In 1928 in Unterseen, Switzerland a famous type-designer named Adrian Frutiger. He began his education at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts for three years. After that he moved to Paris in 1952 to be a type designer and artistic manager at Derbeny and Peignot. After a few years of work and three typeface creations later he created a sans-serif font known as Univers, which made him an internationally known type designer. The Univers type family made such an impact that every typesetting system in the world licensed it for their use. This was because he created a numbering system for weight and width for the 21-member font family, which became a guide for font designers of the next generation. The Univers Grid became known as the “intellectual springboard” because of it breaking and broadening of the – normal, bold, and italic. The grid and its layout allow much more detail with space.
“Frutiger likens it to a star; in the centre, there is a basic font face marked with number 55. Adjacent on the left and the right , are one unit higher or lower faces with always broader or narrower characters, but always with a ductus (stroke width) of the same thickness. On the other hand, there are adjacent faces in an upward or downward direction that are a tenth lower or higher with a ductus (stroke width) of equal thickness. Odd numbers mark the upright faces while even numbers mark the oblique faces. All characters are therefore logically connected and derive from one “prototype”.”
Since then he has created more than forty other fonts. Also, he was consultant for IBM and for the Stempel type foundry and then went on to be a professor for eighteen years. He has accomplished so much in his life including this year on his 80th Birthday when he came out with his latest type: frutiger serif. He has accumulated many awards and honors for his incredible talent, which he very much deserves.
http://www.identifont.com/show?110
http://www.artandculture.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ACLive.woa/wa/artist?id=190
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