Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger was born in 1928 in Switzerland where his love for sculpture influenced his career in printing. He was discouraged form pursuing sculpture and instead got interested in printing, but his first love is evident in his typefaces. When he was sixteen he was an apprentice as a compositor for four years. He released his first commercial font in 1954, called ‘President.’ In 1956 he designed his first of three slab-serif typefaces, which included Univers. In 1970, his Univers font variation caused French airport authority to commissioned Frutiger. The eventual font he created used Univers but used fonts by Eric Gill, Edward Johnson, and Roger Excoffon as inspirations for the modifications. The font was called Roissy, but was renamed Frutiger when it was released for public use in 1976. In the late 1990’s Univers was re-released with sixty three variants. He also re-released Frutiger and Avenir as Frutiger Next and Avenir Next, with additional line weights. In 2003 he was commissioned to design a new watch face for a vary rare limited-edition of watches by Ventura, a Swiss watchmaker. He also was commissioned to make a woodmark for the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, which changed its name from National Design Institute to match his NID logo on the sign.

Univers has a wide variation of styles and line weights that range from very thin to very thick and they can all be used with one another in harmony. The Univers grid shows all 21 of the weights and widths of the original type that Frutiger designed.

http://www.wikipedia.com/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/univers/