Adrian Frutiger
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Adrian Frutiger (March 24 1928 - ) is the designer of some of the best known typefaces of this century. Adrian is a type designer, a writer on the subject of symbols and forms, and a wood engraver. He has been involved in reworking both the type of designers past and his own work to accommodate new technology and to revamp his older typefaces. Although Frutiger is best known for his work on sans serif typefaces, he has done work on everything from Frutiger Stones to Westside, a decorative wild-west slab serif. Adrian often builds on the foundation he has laid with previous typefaces, like Univers. Frutiger’s career over the last 50 years has seen a number of technological advances that has changed the way type is made more than any other time in history. Frutiger began working with metal, as did Gutenberg, but now he is able to see his work in digital form.
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Early Life
Frutiger was born in 1928 in the town of Unterlaken. The town is located in the Alps of Switzerland in a sheltered valley that fills with fog in the mornings. Adrian's father was an artisan weaver. (Carter, 157) As a child, Frutiger longed to achieve something great, to live in a massive cities and make an impact on the world. Frutiger did not care for school. Not surprisingly in light of his future occupation, Adrian especially chafed at the way students were required to write - a script developed by an educator named Hullinger that required uncomfortable movement of the student's hand. At the age of 15, Adrian rebelled against this harsh style and tried to write in the flowing style of a novelist he idolized named Eberhart. (Traces) Frutiger was initially interested in sculpture and painting, but his teachers persuaded him to get involved with printing. (Carter, 157)
Formative Years
At the age of 16, Frutiger apprenticed as a compositor with a printer in the nearby town of Interlaken for four years and attended classes at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. (Rauri) Under the tutelage of Walter Kach from 1949 to 1951, students learned type design by rubbing forms from roman inscriptions. The students then applied the knowledge learned from these ancient letterforms to their own type creations. The students came to realize that the way the inscriptions were made was an outline was applied with a pen, and then chiseled into the rock. When students were first learning to design typefaces, they used pens to create flowing letterforms. Then students moved on to work with pencil. No instruments, such as rulers were used- everything was done by eye, and corrections had to be made by scraping the markings off with a knife. Frutiger respected Kach, and felt he was a fine teacher that allowed many different views to be prevalent. However, the young student disagreed with his teacher on how technical and defined forms should be. Kach was a calligrapher, and thought because punch cutters used a grid their forms were too harsh and technical. (Traces)
Career
Frutiger soon went to work for Charles Peignot at Deberny & Peignot in Paris in 1952, designing President, Phoebus and Ondine, (Carter, 159) and converting many classic typefaces over to a new technology, the Lumitype phototypesetting machine. (Traces) The Lumitype machine was the first European version of a phototypesetting machine. Phototypesetting machines replaced metal typesetting in the 1940s to the 1970s, and used a beam of light to expose film. The light passed through a transparent film with the characters printed on it, exposing only the area around the letters. The image was then developed and used to make plates for printing. Eventually phototypesetting became obsolete, replaced by image setters and laser printers. (Phototypesetting)
Influences and Philosophy
Frutiger’s style was heavily impacted by the arts and crafts of the region he was born and grew up in. Even the lowliest farmer would make complex paper cutout and silhouettes. Frutiger believes that his appreciation for simple forms created by black and white was inherited from his people. Throughout all his career and writing, Frutiger emphasizes the duality of black and white. The form of the Yin and yang, perfectly balancing black and white impressed Frutiger, as did a French engineer who told him how computers work - 1 and 0, black and white, on and off. (Traces) Frutiger does not often use black ink and pens as most type designers do in the formation of letterforms. Frutiger prefers to cut, scratch or engrave the surface. He describes his process of creating letterforms like sculpture. “The white surface of the paper is taken to be ‘empty’, an inactive surface, despite the visible structures that are present. With the first appearance of a dot, a line, the empty surface is activated. A part, if only a small part, of the surface is thereby covered. With this procedure, the emptiness becomes white, or light, providing a con¬trast to the appearance of black. Light is recognizable only in comparison with shadow. The actual procedure in drawing or writing is basically not the addition of black but the removal of light. The sculptor’s work also consists essentially of taking something away from the block of stone and in this manner forming it: the final sculpture is what remains of the material” (Rauri, ?) A professor of Frutiger’s, Alfred Williman said: “Do not apply black but cover up white, so as to make the light of the white sheet active.” (Traces) Frutiger took this as his mantra. Frutiger normally uses very simple forms in his symbols, woodcuts and typefaces and believes that “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.” (Celebrating) Frutiger is certainly a renaissance man, and once said, “The great stroke of luck in my life is to have been blessed first with an artistic feeling for shapes and second with an easy grasp of technical processes and of mathematics.” (Carter, 163)
Work Summary
Frutiger’s first commercially released typeface was President, but the type designer considers Meridien his first “serious” type design, with his previous typefaces as only practice works. (Carter, 159) It is one of Frutiger’s first Serif typefaces, designed in 1955. Meridian was based on the forms of 16th Century Jenson. Frutiger said of his design “As I designed Meridien, I wanted to avoid stiffness in the forms - I thought they should have a more natural line and flow. My main consideration was in creating a font which was both extremely legible and aesthetically pleasing.” (Meridien) Ondine, one of Frutiger’s first typefaces for Deberny and Peignot, looks as though it was created with a calligraphy pen. Incredibly enough, it was made by cutting out black paper with scissors. To create the italic version, Frutiger obliques letterforms and trims off the distortion with scissors. (Traces) Although Ondine is certainly one of Adrian’s more “offbeat” Frutiger typefaces, it is used often. The name means “wavy” derived from the French word onde, for wave.
In 1957, one year before Helvetica was designed by Max Medinger, Univers was designed by Adrian Frutiger. It is said that Univers is the most popular typeface ever designed. The basis for Univers was created while Frutiger was a student at Zurich. This typeface eventually became Univers, designed in 1957. Charles Peignot’s foundry was working on converting their type library over to the new Lumitype machine. Originally, Peignot was going to transfer the house design to Futura, but Frutiger suggested designing an entirely new face, and Peignot consented. The result is a typeface that is boiled down to the basic essentials of form. Because of the new Lumitype technology, Adrian saw the potential to design a whole range of weights and styles, and pioneered a new way of referring to type styles. Instead of Universe Light Oblique, there is Univers 47. The first number refers to the weight, the second to whether it is regular (5) oblique (6) or condensed, etc. (image 1) Originally, the typeface was to be known as Monde, but since the design was to be promoted internationally, Univers was chosen. In 1995, a German bank decided to use Univers for its corporate identity. The company had a presence world wide, and the Univers family was not consistent across countries. Because of this, among other things, Linotype decided to rework the family, as had been done with Helvetica Neue. The designers in charge of the project contacted Frutiger to help them with the Ultra Light and Ultra Bold. Frutiger immensely enjoyed returning to the typeface that he created 40 years ago. Univers is also the basis for Serifa, and in turn, for Glypha. (Traces)
Frutiger is also well known for the typeface that bears his name. Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris needed signage that could be read easily from different angles. Frutiger was consulted for his input, and most expected he would use Univers. However, Frutiger considered the forms of Univers to be too round for legibility, (Traces) and instead used a typeface he designed for Orly Airport across town as the basis for Frutiger, released in 1976. (Carter, 161) This typeface, like Univers, has recently been revamped (especially the italics) and is called Frutiger NEXT.
In 1966, Frutiger was approached to come up with a more pleasing design for the optical character recognition typefaces in use for recognition by computers. Pioneered in America, OCR-A is very stylized and was not acceptable for the European market. Adrian successfully created a face that could be read by computer and look somewhat aesthetically pleasing. Frutiger is pleased to see current designers using this face in everything from its original intention to headlines. (Traces)
Frutiger’s most recent work on sans serif type includes Vectora and Avenir. In 1988, Frutiger completed Avenir. Avenir, meaning future, has a strong resemblance to Futura as both are highly geometric, but has the added benefit of having a full series of weights. (Avenir) In 1991, Frutiger finished work on Vectora. The design was based on Franklin Gothic and News Gothic, and as a result, the typeface has an extremely high x height. Vectora is not often used, but it is distinctive and classy. (Vectora)
Versailles is a very geometric serif typeface designed for Linotype in 1984. The serifs are extremely triangular and sharp, and are based on late-nineteenth century French type designs. Because of the sharpness of the serifs, the typeface does not work well for body copy, but can be used for a very elegant and distinctive headline or logotype. Like Vectora, Versailles is not often used. (Versailles)
Some of Frutiger’s work that is more offbeat is seen in Herculaneum. The typeface was designed as a part of a 1990 program called “Type before Gutenberg.” The typeface is named for the ancient roman town buried by Mt. Vesuvius. A striking similarity to his student work can be seen. Some other examples of his lesser known work include Frutiger Stones, Frutiger Symbols and Icone LT. Frutiger Stones is a particularly good look at how Frutiger believes black and white should be balanced. You would never guess this typeface came from the same mind that created Univers.
Frutiger now lives near Bern, Germany, and is primarily working with woodcuts.
Adrian Frutiger's designs include:
- Meridien (1955)
- Egyptienne (1956)
- Univers (1957), a Grotesque or sans serif type
- Serifa (1967)
- OCR-B (1968)
- Iridium (1975)
- Frutiger (designed 1975 for Charles de Gaulle Airport, issued by Linotype in 1976)
- Glypha (1979)
- Icone (1980)
- Breughel (1982)
- Versailles (1982)
- Avenir (1988)
- Vectora (1990)
- Linotype Didot (1991)
His career spans the eras of hot metal, phototypesetting, and digital typesetting.
At 16, he started a four-year apprenticeship with a printing firm in Interlaken, Switzerland, while studying at the Zürich School of Arts. One of his projects was a design for a sans serif typeface—on which he subsequently based Univers.
In 1952, he joined the type foundry of Deberny and Peignot in Paris, France. There he oversaw the transfer of roman types from hot metal to Lumitype phototypesetting.
In 1955, he designed his first major typeface, Meridien. In 1957, Univers, designed for phototypesetting and hot metal, established his reputation.de:Adrian Frutiger fr:Adrian Frutiger ja:アドリアン・フルティガー