Univers

Adrian Frutiger is one of the greatest typographers from the 20th century. Born a Swiss, he spent almost his whole life in Paris. He went there to work for Deberny and Peignot type foundry. He established his own design studio in Paris where he became a freelance typographer. He also did logos, fonts and the corporate image for many large companies. He also studied sculpture, graphic design and illustration. Later in Paris, he taught typography and illustration for 10 years while working. He published a book on the standard work on typography. He heavily influenced the Swiss school with his work and received many awards for his work. During his work he created more than 170 typefaces. His first creations were Phoebus, Ondine and Meridien in the early 50s. One of the most universally used is Univers. It was designed to be as neutral as possible without serifs to have clarity. The main principle in his work was the legibility of typeface, efficiency and beauty. In 2008 he collaborated on a revision of Meridien which was released as Frutiger Serif by Linotype in honor of his 80th birthday.Universe is unique because different weights and variations are differentiated by numbers rather than names with letter suffixes. The type family consists of 44 faces. The @ is not rescaled by width. The univers grid is Frutiger’s system of organizing the type family by width and thickness.

“If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.”- Adrian Frutiger