Adrian Frutiger – Traces

Even when I was completing my apprenticeship as a compositor in distant Interlaken, I used to seek contact with the graphic world in the cities of Zurich and Basle. For example, the trade magazine Typografische Monatsblätter reported on the teachings of the Basle School of Design. I was greatly impressed by the many new trends which were illustrated and explained in that publication. It was above all the contributions of the Typography class, founded and directed by Emil Ruder, which had a special appeal for me. In those pages I encountered a completely new and surprising manner of typographic design. So during my first year in Zurich I tried to get in touch with Emil Ruder.

"Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing.
No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty."
Emil Ruder

I sent him one of my typographic woodcuts, to which he reacted spontaneously by inviting me to his house. My first meeting with him and his family was an impressive experience. Emil became my friend and I was deeply shocked by his early death. I wrote the following contribution to the issue of Typografische Monatsblätter which was dedicated to him:

We were friends. When our ways crossed, he was already a teacher and I was still a student. He was never officially my teacher, which probably made the development of our friendship easier. Our first meeting made a profound impression on me. Now two decades have gone by and given the event a kind of symbolic status, which is how I would like to record it here.

The first thing I see is the boldly designed birth announcement: the name Martin in vivid, unexpectedly new typography and color, which at that time was a sign of a new era for us as students of type. We met for the first time in the circle of his newly formed family: he already a mature man, his wife Susanna young and beautiful, tenderly cradling the newborn baby in her arms. I myself was still a youth, lately arrived from my narrow mountain world, eagerly seeking all that was new. I see before me that happy family who had invited me to a midday meal (how proud and yet intimidated I was!); I see them in their home, living with modest but well-chosen everyday objects and surrounded by noble, beautiful works of art and craft. (In this environment it first became clear to me that my father’s old weaving shuttle in our own home must be a very beautiful thing.) The food was good and new in its selection and preparation. At that time, I did not know that there was such a thing as "healthy food”. And the glass of good-quality Burgundy gave the meal a fine delight, new to me. There I saw many books, old and new, also a collection of well-designed glassware; and we talked about letter-forms in detail. Afterwards, Emil played the violin beautifully, playing to his child, his wife, and a bit for me.

"Emil Ruder saw my first specimens of Univers and was so delighted with them that he designed and published many works with this type in association with his Basle students."