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
[...]Frutiger® Next is a Platinum Collection family, exclusively available from Linotype GmH and authorized partners. Released in 2000, it is a revised and extended version of the famous Frutiger typeface.
Frutiger Next is available either as an extended OpenType family, or in traditional PostScript and TrueType formats. The OpenType version includes seven weights (a new, Ultra Light weight was released solely in OpenType format in 2007). Each weight has upright, true Italic, and Condensed
[...]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
[...]Adrian Frutiger is considered one of the most important typeface artists of the 20th century. He has been the creator of such internationally renowned typefaces as Avenir™, Linotype Centennial™, Frutiger™, Icone™, Meridien™ and Univers™. Numerous prizes distinguish his pioneering work in the fields of typography and the graphic arts.
More about the fonts:
Apollo™
The text typeface Apollo was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1962–64, and was one of the first fonts produced by Monotype for
[...]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.
The typeface Frutiger™ from the famous font designer Adrian Frutiger is immense popular. Now Linotype offers the complete font family on CD. This enables for the first time to receive the entire font family more easily and inexpensively than buying each font individually.
Euro Symbol: All fonts contain an integrated Euro symbol.
For Frutiger we offer two delivery methods:
– Order the entire Frutiger font family as Value Pack for instant download.
Or
– Order the entire Frutiger font
[...]First encounter at the airport
When the Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport was being planned in Paris in the early 1970s, it was clear that the signage needed to be set in a clear and legible typeface. The development of the wayfinding system was assigned to Adrian Frutiger, and the result was so effective that the demand for the typeface rose, both for general printing as well as navigation systems. The typeface entered the Linotype library in 1977 under the name Frutiger™. It set a new
[...]Bizarre and naked, sans serif alphabets joined the ranks of typefaces in the early 19th century when an English type foundry produced the first sans serif typeface in 1816.
But between 1810 and 1840, bold antiqua weights inspired by Bodoni and the newly developed slab serif linear antiqua typefaces were still more prominent and widely used in advertisements.
Even the creator of the first sans serif typeface, William Caslon, was not immediately convinced of the success of this new kind
[...]Adrian Frutiger was born in 1928 at Unterseen near Interlaken (Switzerland). After an apprenticeship as a compositor he made further education in type and graphics at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) from 1949 to 1951 (teacher: Alfred Willimann and Walter Käch).
Frutiger was called to Paris in 1952 and worked as typeface designer and artistic manager at Deberny & Peignot. He founded his own studio in Arcueil near Paris 1961, together with Bruno Pfäffli and André
[...]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
[...]
Font Designer: Adrian Frutiger, 1976
In 1968, Adrian Frutiger was commissioned to develop a sign and directional system for the new Airport Roissy, later named Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Paris. The font was bolder than original typesetting fonts in order to offer better legibility for the light boxes of the signage system. Adrian Frutiger worked carefully on the letterforms so that characters and words could be recognized even in poor light conditions or when the reader was moving
[...]
Font Designer: Adrian Frutiger, 1976
In 1968, Adrian Frutiger was commissioned to develop a sign and directional system for the new Airport Roissy, later named Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Paris. The font was bolder than original typesetting fonts in order to offer better legibility for the light boxes of the signage system. Adrian Frutiger worked carefully on the letterforms so that characters and words could be recognized even in poor light conditions or when the reader was moving
[...]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
[...]
In 1968, Adrian Frutiger was commissioned to develop a sign and directional system for the new
Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
Though everyone thought he would want to use his successful Univers font family, Frutiger decided instead to make a new sans serif typeface that would be suitable for the specific legibility requirements of airport signage: easy recognition from the distances and angles of driving and walking. The resulting font was in accord with the modern architecture of the airport.
In 1976, he expanded and completed the family for D. Stempel AG in conjunction with Linotype, and it was named Frutiger.
The Frutiger™ family is neither strictly geometric nor humanistic in construction; its forms are designed so that each individual character is quickly and easily recognized. Such distinctness makes it good for signage and display work. Although it was originally intended for the large scale of an airport, the full family has a warmth and subtlety that have, in recent years, made it popular for the smaller scale of body text in magazines and booklets.
The family has 14 weights and 14 companion fonts with Central European characters and accents. Another 14 Cyrillic companion fonts are available as well.
See also the new revised version Frutiger Next from the Linotype Platinum Collection.
