed Berliner Grotesque, a font I used for the original branding of MANOVERBOARD.)
Today, FontShop created a beautiful, elegant and informative small site dedicated to its relatively recent release of FF Meta’s serif sister. Everything about the design screams “buy me” – the large type at the top, the cute twins below the fold, haloed in pink, and the smartly crafted facts and figures page. To font-heads like myself, the story of the design of Meta Serif is a soap opera with multiple threads, leads, starts, and stops. Three of my most favorite designers collaborated, including Spikermann, the brilliant Christian Schwartz, and Kris Sowersby of New Zealand, to design and build this font.
The site even validates, a very unusual occurrence for any site, but especially sites dedicated to typography for some reason.
Kudos Kudos to FF.