Hans Eduard Meier

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Hans Eduard Meier (born December 30, 1922 in Horgen ; † July 15, 2014 ) was a Swiss typographer who was best known for the Syntax font he designed .

Life

After attending primary and secondary school, Meier completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter in Horgen from 1939 to 1942 . He then attended the Zurich School of Applied Arts from 1943 to 1945 . In the first semester he attended Karl Sternbauer's classroom setting. This was followed by two semesters in the typography class with Alfred Willimann. He completed his studies with the one-semester preliminary course and the consecutive one-semester specialist class for graphics with Ernst Keller. After completing his studies, he worked from 1946 to 1948 as a graphic artist for the monthly magazine “ du ” in Zurich. This was followed by a job as a graphic artist (including at UNESCO ) in Paris . In 1950 he returned to his former training school in Zurich as a specialist teacher for writing and drawing and taught there until his retirement in 1986.

Parallel to this activity, he also took on freelance contract work for industry from 1950. In addition, he created posters for the Tonhalle Zurich and the Kunsthaus Zurich . From 1978 he gave numerous lectures on the subject of writing in New York, Providence, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Montreal, Mainz, Zurich, Basel, Glarus, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Weimar. In addition, from 1984 to 1992 he was a lecturer in “Font Design on the Computer” at the Institute for Computer Systems at ETH Zurich . Meier was also a lecturer for typeface design on the computer in the field of visual design at the Zurich University of Art and Design, today's Zurich University of the Arts . From 2013 he lived and worked again in his hometown Horgen.

Act

In 1959, his trilingual textbook, Die Schriftentwicklung , was published, which in 1994 saw its eleventh edition.

Between 1955 and 1972, Meier developed Syntax , one of the world's most important sans serif typefaces . The first drafts were made in 1955 and 1959, which were followed by the final artwork in 1964 . From 1968 to 1972, he first created metal typesetting , followed by photo typesetting . The first digitization took place in 1989, followed in 1997 by a second digitization and expansion into a family (1992: Syntax Letter, 1995: Syntax Lapidar; 1999: Syntax Serif and 2001 Syntax Lapidar Serif).

The publications 1984 Barbedor, 1986 Syndor, 1992 Oberon and 2002 Elysa emerged from the collaboration with the Institute for Computer Systems. He also developed the SNB alphabet in 1994 and the ABC script in 2002, which was developed as a Swiss school script for the lower grades and is intended to make it easier for children to learn to write.

Some designs, e.g. B. Roman, developed in 1969, Classica in 1970 and Embroidered Antiqua in 2004, were never realized.

Fonts

  • My writing lessons in the preliminary course at the School of Design in Zurich: Contributions to training in writing. In: Typographic Monthly Pages. No. 4/1991.
  • Font design with the help of the computer. Basic typographic rules. ETH Zurich, 1993, issue 204.
  • The font development. Syndor Press, Cham 1994, ISBN 3-7212-0445-X .
  • Instructions for a contemporary school font for everyone who learns to write: a book for the teachers and exercise books for the learners. Fridolin-Digitaldruck, Glarus 2003. (See also: Website schulschrift.ch )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Siebert: Hans Eduard Meier (1922–2014) In: fontblog.de of July 18, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Meier, Hans Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss typographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Horgen
DATE OF DEATH 15th July 2014