edenspiekermann_ Harry Keller

Edenspiekermann has been doing responsive webdesign since 2010, but in 2012 we brought it to a whole new level when we worked closely together with Ableton to revamp their website. The result is an immersive, fully responsive page that utilizes media queries and a fluid grid to showcase the Ableton products and their online shop in the best way possible, regardless of device, screen size or operating system.

It launched in October and was widely praised to contain “some of the most original & well thought out responsive design […] to date”. This notion was recently underlined by .net magazine when they talked to industry leaders and compiled the top 25 responsive sites of 2012. There are lots of fantastic entries and we are very proud that Ableton.com is included. Take a look at the whole list or at the Ableton website here. We also have a project case.

TYPO 2012: Maurice Göldner – die vergessene Schriftkultur der Brüder Butter

Man lasse sich den Titel dieses Vortrages auf der Zunge zergehen: „Die vergessene Schriftkultur der Brüder Butter“ … 3, 2, 1 – Kopfkino: Maurice Göldner mit funzeliger Taschenlampe in dunklen Kellergewölben unterwegs, den Staub der Jahrzehnte von verloren geglaubten Dokumenten pustend, mit zittrigen Fingern vergilbte Seiten umblätternd, wühlt sich durch Bibliotheken, sucht Zeitzeugen auf, die bei einer Tasse Blümchenkaffee in Erinnerungen graben …

Ganz so wie bei Galileo Mystery lief es vermutlich dann doch nicht ab, als sich Maurice Göldner, Schriftgestalter in Leipzig, in die Geschichte der Brüder Butter vertiefte. Bei einer Recherche für ein Buchprojekt stieß Göldner eher zufällig auf deren Schriftgießerei, die in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts für Aufsehen sorgte.

Das Geschäft mit Schriften stellte sich vor der mikroelektronischen Revolution allerdings deutlich anders als heute dar: Schriftgießereien produzierten Bleilettern für den von Johannes Gutenberg pionierten Bleisatz und waren Großbetriebe, die tonnenweise Blei für nationalen wie internationalen Handel verarbeiteten. Die Brüder Butter fertigten diese Lettern sehr erfolgreich im Raum Dresden an. Während sie in den ersten Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts erst über wenige Maschinen verfügten, lief ihr Geschäft ungeachtet des Ersten Weltkriegs immer besser; 1920 besaß man bereits 40 Komplettgießmaschinen zur Anfertigung von Bleibuchstaben. Interessant sind neben ihrer bekanntesten Schrift – der Super-Grotesk – vor allem die Schriftrastersysteme. Dabei handelt es sich um einen typographischen Baukasten, dessen Lettern statt vollständigen Buchstaben nur deren Elementarbausteine zeigen. Aus diesen lassen sich dann in Kombination mit zusätzlichen Ornamenten oder passenden Negativformen ganze Buchstaben, Formen oder Wortmarken zusammensetzen.

Dass die Brüder Butter trotz florierenden Geschäftes in Vergessenheit gerieten, hatte dann allerdings mit ihrem Produktionsstandort Dresden zu tun. 1948 wurde der Betrieb enteignet und ging schließlich in die „VEB Typoart“ über – diese verfolgte eine Strategie politischer Abgrenzung und entledigte sich der kapitalistischen Altlasten. Was blieb, ist das große Fabrikgebäude mit eigenem Gleisanschluss, in dem einmal 55 Komplettgießmaschinen betrieben und Buchstaben in die ganze Welt verschickt wurden.

Maurice Göldner allerdings bewahrt die reiche Unternehmensgeschichte zum einen durch lebendige Vorträge wie diesen bei der Typo 2012, aber auch durch sein eigenes Schaffen – so hat er den „Buttergeist“ zur Grundlage seiner Arbeit gemacht und mindestens zwei Schriften auf Butterbasis entwickelt: Seine Stan fußt auf der klassischen Wellington und mit NePo (kurz für Negativ-Positiv) hat er sogar ein Schriftrastersystem neu aufgelegt. Die Stan kann bereits seit Anfang des Jahres bei OurType begutachtet und erworben werden, während NePo bisher noch nicht erhältlich ist.

Weitere Informationen finden sich auf Göldners Webseite kurs26.de, sowie ourtype.com. Ihm selbst kann man auch auf Twitter folgen: @mau_gold.

A quick note before we start: This blogpost complements our job opening in which we are looking for front end developers to work with us on ongoing and future projects. I have the impression that Edenspiekermann is mostly seen as a design agency and not as a happy place for developers – so I decided to give some background on everyday work from a developer’s perspective.

It was January 2011 when I came to Edenspiekermann’s Berlin office as a webteam intern, followed by a period as a freelance developer I am now employed full time. I am 24 years old and I have a B.Sc. in computer science & media from BHT Berlin. Front end web development is my profession and I strive to deliver semantic markup, to-the-point CSS in conjunction with snappy performance to guarantee a top-notch user experience. I love gadgets, enjoy trying something new every day and playing with the latest technologies. Edenspiekermann gives me room to do just that, in a friendly environment, with awesome clients and inspiring colleagues working on small and large projects. In the past 1.4 years I have written thousands of lines of markup and stylesheets, several jQuery plugins, a chrome extension, a windows screensaver (duh!), very little PHP, lots of Ruby with Padrino/Rails and countless lines of JavaScript/CoffeeScript. At Edenspiekermann we like to dive into modern web technology. We use Haml for markup, Sass for CSS and develop mostly in Ruby as a server side language. We are not fixed on these tools though, they just represent our status quo – every single member of the team can introduce a new technology or framework and if it is better suited to get the job done, we will go ahead and use it.

Let me give you an example: When Lukas Hodel joined us earlier this year and suggested to use backbone.js for a major project (sorry, NDA forbids any details) we gave it a spin and it turned out to be the perfect choice. A different client needed to use Django as a CMS and we are happily coding python based front end code for weeks now. As a developer you are involved in these choices and you can really make a difference and move the team forward, every single day.

Our development team consists of roughly 7 people, namely Moritz Guth, Lukas Hodel, Jonathan Krause, Dirk Schmid, Eike Send, Oliver Zeyen and myself. You can hit any of us by mail or Twitter and ask us about our work, if you happen to have questions before applying for a job. We are always looking for like-minded people and if you are such a person, you can start working with us as early as next week.

Still sceptical? Let me tell you about our workflow and the relation with our designers. A common misconception is the pixel-perfect mentality … you know the dilemma: A designer comes up with a heavily complicated mess of boxes and colors, sends the Photoshop file over to you and expects you to code it pixel-perfect. Well, not in our case. Our interaction designers know what they are doing and they do not force you to use JS to vertically center some text in IE7. Quite the opposite actually – most of our designers know how to code themselves and what they come up with is always clever and thought-through. Of course they push your abilities, but otherwise it would be boring, right?

Still not convinced? How about this run-down:

We have left IE7 behind and are rapidly abandoning full support for IE8 as well. No round corners? Well, we do not think elements need to look exactly the same in all browsers. We like to move forward and let things degrade gracefully, instead of forcing dozens of polyfills into the code.

Our websites are responsive by default. If you agree with us that responsive webdesign combined with a mobile-first approach is the only viable solution to a increasing mess of internet capable devices, then we are talking along the same lines.

More and more of our projects are managed with Scrum methodologies. Scrum was invented in a coding environment, so the agile workflow that comes with it is natural for developers.

We work in teams where people can benefit and learn from each other … developers need like-minded people to stay on top of their game and that is exactly what is happening for me every day.

At Edenspiekermann we do not take job titles too seriously … you got viable skills besides coding? Bring them in! Are you good at social media? There is concept and strategy work to be done! Do you like to design something visual once in a while? Besides programming I have also created presentations and interfaces. Do you enjoy writing sentences as well, not just code? This blog is your stage. Basically: If you are good at something that is related to our work you will be able to make it flourish.

If you decided to join us, you would work on small to large scale websites and applications (both web and native) as well as building prototypes. That includes architecting and engineering the structure, deciding on the right tools, taking care of the presentation and wrapping it up with behaviour in JavaScript. Of course we do not expect you to be perfect in all of these fields, but it gives you a sense of scope. You will definitely not be the code monkey sitting in the basement optimizing for IE7. Quite to the contrary.

To draw a conclusion: Joining Edenspiekermann was a decision I certainly do not regret … the past months have been a hell of a ride; I have met so many inspiring people, tried countless new technologies, learned so many things and helped to produce products I can be proud of. If that sounds like your thing, come join us by contacting us on Twitter or dropping us an email. We would love to work with you and build awesome stuff.