Design Questions

Adrian Frutiger was born in 1928 in Unterseen, Switzerland. At a young age, Frutiger showed interest in letterforms. He emulated writer and teacher, Ernst Eberhart’s freer method of handwriting. Frutiger quickly developed his own style, as he would cut his pens down to a broad nib to make letterforms open and round. He was trained in type and graphics at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts from 1949 to 1951. After moving to Paris in 1952, he worked as typeface designer and artistic manager at Deberny & Peignot. Here, he created some of the earliest typefaces for photocomposition. In 1957, he established his international position after designing the Univers typeface. Overtime, he has reworked and expanded it to include 63 fonts. His other typefaces include Serifa (1967), Frutiger (1975), and Avenir (1988). Soon after, Frutiger found his own studio in Paris with Bruno Pfafi and Andrea Gurtler, where Linotype became his namesake typeface and remains the best regarded.

Frutiger is also a respected painter, sculptor, symbologist, and mathematician and has written many books about type and design. He has taught at the Ecole Estienne and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs. 

Univers is a unique typeface cause it is the first family to use numbers as a naming system for its various weights. This family is extensively varied and has a very systematic structure. Univers is suited for long bodies of text. It uses optically even strokes and a large x-height that increases legibility when used large or small. It is slightly elegant and rich in form.

The Univers grid utilizes a numbering system to define various widths, weights, and styles. The first digit, which runs from top to bottom, denotes weight, with 3X the thinnest and 8X the thickest. The second digit running from left to right denotes width, with X3 the most expanded and X9 the most condensed. Odd and even numbers are used to differentiate between roman and italic styles.