Adrian Frutiger

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Specimens of typefaces by Adrian Frutiger.
Specimens of typefaces by Adrian Frutiger.

Adrian Frutiger (born March 24, 1928) is one of the twentieth century's most prominent typeface designers and continues to influence the direction of digital typography into the twenty-first century. Frutiger is best known for his typefaces Univers and Frutiger.

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[edit] Early life

Frutiger was born near the town of Interlaken, in the Swiss Alps. His father was a weaver. As a child he experimented with a variety of self-invented scripts and stylized handwriting in reaction to the formal cursive required at the time in Swiss schools. An early interest in sculpture was discouraged by his father and secondary school teachers who encouraged him to work in printing. Though Frutiger entered the world of print, he maintains that love of sculpture influenced the form of his types.

[edit] Formative years

At the age of 16, Frutiger was apprenticed for four years as a compositor to the printer Otto Schaerffli in the nearby town of Interlaken. Between 1949 and 1951 he attended classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule (school of applied arts) in Zürich, studying under Walter Kach. There students studied monumental inscriptions from rubbings made in the Roman forum. While attending the Kunstgewerbeschule, Frutiger focussed primarily on calligraphy, a setting where drafting tools were avoided in favor of nib and brush.

[edit] Work summary

Charles Peignot of the Paris foundry Deberny Et Peignot recruited Frutiger based on an illustrated essay he had titled History of Letters. Frutiger's wood-engraved illustrations in the essay demonstrated his skill, attention to detail, and knowledge of letterforms. At Deberny & Peignot Frutiger designed the faces President, Phoebus, and Ondine. Charles Peignot set Frutiger to work converting many existing faces for the new phototypesetting Lumitype equipment.

Frutiger's first commercially released typeface was President, a set of titling caps with small bracketed serifs, released in 1954. A calligraphic informal script face, Ondine (French for wave), was also released by Peignot in 1954. In 1955, Meridien, a glyphic old style serif text face was released. The face shows inspiration of the work of Nicholas Jenson, and in Meridien Frutiger's ideas of letter construction, unity, and an ever-present organic quality of form are first expressed together. In 1956 Frutiger designed his first of three slab-serif typefaces–Egyptienne. Egyptienne is a slab serif on the Clarendon model, and was the first new text face commissioned for the process of photocomposition.

Charles Peignot envisioned a large unified family, able to be set across metal and photocomposition systems. Impressed by the success of the Bauer foundry's Futura typeface, Peignot encouraged a new geometric sans-serif to compete. Frutiger disliked the regimentation of Futura, and persuaded Peignot that the new sans-serif should be based on the realist (neo-grotesque) model. The 1896 face Akzidenz Grotesk is cited as the primary model. To maintain unity across the 21 variants, each weight and width, in roman and italic, was drawn and approved before any matrixes were cut. In Univers Frutiger introduced his two-digit numbering system. The first digit (3 though 8) indicates weight, with 3 being the very lightest, and 8 being the heaviest. The second digit indicates the width of the face and whether it is roman or oblique. The response to Univers was immediate and positive. Frutiger claimed that Univers became the model for all of his future typefaces. Univers is the basis for Serifa (1967) and Glypha (1977).

In the early 1970s the French airport authority commissioned Frutiger to create a way-finding signage alphabet for the new Charles de Gaulle International Airport in the Paris suburb of Roissy. The brief required a face with high legibility at great distance and from an angle. Frutiger considered an adaptation to Univers, but decided the feeling was dated, having a 1960s association. The face that resulted is an amalgam of Univers tempered by organic influences from humanist sans-serifs like Eric Gill's Gill Sans, Edward Johnston's type for the London Transport, and Roger Excoffon's Antique Olive. Originally titled Roissy, the face was renamed Frutiger when it was released for public use by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company in 1976.

Frutiger's 1984 face Versailles is an old style serif text with capitals similar to those in his earlier face President. In Versailles serifs are small and glyphic. In 1988, Frutiger completed Avenir. Avenir, French for future, takes inspiration from Futura but includes structural similarities with neo-grotesques. Avenir has a full series of unified weights. In 1991, Frutiger finished work on Vectora, a design influenced by Morris Fuller Benton's faces Franklin Gothic and News Gothic. The result face has a high x-height, and is legible even in smaller point sizes.

In the late 1990s Frutiger began collaboration on the refinements and expansion of his existing faces Univers, Frutiger and Avenir using current technology and addressing issues of hinting for on-screen display. Univers was reissued with 63 variants. Frutiger was reissued as Frutiger Next with true italic and additional weights. Collaborating with Linotype designer Akira Kobayahi, Frutiger expanded the Avenir family by adding additional light and heavy weights, and a condensed version. The face was released as Avenir Next.

Frutiger's career and type development spans the eras of hot metal, phototypesetting, and digital typesetting. Frutiger now lives near Bern, Switzerland, and is primarily working with woodcuts.

[edit] Typefaces

Frutiger's typefaces include:

[edit] Other work

In 2003 Frutiger was commissioned by Swiss watchmaker Ventura to design a line of limited-edition watches. He created a new face specifically for the watch face.

Frutiger also designed a mark for the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. The institute had been named the National Design Institute; however, the name was changed to match Frutiger's design, which incorporated a stylized NID logo alongside the words "National Institute of Design."

[edit] References

  • Carter, Sebsatian. 20th Century Type Designers. Lund Humphries Publishers: 2002. ISBN 978-0853318514.
  • Friedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
  • Jaspert, Berry and Johnson. Encyclopædia of Type Faces. Cassell Paperback, London; 2001. ISBN 1-84188-139-2
  • Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
  • McLean, Ruari. Typographers on Type. Lund Humphries: 1995. ISBN 978-0853316572.
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