Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger is a well-known typeface designer from the 20^th century and continues to be one in the 21^st century. Born in Switzerland in 1928, he is best known for designing the Frutiger and Univers typefaces.

He began his career in typography when he was sixteen as the apprentice of a printer in Interlaken, Switzerland. He worked in this position for four years. Later, he was the student of Walter Käch and Alfred Williman. This was in Zurich, Switzerland at the Kunstgewerbeschule.

He found employment in Paris at the Deberny et Peignot foundry based on his knowledge and skill with letterforms. At this foundry he was able to create the typefaces “Président", "Phoebus", and "Ondine".

During the foundry’s creation of a unified font family, Frutiger was an essential influence on the success of their design. He strived for unity and at the same time non-regimentation which led to the highly successful “Univers”. Frutiger would base some of his later work on “Univers” as well.

In the late 90’s Frutiger began to refine and expand his fonts to accommodate screen display. “Univers” was reissued with sixty-three variants and several of his others were updated as well including Frutiger and Avenir.

Frutiger is currently alive and has most recently worked on a limited edition wristwatch face. He also created a wordmark for an institute in India, the National Institute of Design.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Frutiger#Current_work)