By Adrian Frutiger
Much has been written about the evolution of type: how the forms of our letters took shape, from the roman capitals to the Carolingian minuscules, and how the Latin alphabet was then, essentially, finalized for eternity by the first printing presses of the Renaissance Age.
Looking back from where we stand now, we could say that the original forms of our uppercase letters are around 2,000 years old, while those of our lowercase letters would be over 1,000 years old. And
[...]Linotype Univers® is a completey reworked version of the original Univers typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger forty years ago. It includes 59 Linotype Univers weights and 4 monospaced Linotype Univers Typewriter weights. All fonts contain the Euro currency symbol. Starting with Version 3.0, Linotype Univers will also be available with optimized screen display in TrueType format.
Linotype Univers®, along with Avenir® Next, Compatil®, Eurostile® Next, Frutiger®
[...]Football Jersey Fonts
Football is in the air! Like all great team sports, football (or soccer, if you are in the US) inspires its fans to identify with their favorite team’s players, and sometimes even with a specific city or country. Each football team has its own visual identity, and the appearance of their logos and jerseys are one of the most exciting areas of graphic design. And it is no surprise that fonts play a strong role!
Below are images of just a few of the jerseys known and
[...]Adrian Frutiger has spent decades working very closely with Linotype. In the many years of this fruitful collaboration, we’ve accumulated a number of photographs of Adrian Frutiger. These images show glimpses of the different periods and highlights of his life so far, including pictures of him working in his studio, moments of him along with his typefaces, and even more recent shots of him working together with Akira Kobayashi.
We hope that you enjoy browsing through these images.
Customers from all over the world come to Linotype.com every day to purchase fonts. Below is a list of the 20 typeface families that our customers licensed most often in during 2008. Do you know them all?
Frutiger® – the sans serif classic.
Get the original from Linotype as single fonts, in a Value Pack, or on CD.
About Frutiger
Famous type designer Adrian Frutiger created a masterpiece with this typeface. Faced with the challenge of designing an exceptionally legible type for the signs of the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, he developed the now legendary Frutiger in 1968. The original Linotype typeface has since been expanded to include 14 weights and is of course not just
[...]Über die Lesbarkeit
Unter dem Einfluss der verschieden Druckverfahren hat die lateinische Textschrift subtile Formveränderungen erfahren. Grundsätzlich neue Formen sind jedoch keine entstanden. Als Demonstration dafür sind acht a in den meistgelesenen Schriftstilen mit einem Drehraster versehen und übereinander kopiert. Das Resultat zeigt eine erstaunliche Übereinstimmung.
Created by a merger of the two companies Deberny & Cie (founded 1818) and Peignot & fils (founded 1842) in 1923. Its main font designers were A. M. Cassandre and Adrian Frutiger. One of the first practicable phototypesetting machines, the Lumitype, was developed in the 1950s. In 1972, the company was acquired by the Haas foundry (Haas’sche Gießerei) in Münchenstein.
For over 40 years, Univers has remained one of the most used sanserifs. It binds the rational and economic elements of typography with a timeless elegance and modern grace. Its systematic construction and almost unlimited applications made Unviers a success in all corners of the world.
Due to the translation of typefaces from hot-metal setting to phototype, and shortly thereafter to digital typesetting, many new Univers families, some of which differed considerably from the original,
[...]The font Univers™ is one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century The typeface has the advantage of having a variety of weights which even combined give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. The clear, objective forms of Univers™ make this a legible font suitable for almost any typographic need.
In 1954 the type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif antiqua in serveral weights to the range of the Lumitype-fonts. Adrian
[...]The Univers® family of fonts designed by Adrian Frutiger more than forty years ago is one of the most innovative type creations of the modern age. Its introduction prompted a reappraisal of the sans serif.
While the forms of the Univers have their roots in the old grotesque types, they also combine features which rebel against the past. They carry in them the knowledge that type is part of the cultural heritage handed down from our forefathers, a heritage which we should neither ignore or
[...]Portrait
We can read because we perceive elements and forms which are familiar to us. So in order to even recognize words, we must first decipher the elements which make up the shapes of the letters – a process which involves the interplay of myriad aspects. To a certain degree, many of us are aware of these aspects. Yet Adrian Frutiger knows about such shifting dynamics in perception in a way no other person can, as he has been instrumental in researching the subject and over several decades
[...]Westside™
Westside can be classified as a "wood type." It is reminiscent of dusty streets, Wild West heroes and swinging saloon doors. The origins of wood types are found in the early nineteenth century, when such types really were cut in wood, and printed on hand presses. Westside has big fat serifs and heavy horizontals that are much thicker than the skinny vertical strokes. When the letters are set together, the heavy serifs build dark horizontal bands. As most of Frutiger's other fonts are
[...]Find further Font Features in our Font Feature Archive.
Typographic Tip of the Month from Linotype’s Type Director Akira Kobayashi!
May 2008: Understand Adrian Frutiger’s methodology!
“Typography must be as beautiful as a forest, not like the concrete jungle of the tenements ... It gives distance between the trees, the room to breathe and allow for life.” – Adrian Frutiger (Interview with Klaus-Peter Nicolay, Druckmarkt, issue 2004 9/10).
I have worked
[...]With the invention of the printing press, a longing for formal refinement began to awaken. First leaning on the bold and distinct typography of incunabula, styles gradually progressed to culminate in the decorative classical fonts of the 17th and 18th centuries. This growing preoccupation with ever greater refinement was also reflected in the architecture of the times, as well as in objects of daily use, especially furniture. But also the fashionable attire worn by the upper classes of each
[...]
The font family Univers™ is one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century. The family has the advantage of having a variety of weights and styles, which, even when combined, give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. The clear, objective forms of Univers make this a legible font suitable for almost any typographic need. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry's art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts - quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Piegnot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype. The Deberny & Peignot type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas, and the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) was folded into the D. Stempel AG/Linotype collection in 1985/1989. Adrian Frutiger continues to do design work with Linotype right up to the present day. In 1997, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed a large joint project of completely re-designing and updating the Univers family. The result:
Linotype Univers - available with 59 weights and 4 Linotype Univers Typewriter weights. With its sturdy, clean forms Univers can facilitate an expression of cool elegance and rational competence.
Univers has the uncanny ability to combine well with fonts of many different styles and origins:
Old style fonts such as: Janson Text, Meridien, Sabon, Wilke.
Modern-stressed fonts such as: Linotype Centennial, Walbaum.
Slab serif fonts such as Egyptienne F, Serifa.
Script and brush fonts such as: Brush Script, Mistral, Ruling Script.
Blackletter fonts such as: Duc De Berry, Grace, San Marco.
Even fun fonts such as F2F OCRAlexczyk, Linotype Red Babe, Linotype Seven.
