Hans Eduard Meier

Swiss designer who worked with Stempel in the late 1960s, creating that most humanist of sanserifs, Syntax, a type whose influence is clear in Spiekermann’s FF Meta and its followers. Meier taught typeface design and graphic arts at Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich for 36 years. Although he retired in 1986, Meier continued to design new typefaces and publish them through Elsner+Flake and Linotype. In 1994, he designed the typeface for the Swiss franc banknotes. He was using Fontographer and emailing his files to Linotype until well into his eighties. During the last years, he devoted himself to a better model for learning to write. His proposal, the ‘ABC-Schrift’, is a shapely, well thought-out and all-embracing design. Schools are starting to use it and discover its advantages.