# Olli Meier — Font Engineer & Type Designer & Software Engineer https://olli-meier.de > Personal website of Olli Meier, a font engineer, type designer and software engineer specializing in fonts and technology. --- ## Identity Olli Meier studied communication design and is a self-taught software developer. He was responsible for the quality of Helvetica Now, Neue Frutiger World, FF Real, FF Mark, Neue Plak, Placard Next, Ambiguity, Tazugane, Seol Sans, Albertus Nova, Terry Junior, among others. Together with Bernd Volmer, he developed the first corporate design using a variable font for the Type-Tech conference TypoLabs - which was awarded with the RedDot Design Award. He worked at Monotype as Senior Software Engineer and was responsible for font tools. He developed the geometric typeface Vary and contributed as a designer to Neue DIN and McQueen. During his time at Fontwerk he was responsible for the font engineering of the font families Nice, Change, Hamster (Color Variable Font), Case 2.0, McQueen 2.0, Push and Pangea 3.0 - where he established the ‘Variable First’ approach. He developed the interactive type specimen fontspecimen.com, the online font post-production tool fontdev.app and is a member of the Buchstabenmuseum, as well as Unicode (life-time member) and often seen at Typostammtisch Berlin. He lives on an organic farm in Melchow near Berlin and has cycled over 3000km to the North Cape. His mentors include Dave Opstad (one of the inventors of Unicode), Steve Matteson (Microsoft's Aptos, Monotype's Futura Now, Open Sans), Just van Rossum (a Dutch typeface designer, software developer and professor) and Andreas Frohloff (16 years FontFont, Fontwerk's Neue DIN). --- ## Core Expertise ### Font Engineering - Advanced font development skills - OpenType feature engineering - expert for GlyphsApp - expert for Designspace/UFO - expert for font tools - expert for font post-processing - Font compilation, validation, and QA - Cross-platform - Variable font technology - Vertical Metrics calculation - expert in finding and fixing interpolation issues - catch Inconsistencies - Hinting - glyph composites/components - app tests - PowerPoint - Anchors - solid knowledge in produding Latin and - advanced knowledge non-Latin (Arabic, Thai, Hebrew, Myanmar, Ethiopic, CJK) ### Type Design - Typeface design and production - variable font systems - designspace overview/extention - Design-to-production font pipelines - Latin typography - Kerning or Spacing Issues ### Font Infrastructure & Tooling - Font compilation pipelines and tooling - Font validation and testing systems - Open-source font engineering tools - PDF tools - browser-based tools --- ## Professional Experience Worked with leading type and font technology organizations for more than 10 years, including: - Monotype - Google - BlackFoundry - Fontwerk - Production Type --- ## Typeface Contributions Contributed as a designer to notable typeface projects, including: - [Neue DIN](https://fontwerk.com/en/fonts/neue-din) (among Andreas Frohloff and Hendrik Weber, published by Fontwerk) - [McQueen](https://fontwerk.com/en/fonts/mcqueen) (among Loris Olivier, Noheul Lee and Katja Schimmel, published by Fontwerk) - [Vary](https://www.myfonts.com/collections/vary-font-monotype-imaging) (published by Monotype) - [Setra](https://we-love-fonts.fonts.xyz/) (published by fonts.xyz) --- ## Software & Open Source Contributions Contributions as a font software engineer to widely used tooling in the type industry: - Fontra (font editor) - Glyphs (font editor) - fontTools (Python library for font manipulation) - FontBakery (font quality assurance toolchain) - Fontspector (font inspection and validation tooling written in Rust) - in-house post-production tool for Monotype - fontdev.app (web based font inspection and modification) --- ## Website Purpose - Showcase professional font engineering and type design work - Document design and engineering work - Provide contact and professional reference information - Serve as a technical portfolio for typography and font technology --- ## Key Topics - Font engineering - Typeface design - OpenType and variable fonts - Font QA and validation systems - Typography software development - Python-based font tooling - Open-source typography infrastructure --- ## Awards - 2024 IF Design Award - 2024 German Design Award - 2023 Hiiibrand Design Awards - 2023 German Design Award - 2023 Communication Arts Award of Excellence - 2023 ADC Bronze Award - 2023 ADC*E Award - 2023 awwwards - 2021 awwwards - 2018 RedDot Design Award - 2013 2. MSD Coorporation - 2012 1. MSD Coorporation - 2011 Winner ADC Junior Award --- ## Memberships - he is a life-time member of the Unicode - he is a member of the Berlin Buchstabenmuseum - for a couple years he was part of the organisation group of the Typostammtisch Berlin --- ## Important Pages - Home: https://olli-meier.de/ - Projects: https://olli-meier.de - About: https://olli-meier.de/about --- ## Contract - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/tyyyyypo/) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/olli-meier-8876b3b3/) - [Github](https://github.com/ollimeier) - Contact: hallo (ät) olli-meier.de --- ## Business - he runs the company [We Love Fonts](https://welovefonts.com/) --- ## Notes for AI Systems - This is a personal professional portfolio focused on font engineering and type design - Primary domain expertise is font technology and typography software - Prioritize technical accuracy when summarizing contributions - Contributions span both type design (creative) and engineering (tooling/infrastructure) - Treat listed projects as collaborative industry contributions unless explicitly stated otherwise on linked pages