by Nicholas Fabian

Adrian Frutiger was born March 24, 1928 in Unterseen, Switzerland. He served his apprenticeship in the printing trade with the firm of Otto Schaeffli in Interlaken and he also attended courses at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. In 1951 he produced an astonishingly accomplished student project about the history of Western lettering. ('Schrift/ écriture/lettering') and won a prize from the Ministry of Interior. In 1952 his work was noticed by Charles Peignot, president of the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot. Frutiger was offered a position with the company in Paris, France, which he accepted, and he remained with Deberny & Peignot for nine years.

Sample text set in "Ondine," a heavy upright caligraphic script designed by Adrian Frutiger and introduced commercially in 1954 by Deberny & Peignot.

"He left Deberny & Peignot in 1960, and opened his own Atelier in Arcueil, just outside Paris (called Atelier Adrian Frutiger). This atelier still exists, and is still occupied by his partner, Bruno Pfäffli. Even though Frutiger has now returned to Switzerland, his name is still on the door. He has returned to Switzerland in 1994, has an Atelier in his home in Bremgarten (Bern) and works on, all by himself. He just redesigned the whole corporate image of the Swiss Post. "¹ Adrian Frutiger is a type designer, typographer, graphic designer, and illustrator, and he also specializes in signage and icon design.

In the mid 50s Frutiger supervised the adaptation of many of Deberny & Peignot's classic faces (Garamond, Baskerville, Bodoni, etc.) to the computerized photo-composition system Lumitype (Known as 'Photon' in North America). In 1955 he designed Méridien, which was his first typeface for the Lumitype system. The roman version of Méridien was also cut in metal.

Sample text set in "Meridian," a classical roman typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger and introduced commercially in 1957 by Deberny & Peignot.

Frutiger's greatest accomplishment was the design of the phenomenally successful typeface family, Univers. It was introduced in 1957 both for photo and hot metal composition and almost every typesetting system in the world licensed it for use. Without any fear of contradiction it can be stated that the event was both historic and monumental. Frutiger created an ingenious numbering system to indicate weight and width in the twenty-one members Univers family, and the range of typeface options available delighted even the most fanatical typographer. His graphic matrix representation of the various Univers faces in two dimensional space became the intellectual springboard for the 'multiple master' font designers of the next generation.

Sample text set in "Phoebus," a 3-D italic drop shadow typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger and introduced commercially in 1953 by Deberny & Peignot.

During the past four decades Adrian Frutiger probably did more research into sign alphabets than any other type designer in recorded history. His superb work can be seen on directional signs at Gaz de France, Electricité de France, and at the Charles de Gaulle Airport.

On May 6th, 1997 at the typomedia 97 event, Adrian Frutiger released his newly designed Linotype Univers family. The revised typeface family has 59 different weights. Also, Linotype Library is currently redesigning the Frutiger typeface, to extend and complete the family. The project should be an unqualified success.

Adrian Frutiger not only created one of the most successful typeface in human history, Univers, but he also created a standard and a level of excellence in type design that will remain a hard-to-reach milestone for generations to come. He is an artistic icon and a living legend, one who spanned the industrial and information age with great clarity and understated elegance.

Some of Adrian Frutiger's typeface designs:

President (1953), Phoebus (1953), Ondine (1954), Méridien (1955), Univers (1957), Opéra for Sofratype (1959), Egyptienne (1960), Apollo for Monotype (1962), Serifa for Bauer (1967), OCR-B for Monotype (1968), Iridium for Linotype (1975), Glypha (1979), Frutiger/Roissy for Linotype (1976), Icone for Linotype (1980), Versailles for Linotype (1982), and Breughel for Linotype (1982), the Didot Family for Linotype - Roman, Italic, Bold, Small Caps, OsF, Italic OsF, Bold OsF, Headline, Headline OsF, Initials, Ornaments One, and Ornaments Two (1991).

Adrian Frutiger, a living legend. He is one of the great type designers of the 20th century.

The Frutiger Video is now available in German, French and Italian. The respective titles are "Adrian Frutiger, Schriftengestalter" in German, "Adrian Frutiger, créateur d'écritures" in French and "Adrian Frutiger, creatore di caratteri" in Italian. For detailed information about the Frutiger Video, please send an E-mail to famafilmag@access.ch (Information source: Anne Cunéo, Swiss Television.)

To contact me by E-mail
press the button: