Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger born May 24, 1928 is one of the famous typeface designers of the twentieth century. He served an apprenticeship as a typesetter before going on to study at Zurich’s arts and crafts college where he learned additional skills in drawing and wood engraving.

Adrian Frutiger has helped shape our everyday world such as metros, airports and museums.His first typeface creations were President (1952), although often disregarded, but this was his first commercially released typeface, by the Deberny &Peignot type foundry. This typeface was very crucial in his development as a design and had taught him much about letterforms.

Not long after, he established his international position as a typeface designer with his ‘Univers (sans-serif)’ font.

Some feel that ‘Univers’ modulated strokes give it a bit more chatacter than Helvetica. It was designed as a full system of fonts with a wide range of weight, unlike ‘Helvetica’ which produced variations in a rather disordered way. Univers has a smaller x-height than Helvetica and the base font sets a little wider. Univers gives us a more uniform series by disciplining the central designs unlike Helvetica. (Deutsche Bank chose to use Univers typeface as its house font.)

Courier New; designed as a typewriter face for IBM (International Business Machines). This typeface was redrawn by Adrian Frutiger for IBM Selectric series. A typical fixed pitch design, monotone in weight. Used to imitate typewriter output for reports and technical documentation.

'Meridien'

Frutiger serif is a new typeface family from Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi; which was released at Adrian Frutiger’s 80^th birthday by Linotype. This typeface is an updated and expanded version of his classic serif typeface Meridien(1957). Meridien is a typeface with slightly flared stems and Latinesque spiky serifs. This typeface’s quite large x-height promotes legibility and does not compromise its essential beauty and grace. As he once quoted; "From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader."