TWO major design companies from Barcelona and Berlin have been engaged to give Glasgow a 1999 facelift.

As the process of convincing the world that Glasgow can make a significant impact as UK City of Architecture and Design gathers momentum, Javier Mariscal of Studio Mar-iscal, the charismatic Spanish designer who gave the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games its beloved Cobi dog logo, will be working in collaboration with Glasgow-based architects and designers to create the Lighthouse, a new design in the heart of the city.

MetaDesign, the company commissioned to link East and West Berlin with a new look for its subway system, has won an international competition to produce Glasgow 1999's typeface and logo.

Proposals by MetaDesign for a typeface intended to express the character of the city were selected from nearly 40 entries in a keenly fought logographic battle.

The judges could barely have come up with a more internationally prestigious company as their final choice but the results also had to be locally specific.

Mr Tim Fendley, director of MetaDesign's London office, says its approach was direct and forceful: ''Our take on a Glasgow typeface was that it had to be strong and robust, although not necessarily in-dustrial. We concentrated on making it idiosyncratic and simple.''

The simplicity comes from using bold lettering with hints of a stark Mackintosh style in the underlining of certain vowels.

The idiosyncrasies, though, are what make MetaDesign's early drafts most striking. Repeated letters in any word can be automatically altered, or connected to adjacent letters with a ligature.

Like a typographical equivalent of Glasgow's shifting identity, the lettering will alter as any given sentence progresses. Mr Fendley hopes it will ''get the balance right between freedom of expression and a solid base which holds it together.''

Out of this typeface, Glasgow 1999 will glean a similarly flexible logo which can be adapted for all future projects leading up to the millennium.

Central to these, however, will be the creation of 1999's flagship enterprise, the Lighthouse.

Situated in the former Glasgow Herald building in Mitchell Street, this will host events for 1999 and become a permanent centre for exhibitions and conferences on design.