Webfonts Week: An Interview with Erik Spiekermann

Still speaking a-mile-a-minute and showing no signs of slowing down, Erik Spiekermann coyly calls himself an "old guy". It's true that he's been around for every incarnation of type — metal, film, and digital — but he's no fuddy-duddy when it comes to new technology and new methods. Spiekermann embraced the fledgling world of digital type early on when he founded FontShop 20 years ago, and he's just as forward-thinking now about licensing type in an era of Web-embeddable fonts.

I pulled him aside one morning during the Typ09 conference in Mexico City to talk about the interesting parallels between using web fonts as a service and typesetting the old-fashioned way.

Click here to watch the FontCast or simply push play below.

Header image:Erik Spiekermann at TypeCon2008 in Buffalo, NY. Photo © Eben Sorkin.