Heroes: Meeting Neville & Erik
October 8th, 2009Before I start, just want to say that I do sincerely want to share with you the unforgettable experiences I had.
I think I am considerately lucky. I meet a lot of my design heroes in my first four years working professionally as a graphic designer. It was a thrill to meet and hear these heroes speak and observing them live in person. I do believe that what we hear and read from blogs and other media might not reflect the personality or energy these individuals carry. Even by observing their works closely, its still hard to accurately identify with the characteristics the person has as an individual to the people he/she is around.
My first encounter of an absolutely famous designer would be Neville Brody of Research Studios. It was back in 2006 when Mr. Brody first visited India to speak in a design conference. He seemed really happy and excited to be there. All I could do to get an excuse to start a conversation is to ask for his autograph. Upon approaching him, he declined and mentioned that he needed to rush off to get something from his room. Probably his computer for his presentation which was coming up pretty soon.
It won’t be until the conference was over, and while I was having lunch with a colleague when he approached us and I asked for his autograph again. He gave me this:
Well, I must say I was happy to even get this from him. He looked pretty bored while signing it; probably because he had signed a thousand autographs before that.
Yearly, we would be in the same design conference but well, he being speaker and me delegate, I never could find a good reason to go approach him for a talk. Until last year when I had to pick him up from the airport for him to speak in a design conference the company was organizing. I was late. He was waiting. I had one of his framed up posters as a hoarding for him to know who to follow to bring him to the designated hotel. We got a cab, hopped in. In not more than 5 mins in the cab, he pointed out to me a Maggi Noodles Truck, with FF Blur on it. It was indeed ironic to be greeted in such a way. ‘Hey, that looks like one of my typeface…’.
We talked about the long stretch of empty apartments and houses we spotted along the way to the hotel; why were they empty and non-vacant. Conversation then moved on to him asking whether there was a sort of ancient writing for the Malaysian language and also I gave him a brief history of Malaysia. He seems to be interested in that point: On how the Indians from India immigrated over, the Chinese from China, Malays for Indonesia, etc. And of course, we talked a little about what his studio does and what Figtree does.
Few days later we would go watch football, thanks to Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates love for Manchester United (dragged along the guys from DixonBaxi as well). But before that, we had some Penang food, of which he taught the jelly in the Ais Kacang tasted medical. It was here that we had our goodbyes. I thought he would be around of this years Designyatra conference in India but was not present.
I only had 5 golden minutes with Erik Spiekermann. I brought along with me to India this time, a fontshop tribute issue to him containing wishes from various designers and students to him. It would be ashame not to enhance the booklet with his signature on it of course! He seemed suprised to see that book and asked how did I get it; it was a very personal thing to him he mentioned. He also seemed suprised when I mentioned to him that I do have some other fontshop publications and the really old druk publications, maked even more suprised. He was the one who told me that that particular issue was designed by some of his students for him and printed at the Hague in a very limited run. He was really chatty, took him quite a lot of words with me to get the date and location correct on this one:
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Both Neville Brody and Erik Spiekermann are design legends and very influential typographers.
