Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Adrian Frutiger



Who is Adrian Frutiger?

Adrian Frutiger is one of the most typeface designers in the 20th century.  He continues to influence the direction of digital typography in the 21st century.  He was best known for creating the typefaces of Univers and Frutiger.  He has also produced some of the most well-known and widely used typefaces.  

In his early life, Adrian was interested in sculpture and was discouraged by his father and by his secondary school teacher.  They encouraged him to work in printing.  Although he is a magnificent type designer, his love of sculpture greatly influences his type forms.    Adrian then continued his training in typography and graphics at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts.  He was taught by two well known professors, Alfred Willimann and Walter Kach.  He later estbalished his international position as a typeface designer with his Univers sans-serif font.

What makes univers unique?
Univers is a typeface that is in the Swiss Style of graphic design.  Different weights and variations within the type family are designated by the use of numbers rather than names, which is something that Adrain adapted.  The actual typeface names within Univers familiy include both number and letter suffixes.  As of now, "Univers type family consists of 44 faces, with 16 uniquely numbered weight, width, position combinations.  20 fonts have oblique positions, 8 fonts support Central European character set. 8 suppose Cyrillic character set".
Adrian Frutiger decided to design this unique classificaton system to eliminate naming and specifying confusion.  The number used in a font is a concatenation of 2 numbers.  The first set defines weight, while the second defines width and position.







Typophile

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