Talk:FF Meta

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[edit] ff meta

delete for lack of citations?! There are none in the article currently. I provided a Url which shows a copy of the drawings done by barney. As for the fact, if you care to substantiate, why not drop an email to Gerry at sedley place, and ask him, for the sake of historical accuracy. Next time you revert, why not offer discussion? There's a whole page for that too. Or are you too self-righteous for that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.6.250.44 (talk) 22:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Meta authorship

Hello User:81.6.250.44, our discussion should take place here. Your recent edits to the FF Meta article suggest that someone named Gerry Barney is the originator of the Meta design. As the edits were without citation and I had at hand references that contradict your claim, they seem clearly to be conjecture or new research and therefore no requirement for discussion. More pressing was your unsubstantiated and quite serious charge of plagiarism. I have checked Neil Macmillan's An A–Z of Type Designers. Ron Eason and Sarah Rookledge's Rookledge's International Directory of Type Designers, Frederich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott, and Bernard Sein's Typography: an Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design, and Robin Dodd's From Gutenberg to Open type. In none of them does mention of Gerry Barney as a designer occur. Neither is there mention of any dispute of authorship of FF Meta's design. Spiekermann is listed as design collaborator with Just van Rossum, Ole Schåafer, and Christian Schwartz. For a wikipedia editor to contact Mr. Barney would constitute original research. We must cite reputable third-party sources. If Spiekermann has infringed upon Barney, a legal court, not wikipedia, is the place to present those claims. CApitol3 (talk) 21:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gerry Barney and FF Meta

I beg to differ with your point of view. Contacting Gerry Barney would be obtaining information from a primary source, which is encouraged. Also, the source is verifiable. Although I understand that personal experience cannot be used in the article proper, I have talked with Barney, and I have seen the artwork that he has done.

In Spiekermann's CV, he mentions that he was working in London as a free-lancer during the time that Meta was designed. The company that he was working for was Sedley Place Ltd, where he was responsible for digitising fonts from original artwork. Gerry Barney, one of the directors of the company, would have been working closely with him as well as the rest of the team.

Spiekermann's argument, as I understand it, was that the ideas behind Meta were his - namely that it could work both small and large. However, the actual implementation was by Gerry Barney, who is a prolific designer. I hope that you visit the following URL (indicating the work done for the Bundespost as mentioned in this article) - Bundespost (German Post Office) . The URL shows an actual photograph of something that Spiekermann never actually held - the original artwork of the FF Meta font, as drawn by Gerry. Do you not think it is remarkable that Sedley Place - a renowned design house - should have a photograph of this font, if they had nothing to do with it? Surely Spiekermann should be concerned at such a violation of HIS copyright if this article were correct?!

The Sedley Place Ltd website explicitly claims to have designed the typeface for Bundespost ( see the 1984 entry in the flash movie ) - What is your opinion of that?

Sedley Place chose not to take Spiekermann to court. This does not mean that he was not involved in falsifying the significance (or lack of it) regarding the design of FF Meta. Those of us who have spoken to the Gerry and the other directors know the truth, certainly as they see it. And their truth is significantly different from the claims made by Spiekermann.

Of course his fame is more or less (and rather embarrassingly) founded on the success of FF Meta, so it IS a much bigger issue than that of merely who authored this typeface. In my opinion it has to be one of the worst cases of design fraud of the twentieth century.

So - what I wrote in the article was that there IS some controversy over the authorship of the typeface. The Sedley Place website demonstrates that. It is a fact that this controversy is present, and does not represent original research. Gerry still works at the company, and he is a friendly, and affable man (though somewhat of a technophobe) - why not e-mail him or phone him and find out from a primary source?

81.6.250.44 (talk) 22:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

No, interviewing an individual constitutes new research. It does not belong here. Articles on wikipedia require third-party verification from an existing published source. Gerry Barney does not show up in standard references on twentieth century typographers or punch-cutters. It is no surprise that Spiekermann, a major figure of typography, has detractors. For this to have legs you will need to find a neutral source. The aforementioned are authored by people seemingly with a grudge. Personal grievances do not have a place in a wikipedia article. If you can cite a neutral third-party account of a court action it could belong here. Are you involved with the subject of the article? I am curious why you find this important. CApitol3 (talk) 01:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, there you go - there is always a distinction between truth and wiki-truth. Your response reminds me of an incident in which the interpretation by a literary critic of an author's text (it was Dylan Thomas) was considered by academics to be more correct than the author's own assertion. Typical academic arrogance - and why I stopped being a wiki-editor two years ago. If only the texts you cited had the same degree of neutral third-party sources, you would find that there IS a controversy - and that the authorship of FF Meta by Spiekermann is actually questionable.