Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Adrain Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger



 
   The typeface designer Adrian Frutiger, born in Unterseen, Canton of Bern, was influential during the second half of the 20th and into the 21st century. His most renowned typefaces are Frutiger and Univers.
   He began his interest in typography at a young age, inventing scripts and stylized handwriting in reaction to the cursive required by Swiss schools at the time. As a boy he was originally interested in sculpture, but was discouraged by his teachers and father and pushed towards the direction of printing. Although he then focused on print, the influence of sculpture was still apparent in his work.
   When he was sixteen he apprenticed as a compositor for the printer Otto Schaerffli, in Interlaken. He also studied under Walter Käch and Alfred Willimann in 1949 and 1951 in the school of applied arts in Züric. There he primarily focused on calligraphy with a nib and brush.
   Later, Charles Peignot, of the Paris foundry Deberny Et Peignot, recruited Frutiger after seeing his illustrated essay Schrift / Écriture / Lettering: the development of European letter types carved in wood. At Deberny Et Peignot Frutiger designed the typefaces "Président", "Méridien", and "Ondine.” He also designed Egyptienne in 1956 and, after Univers, it was the second new typeface to be commissioned for photocomposition. He also created variations of Univers for the Paris Metro and Charles de Gaulle International Airport wayfinding signage in the 1970’s. His later typefaces include Versailles, Avenir, Vectora, and Frutiger Next.
Frutiger’s career and typeface development spans the hot metal, phototypesetting, and digital typesetting eras and he now lives in Bremgarten-Bern.

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