Meta Serif is less unique

(A comment to At last! FF Meta Serif published in I Love Typography.)

First trials on Erik’s blog was quite a nice surprize, The idea was so obvious. With this bunch of designers behind the design, probably no reason to say anything.

But, more and more I came across several webpages announcing this typeface family, more and more something seems to don’t work with this Serif version. FF Meta Serif looks Renault typeface from the 70’s (Erik told us that he participated to initial design of the french car branding type…): boring.

With FF Meta, we have a typeface with style, a typeface who seems to bring into letters: Mr Spiekermann himself, the guy who speak too much during his lectures (we love it), because of the various bits there and there, who make the font a lively face, different than the sobre Officina or Info.

In Meta Serif, nothing like that, I miss all this stuff present on the Sans. Why the three designers don’t tried to add less regularized elements of design, like we can see in a typeface from Jeremy Tankard, its an Enigm to me! Enigma is a different animal, but original, unique on its way to interpret Serif typefaces. And Meta Serif is not unique, as Meta is a unique Sans.

Perhaps the team can explain a bit more: Do they have some specific use in mind? perhaps too much influenced by Corporate ASE?

I know that designing a Serif from a Sans is the worst thing ever, its so more easy to do the reverse. Perhaps the reason. No clear idea, but for sure, I’m perplex.


jfp le 15.11.07 — cat. — key.
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3 Commentaires "Meta Serif is less unique"

  1. If you want to learn more about the background and motivations behind the design of FF Meta Serif, you can find quite some information in my post on Unzipped.


    — Yves Peters Nov 20, 09:30

  2. It’s called ‘marketing’, JP. Meta is a valuable brand and extending it makes sense.
    Re your being perplexed: maybe you set your hopes too high?


    — Bert Vanderveen Nov 21, 14:48

  3. Following Unzipped article:

    Thanks for this Yves, its gives good answers to my wonderings about the deliberated design choice for something more clean, straight, efficient, effective. Meta Serif will be perfect for forms, probably less for fancy stuff like we have see set in Meta “Sans”. But we can understood Meta Serif as a follow up of the evolution of the designer mind about what make a good typeface. Cleaned Officina version published few months ago, prove this evolution I presume.

    Scherzo from my friend Albert Boton, designed roughly 20 years ago or more belong to the Meta Serif category of workhorse Serif typefaces.

    I just realized too, via the Typophile thread that I’m not alone wondering about Meta Serif.


    — Jean F Porchez Nov 27, 17:44
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