designworkplan

Font Series: FF Meta is everywhere

by Sander Baumann. Average Reading Time: about 4 minutes.

FF Meta® is a won­der­ful type­face designed by Erik Spiek­er­mann, the font fam­ily was released between 1991 and 1998. A very read­able type­face in smaller point sizes but also with enough detail to dis­play in large point sizes. FF Meta is a sans-serif type­face which can be found all around you. The last sev­eral months where every I came (The Nether­lands) I saw type­face Meta, in this font series you can see the many dif­fer­ent faces of the FF Meta®.

Con­struc­tion Billboard

FF Meta is everywhere: billboard
A large size bill­board with infor­ma­tion about houses in Ams­ter­dam, you can clearly see the power of Meta with the read­abil­ity from a great dis­tance to this billboard.

Vehi­cle logo Endemol

FF Meta is everywhere: car visability
Wait­ing for a free pomp I spot­ted the logo of Ende­mol at the side of a car, it seems to be the Meta Bold, but I’m not sure about the let­ter — l — , anyone?

Big bill­board

FF Meta is everywhere: large billboard
A big adver­tis­ing for a Dutch com­pany that sells small busi­ness soft­ware, used the Meta Bold for their bill­board cam­paign. Also easy read­able from a distance.

Bike Bag

FF Meta is everywhere: bike bag
In Hol­land you see the bike bags very often. Dis­played is the logo of Sandd a new post com­pany which uses the Meta for their visual communication.

Truck on the highway

FF Meta is everywhere: Highway Truck
Quickly try­ing to get my cam­era and take a shot while dri­ving, I was mis­lead by the big com­pany name. But the pay­off is dis­play in Meta Book.

Gulpener Beer

FF Meta is everywhere: Gulpener Beer
Even on my hol­i­day I spot­ted the Meta, this time the Caps ver­sion got my atten­tion. A Dutch Beer Brow­ery Gulpener used the Meta Caps on var­i­ous visual level of communications.

Super­mar­ket Coop

FF Meta is everywhere: Supermarket Coop
A small super­mar­ket com­pany is using Meta Book & Bold to show their lat­est offers, I’ve also seen plas­tic bags printed with logo and text using the type­face Meta.

Staat­slo­terij / Lottery

FF Meta is everywhere: Staatloterij
Hol­lands biggest (run by the state) monthly lot­tery uses the type­face Meta! Not for all forms of visual com­mu­ni­ca­tions but here I spot­ted a announce­ment cre­ated in Meta Book.

Meta Pick­les

FF Meta is everywhere: Mixed Pickels
A Dutch com­pany Vol­wa­ter uses var­i­ous weights of FF Meta to dis­play the infor­ma­tion on the bot­tles, a good exam­ple of var­i­ous font weights work­ing together.

Lekker bij Rosé

FF Meta is everywhere: Lekker bij Rosé
Huibrecht Duijker is one of Hol­lands famous wine lovers, he writes, tells and drinks wine. In this small book­let the type­face Meta is used in var­i­ous ways, bold, caps, book. It shows again that Meta is a very eli­ga­ble type­face for small point sizes.

Sig­nage

FF Meta is everywhere: Signage with Meta
This is an exam­ple of sig­nage made with Meta Bold, cre­ated in our com­pany I sug­gested to the owner of the build­ing to go for Meta in all sig­nage and wayfinding.

Shop­ping Window

FF Meta is everywhere: shopping window
Found through photo web­site flickr, a shop­ping win­dow printed with var­i­ous font weights of Meta in a nice design.

Elas­tic Bandage

FF Meta is everywhere: Elastic Bandage
Went through our med­i­cines and found the pack­age of Hansaplast who are using the Meta in Eng­lish and Dutch text at the front and back­side of the package.

No more headache

FF Meta is everywhere: Headache Paracetamol
With this pack­age of parac­eta­mol you will never have a headache again. For all text on the pack­age they are using the Meta in Bold and Book typefaces.

Avery Sur­face Cleaner

FF Meta is everywhere: Avery Surface Cleaner
To clean and remove adhe­sive vinyl foil you can use the Avery Sur­face Cleaner, a clear usage of font type Meta Bold on the bottle.

Real Estate Sign

FF Meta is everywhere: Real Estate Sign
A Real Estate Sign from Lun­shof is using Meta as their house type. A good read­abil­ity with the use of blue font­text and white background.

Gall & Gall

FF Meta is everywhere: Gall and Gall
Hol­lands largest liqueur store is using Meta for all lev­els of visual comu­ni­ca­tions. The stores, posters and inter­net web­site is filled with the Font Fam­ily Meta. A Meta tread to buy your favorite wine or beer at Gall & Gall.

http://www.DesignWorkPlan.com

Last.. but not least.. The com­plete tem­plate of Design Work Plan (this web­site) is using the won­der­ful type­face Meta Bold.

Avail­abil­ity of Meta® Font Family

FF Meta available through FontShop
The Com­plete Font Fam­ily con­tains a pack­age of 24 vari­a­tions (via FontShop) and was pub­lished by Font­Font (see their web­site for lots of Meta usage), is avail­able in the fol­low­ing for­mats Mac Post­Script, PC Post­Script, PC True­Type. All styles Book, Caps, Bold and Bold Caps are also avail­able in Italic. Start­ing from a set of 3 fonts at € 40,- to the com­plete font fam­ily for € 229,-. When bought at FontShop you can down­load the fonts after the pur­chase and start using them right away. Although FF Meta® is not in the top 10 best­sellers at FontShop I believe this is a very pop­u­lar font.

Did you have your meta today?

Take a look around you and tell me.. Did you have your Meta today?




45 comments on ‘Font Series: FF Meta is everywhere’

  1. Design Bump

    August 5, 2008

    Story on DesignBump.com…

    Your story was fea­tured in Design Bump! Here is the link to vote it up and pro­mote it: http://designbump.com/Typography/Font_Series_FF_Meta_is_everywhere...

  2. Books and Magazines Blog » Archive » Font Series: Meta is everywhere

    August 5, 2008

    […] Orig­i­nal post by SEGD: Beweg­wi­jz­er­ing, design, grafisch ontwerp en architectuur […]

  3. Sander Spek

    August 5, 2008

    Pfoe hee, flinke col­lec­tie. Ik heb altijd de groot­ste moeite om Spiek­er­manns let­ter­typen (zoals Meta, Unit en Offic­ina Sans) uit elkaar te houden, alhoewel ze alle­maal een duidelijke Spiekermann-touch hebben.

  4. FF Meta photo showcase | CrazyLeaf Design Blog

    August 5, 2008

    […] FF Meta is every­where around you, take a look around.. Did you have your Meta today? View source Posted in : Gen­eral Post sta­tis­tics : 1 […]

  5. Sander Baumann

    August 5, 2008

    He Sander! Dank voor je bericht, het let­ter­type Meta heeft ver­schil­lende spec­i­fieke details zoals de onderkast let­ters ‘a, g, h & y’ waar ik het let­ter­type vaak aan herken. Via Iden­ti­font er is een lijst van Spiek­er­mann let­ter­typen beschik­baar. Ben jij het let­ter­type Meta van­daag al ergens tegen gekomen?

  6. Alcohol Posts » Font Series: Meta is everywhere

    August 5, 2008

    […] Sander Bau­mann wrote a fan­tas­tic post today on “Font Series: Meta is everywhere”Here’s ONLY a quick extrac­tHol­lands largest liqueur store is using Meta for all lev­els of visual comu­ni­ca­tions. The stores, posters and inter­net web­site is filled with the Font Fam­ily Meta. A Meta tread to buy your favorite wine or beer at Gall & Gall. … […]

  7. Font Series: FF Meta is Everywhere | DesignM.ag

    August 5, 2008

    […] Visit Source. […]

  8. Stefan Vervoort

    August 6, 2008

    Dat is een flinke col­lec­tie. Kende het let­ter­type eigelijk niet, maar er wordt toch overal gebruik van gemaakt. Ik zal dit artikel in de round-up stoppen.

  9. Sander Spek

    August 6, 2008

    Die spec­i­fieke g was me inder­daad ook al opgevallen: die maakt ‘m duidelijk anders dan de Unit en Offic­ina Sans. Ik dacht eerst bij mezelf, “nee, ik heb van­daag nog geen Meta gezien”, en ter­wijl ik dat dacht staarde ik voor me uit, naar de rug van het boek Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing van Som­merville. Drie maal raden welk lettertype.

    Over een omnipresent let­ter­type gespro­ken, altijd als ik in Duit­s­land kom, ver­baast het me dat die Duit­sers (naast Spiek­er­manns ontwer­pen natu­urlijk) maar geen genoeg kun­nen kri­j­gen van de DIN. Al helpt het natu­urlijk dat de Duitse ANWB (ver­zorgt de TÜV dat?) en de Duitse NS (DB) al hun bor­den in DIN neerzetten.

    Een tijdje gele­den kwam ik aan op het sta­tion in Düs­sel­dorf, waar lev­ens­grote bill­boards ston­den met de tekst “Wilkom­men / Wel­come”. In… juist, FF Meta. Dat was pas een fijn welkom!

  10. Sander Baumann

    August 6, 2008

    Ste­fan — Dank voor je reac­tie. Fraaie word­press themes maak je. Ik heb je web­site gebookmarked.

    Sander Spek — :-) Geweldig! Wat is het voor boek? Onder­staand een afbeeld­ing van de cover met Meta Book.

    Vol­gens mij wordt DIN veel gebruikt in Europese ver­keers­bor­den, over twee weken ben ik in Duit­s­land zal eens wat foto’s maken van de bor­den. Goed post idee! Vol­gens WIKI is DIN-1451 de Duitse stan­dard sinds 1936.

    Dank voor je reactie!

  11. Sander Spek

    August 6, 2008

    Het is een boek over soft­ware engi­neer­ing, het ontwikke­len, imple­menteren en beheren van soft­ware. Het werd tij­dens mijn studie Infor­matiekunde in Tilburg gebruikt voor een gelijk­namig vak.

  12. Jim

    August 6, 2008

    When I first moved here to the Nether­lands, I was amazed at the amount of plain-jane Hel­vetica in use…even Hel­vetica Rounded Bold! Crikies — HRB is damn 70s fugly. Worse, many com­pa­nies used Arial in their adver­tis­ing, prob­a­bly because it came with the com­puter and some­one used it in a Pow­er­point to describe the design.

    But in the past 3 years I’ve seen com­pa­nies really treat their font work intel­li­gently, real­iz­ing that using poorly-kerned font sets really detracts from their cor­po­rate image, and Meta, Eureka Sans and Hel­veti­ca­Neue are finally com­ing out to play.

    Thank god. Hol­land is safe for design­ers again. :)

  13. Vince

    August 6, 2008

    Mooie col­lec­tie. Hoog dat-is-waar-ook-gevoel!

  14. Sander Baumann

    August 6, 2008

    Sander Spek — Van­daar dat je Mas­ter in Sci­ence bent! Dank voor je reactie.

    Jim — Hi Jim, thanks for join­ing! I know what you mean and so true about the usage of Arial in all sorts of visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It’s pre-installed so why change.… Many peo­ple don’t really think of the impact of type­faces, hope­fuly some­day it will change. Can we visit your designs some­where? Thank you for your comment.

    Vince — He Vince, welkom en dank voor je reac­tie! Inder­daad als je er een­maal op let, zie je FF Meta overal. Fraai logo design op je web­site, aan welke wed­strijd doe je mee met ‘vault’?

  15. Interesting Articles #8 » DivitoDesign - Webdesign Blog

    August 6, 2008

    […] Font Series: FF Meta is every­where — Inter­est­ing study. I had never heard of the font before, but the Dutch mar­keters are using it […]

  16. erik spiekermann

    August 6, 2008

    de Duitse NS (DB) al hun bor­den in DIN neerzetten.

    Where did you find that? The offi­cial type­face of the DB is called DB Type, a fam­ily of sans and serif ver­sions. Designed by, yes: me and Chris­t­ian Schwartz. They still use DIN at the bot­tom of the car­riage for some tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion.
    e

  17. Sander Spek

    August 7, 2008

    Really, Erik? Oh crap, then I should prop­erly rub my eyes the next time. Thanks for the cor­rec­tion. (And good you can read Dutch ;-)

  18. Sander Spek

    August 7, 2008

    Hmmm, I don’t mean to dis­agree with you Erik, but you mean this fam­ily right?

    Direct link to PDF Exam­ple DB Type.

    Maybe a lot of small train sta­tions in NRW are not updated yet, but I doubt if that is the font I saw used for those dark blue signs with white text on the plat­forms indi­cat­ing the name of the sta­tion. It always looked to me as the DIN Mittelschrift.

    I did indeed notice the DIN Engschrift on the carriages.

  19. Sander Baumann

    August 7, 2008

    Erik Spiek­er­mann — Thank you for tak­ing the time to com­ment, highly appre­ci­ated! Over the next few weeks I’ll be vis­it­ing Ger­many and will take some pho­tos of type on sig­nage and will post a arti­cle about it, with infor­ma­tion about DB Type. Thank you again for stop­ping at my blog.

    Sander Spek — Thank you for pro­vid­ing the link to DB Type, when I’m in Ger­many I’ll take a closer look at type and signs. Thank you for your com­ments, appreciated!

  20. Font Series: FF Meta is everywhere! | Fuel Your Creativity

    August 8, 2008

    […] Font Series: FF Meta is everywhere! […]

  21. Stephen Coles

    August 8, 2008

    Great roundup of FF Meta in the wild! Your link to the “com­plete overview” isn’t quite com­plete. FF Meta 1 only has two weights (Book and Bold and their ital­ics). A bet­ter link would be this one and FF Meta 3 which adds all the weights plus Head­line, Con­densed, and Serif.

  22. Sander Baumann

    August 8, 2008

    Hi Stephen — Thank you for join­ing! Appre­ci­ated com­ment with the links to the com­plete Meta Font Fam­ily. I will add the links in the post.

  23. inspirationbit

    August 8, 2008

    I really liked this post. I always enjoy find­ing out what fonts were used on things that sur­round us, so it was very inter­est­ing to look at your discoveries.

    Btw, well done on the design changes here: I like the red icons on the side­bar, and the para­graph sign looks nice too.

  24. Josh

    August 8, 2008

    Nice post, Sander. I too have noticed this type­face in the wild with some reg­u­lar­ity recently. It makes a change from Hel­vetica, although Meta may soon become equally ubiq­ui­tous and thus dull.

    By the way, “Ende­mol” is, I believe, a tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion company.

  25. Sander Baumann

    August 9, 2008

    Vivien (Inspi­ra­tionbit) — Thank you for your com­ment! It was a fun expe­ri­ence to find FF Meta in the wild and thank you again for the design-critic review at your web­site, it improved my design! When can we expect a redesign @ inspirationbit?

    Josh — Hi Josh, thank you for join­ing. I don’t think you just can com­pare Hel­vetica & Meta to eachother. Both sans-serif but totally dif­fer­ent types with dif­fer­ent pur­poses. I believe Meta has the power to become (or already is) a time­less font. Thank you for your comment.

  26. erik spiekermann

    August 9, 2008

    dark blue signs with white text on the platforms

    That is the spe­cial type­face just for sig­nage, based on Hel­vetica. The sta­tions can be used by more than one com­pany (DB is but one provider, albeit the largest), so they can­not be branded for DB only.
    DBType was intro­duced in 2005/6, so there’ll be a lot of appli­ca­tions still set in Hel­vetica, their pre­vi­ous typeface.

  27. Stephen Coles

    August 10, 2008

    > although Meta may soon become equally ubiq­ui­tous and thus dull

    I believe Meta is one of the few time­less clas­sics. It’s been pop­u­lar since its launch in the late ‘80s and it’s not dull yet. As long as it’s used appro­pri­ately it will age well.

  28. Designio » Meta-usada

    August 10, 2008

    […] Bueno ya escribí demasi­ado asíque sin abur­rir­los, les dejo un link para que lo vean uds mis­mos. Aquí pueden apre­ciar los dis­tin­tos usos a los que se somete esta dócil familia tipográfica […]

  29. Max

    August 10, 2008

    so many bikes!

  30. Sunday Type: favourite type | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog

    August 11, 2008

    […] that should die Type Cooker type draw­ing exer­cises Facelift Image Replace­ment (or FLIR). No Flash. FF Meta is everywhere—segd justwatchthesky—simple type treat­ments, good colour palettes Enter the serif—Kung Fu […]

  31. muneefvc

    August 11, 2008

    meta is my fav!
    i am glad that i have it!

  32. Sander Baumann

    August 11, 2008

    erik spiek­er­mann — Thank you for explain­ing, appreciated.

    Stephen Coles — I totally agree with you, FF Meta = Timeless!

    Max — At some point I believe there are too many bikes here in Ams­ter­dam.. Thank you for your comment.

    muneefvc — Thank you for shar­ing your favorite type­face. Can we see a design with FF Meta from your hand somewhere?

  33. Davekos

    August 11, 2008

    Ahhhh Meta has always been my baby. But I don’t have it.

  34. Flaneur

    August 12, 2008

    Nice post. Here in Buenos Aires, Argentina, every­thing is in Frutiger. My favourites: Hel­vetica, DIN, Scala.

  35. Sander Baumann

    August 12, 2008

    Dav­ekos — Thank you for your comment.

    Fla­neur — Great photo blog you got! I’d love to see some pho­tos of type & sig­nage from Buenos Aires. Thank you for your com­ment and shar­ing your favorite typefaces.

  36. James Kurtz III

    August 15, 2008

    Ah, yes, such a beau­ti­ful type­face. I used it on an ad for a fork­lift truck!

  37. Matt

    September 19, 2008

    Ahh! These are nice spec­i­mens! Meta is one of my favorite type­faces… thanks for col­lect­ing these!

  38. Implent sIFR3 - A Healthy Alternative to Browser Text » DivitoDesign

    September 29, 2008

    […] you used the type­face Meta when gen­er­at­ing your file, your .swf file is named meta.swf. You can use these codes […]

  39. Simon Robertson

    November 18, 2008

    this is really nice, thanks!

  40. Fonts in the Wild - Creattica Daily

    December 8, 2008

    […] Bau­mann takes us on a photo-blog tour of two fonts in the wild. Start with FF Meta is everywhere,and fin­ish off with Rotis is every­where. FF Meta® is a won­der­ful type­face designed by Erik […]

  41. Josef Go-Oco

    January 1, 2009

    I am delighted to see such a type­face in the wild, most espe­cially here in the Philip­pines. Almost every­body uses Arial, Papyrus, and Comic Sans. Or those with, per­haps, proper edu­ca­tion (self or not) use Hel­vetica. But Hel­vetica is already very ubiq­ui­tous, which, when added to its neu­tral­ity, makes it really bor­ing at times. Meta is a refresh­ing type­face to see, espe­cially is shops, menus, and brochures (among oth­ers) and I smile when I see it used prop­erly. It’s like ogling women, really.

  42. Luís Guilherme

    January 5, 2010

    FF Meta Sans is also the offi­cial type­face for the Rio de Janeiro under­ground company.

  43. Sander Baumann

    January 5, 2010

    Thank you Luís Guil­herme — for your com­ment, do you have pho­tos of the type­face in use at the under­grond? Thanks in advance.

  44. Jim

    May 7, 2010

    Where is the set of three fonts avail­able for €40,-

  45. Shaun Mclain

    January 6, 2012

    Nice infor­ma­tive blog, thanks for sharing.

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