Brief:
Create a typeface that pays homage to Erik Spiekermann and an outlet to for the typeface to be presented.
Write up:
Erik Spiekermann is a very interesting character, he prides himself on being bold and innovative when creating his typefaces, and is especially vocal about what he likes or dislike on his twitter account, @espiekermann, as well.
On his account, you’re able to see him tweeting or retweeting without any filter, one of his unfiltered tweet got caught on and landed him in a little bit of a tangled situation. He replied a tweet from a writer who was announcing her new book, and told her, “actually, you wrote a text. It took a few other people & skills to make that into a book.” Obviously, everyone pounced on the situation and accused him of being crude and unprofessional in his reply, why rain on the parade of someone’s new book, right?
But many people also caught on to the fact that he wasn’t exactly being rude, he was just stating that a book involved printing, type setting, and so much more rather than just writing the content. He apologized to the public about the misunderstanding but also explained that it wasn’t meant to target the writer, I thought that was a really mature action which spoke loud about who he was as a person.
My created typeface, What the Flick, revolves around his interesting life on twitter and his loud and unfiltered thoughts which he spills online. One of the things that grabbed my attention was his undying hatred for Donald Trump, like this retweet, “you know what the difference is between @realDonaldTrump & Kim Jong-un? 5236 miles. Little else.” I thought it was interesting how Donald trump too expresses this sense of nonchalance online with what he tweets, and thought it would be extremely ridiculous but at the same time fun to create a typeface that combines them together, their witty personality with the added flick of Trump’s hair.
“What the Flick” stands for the interesting side of Erik that you might not know and in the hopes of portraying a fun typeface to be compared to his witty personality as well!
Project:
Adding on to the typeface, since it was a combination of Trump and Erik, I thought it would be really fun to create a lyric video of an auto-tuned Tump singing Taylor Swift's "Look what you made me do".
