LinoLetter 2008/05

Since the 1950s, Adrian Frutiger has been designing typefaces that have been universally acclaimed as groundbreaking. Yet Univers®, Meridien®, Serifa®, Frutiger®, Avenir®, and Vectora® are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amount of work he has accomplished to date. For decades, Adrian Frutiger has been a beloved member of the global design community, traveling throughout Europe, America, and even India. Just as we at Linotype are thrilled to be able to wish him a happy 80th birthday this year, we know that customers and type fans around the world would love the opportunity to send him greetings on this occasion as well. We’ve created a page at Linotype.com where visitors can do just that.

Back when we were in elementary school, our mothers would bake cupcakes and brownies for us to give to our classmates on our birthdays. This year, Adrian Frutiger has a present for the world on his birthday as well: his newest typeface family, Frutiger® Serif. Frutiger Serif is a re-envisioning of Meridien, a typeface first released in Paris during the 1950s. Meridien has always been Adrian Frutiger’s favorite typeface, and it was the most successful of his serif designs. Working closely with Adrian Frutiger, Linotype’s Type Director Akira Kobayashi expanded the original metal type version of Meridien into a new digital family of 20 variants. Renamed Frutiger Serif, this up-to-date Meridien now has weights, widths, and styles that correspond with those of Frutiger® Next (Frutiger Serif even has Condensed Italic fonts, which Frutiger Next does not). This allows designers to finally mix Frutiger Next with a serif typeface whose weights and metrics are optimized for the task.

“Akira says ...” is one of the more popular features on our website. In his newest column, Akira Kobayashi explains the rhythm that can be found behind Adrian Frutiger’s typeface designs. He may be the perfect person to explain this to us; in the past few years, Akira Kobayashi has worked in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger on many typeface projects, including Avenir® and Frutiger® Serif.

Since the 1960s, Adrian Frutiger has been working closely with Linotype to help improve the quality of typography around the world. During the many years of this fruitful collaboration, we accumulated a number of photographs of Adrian Frutiger and how he really appears behind the scenes. We are pleased to publish these online for the world to see. Perhaps they’ll help you get to know Adrian Frutiger a little better.