Thursday, September 8, 2011

Adrian Frutiger and Univers

Adrian Frutiger was one of the great designers that made typeface what it is today.  He started off his designer years in his home country, Siwtzerland, and attended a Swiss school of design.  Right out of school, Frutiger acquired a job in France at a typefoundry in which he would work with various typefaces and typesetting.   From his knowledge that he gained from school and his first job, he has impacted the typeface world.  He is known for creating the typefaces of Universe and Frutiger.  Of course, those are not the only typefaces that hold his name as the creater.  Herculaneum and Glypha are also on the long list of typefaces he created.  During his time as a designer, he would create different fonts and then spend a lot of time refining them to make a complete series of a particular font.  This was the case when it came to Univers, Frutiger and Avenir.  On top of creating multiple popular fonts, he has published many books as well.  The amount of knowledge and gifts he has given to the world of typography seems like too much to list, but all of the typefaces and knowledge we use everyday had to come from somewhere and we just have to be grateful and admire their outstanding work.

The Univers typeface is unique in many ways, but the most unique thing is how every member of the font is named.  Instead of names, like all the other fonts, they are named by numbers.  The Universe grid is very different as well.  The grid organizes the different members of the font by stroke weight and kerning.

No comments:

Post a Comment