typography blog: three

adrian frutiger: Adrian Frutiger is a type-designer from Switzerland. He began his career as a printer’s apprentice near Interlaken and later moved to Zurich where he studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. Upon completing his education in Switzerland, Frutiger moved to Paris where he began working at the Deberny and Peignot typefoundry. While moving classic typefaces used with traditional printing methods to newer phototypesetting technologies as part of his work, Frutiger began to design his own typefaces. These typefaces became very significant in the typography world and led to Frutiger producing several books. His typefaces were so influential that they are still readily available from foundries around the world. A few of Frutiger’s most well known typefaces include Vectora and Serifa. But his first commercial typeface was President, a set of titling capital letters with small, bracketed serifs. Later Frutiger developed his most popular typeface, Univers. Upon seeing this typeface, the public transport authority of Paris asked Frutiger to redesign their metro signage. The font was a variation of Univers which was later released to the public under the name Frutiger. In addition to more projects from various companys and foundries, Frutiger has won several awards and was recently inducted into the European Design Hall of Fame.

univers is unique because it was the first typeface to be categorized by numbers. in addition, though the font family has varying widths, the @ is mark is not rescaled by width. the univers grid is a way of organizing the typeface by weight and width and position, reducing confusion.