![]() ![]() Then one day the question was raised of a grotesque for the Lumitype-Photon. As Frutiger explained in a 1999 interview with Eye Magazine, “When I came to Deberny & Peignot in Paris, Futura (though it was called Europe there) was the most important font in lead typesetting. This was the cultural environment that influenced Adrian Frutiger as he set about his work on a new typeface as a Swiss trained type designer at a French foundry. It was the nexus of the creative drive to design the definitively “modern” typeface and the possibilities opened up by the displacement of metal type with phototypesetting that brought san serif from a niche font into global preeminence. By the late 1950s, the most successful period of san serif type opened up and the epicenter of this change emerged in Switzerland, signified by the creation of Helvetica (1957) by Eduard Hoffmann and Max Miedinger of the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein. ![]() The Bauhaus School, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, was dedicated to the expansion of the modernist estheticĪfter the war, interest in sans serif type design was renewed as a symbol of modernism and a break from the first four decades of the century. Exceptions to this trend were in the US, where the use of grotesque types was increasing, and Switzerland, where the minimalist typographic ideas of the Bauhaus were brought by designers who had fled the countries ruled by the Nazis. Sans serif type came under attack, was derided as “degenerate” and banned in some instances. In the 1930s, especially within the European countries that fell to dictatorship prior to and during World War II, there was a backlash against modernist conceptions. Sans serif type remained something of an oddity and not yet accepted by the traditional foundry industry as viable in terms of either style or legibility. However, these fonts-which are still used today-did not succeed in elevating san serif beyond headline usage and banner advertising and into broader application. Fonts such as Futura, Kabel and Gill Sans incorporated some of the theoretical concepts of the Bauhaus and DeStijl movements and pushed sans serif to new spheres of respectability. Rudolf Koch, Kabel, 1927 Paul Renner, Futura, 1927 Eric Gill, Gill Sans, 1927Īlong with the modern art and design movements of the early twentieth century, a reconsideration of the largely experimental work of the first generation of sans serif types began in the 1920s. ![]() As such, these early san serif designs were often considered too clumsy and inelegant for the professional type houses and their clients. The original san serif designs (beginning in 1898) possessed qualities-lack of lower case letters, lack of italics, the inclusion of condensed or extended widths and equivalent cap and ascender heights-that seemingly violated the rules of typographic tradition. Also known as grotesque (or grotesk), san serif fonts emerged with commercial advertising, especially signage. San serif type is a product of the twentieth century. He also designed several new typefaces- Président, Méridien, and Ondine-in the early 1950s. In 1952, following his graduation, Frutiger moved to Paris and joined the foundry Deberny & Peignot as a type designer.ĭuring his early work with the French type house, Frutiger was engaged in the conversion of existing metal type designs for the newly emerging phototypesetting technologies. It was during his years in Zürich that Adrian worked on sketches for what would later become the typeface Univers, one of the most important contributions to post-war type design. In 1951, he created a brochure for his dissertation entitled, “The Development of the Latin Alphabet” that was illustrated with his own woodcuts. In 1949, Frutiger transferred to the School of Applied Arts in Zürich, where he concentrated on calligraphy. He also took classes in drawing and woodcuts at a business school in the vicinity of Bern. Adrian Frutiger around the time of his apprenticeshipĪt age 16, Adrian obtained a four-year apprenticeship as a metal type compositor with the printer Otto Schlaeffli in Interlaken. He was encouraged by his family and secondary school teachers to pursue an apprenticeship rather than a fine arts career. As a youth, Adrian showed an interest in handwriting and lettering. ![]() He was also a teacher, author and specialist in the language of graphic expression and-since his career spanned metal, photomechanical and electronic type technologies-Frutiger became an important figure in the transition from the analog to the digital eras of print communications.įrutiger was born on in the town of Interseen, near Interlaken and about 60 kilometers southeast of the city of Bern, Switzerland. He was one of the most important type designers of his generation, having created some 40 fonts, many of them still widely used today. Adrian Frutiger died on Septemat the age of 87. ![]()
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