Adrian Frutiger

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Samples of some of the fonts designed by Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger [ ˈfʁuːtɪˌgər ] (* May 24, 1928 in Unterseen ; † September 10, 2015 in Bremgarten near Bern ) was a Swiss type designer . He is one of the leading creators of Swiss typography .

Life

Frutiger was the son of a hand weaver. After an apprenticeship as typesetter at the Interlaken book and art print shop Otto Schlaefli (today Verlag Schlaefli & Maurer AG) and studying at the Zurich School of Applied Arts (1949–1951) with Alfred Willimann and Walter Käch (thesis: European font development from the Greek lapidary alphabet to Renaissance fonts ), Frutiger initially worked as a graphic artist in Zurich. In 1952 he became an employee of the Paris type foundry Deberny & Peignot, and in 1962 Frutiger founded his own graphics studio in Arcueil near Paris, together with Bruno Pfäffli and André Gürtler. For several years he taught part-time at the École Estienne and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs . From 1992 he lived in Bremgarten near Bern.

His two best-known typefaces are the sans serif Linear-Antiqua Univers and the Roissy, an early form of Frutiger, designed for Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport . In addition, Frutiger designed numerous other typefaces, such as Avenir, Centennial, Iridium, Meridien and Serifa . His OCR-B , optimized for machine readability , was raised to the ISO standard in 1973.

Distance board in Switzerland in the ASTRA-Frutiger motorway

Frutiger's book Man and His Signs , published in 1978, is regarded as a standard work on sign theory for practical graphic application, for example for designing a logo . The book has been translated and published in seven languages.

Since 2003, traffic signs in Switzerland have been labeled with the ASTRA-Frutiger Standard and ASTRA-Frutiger Autobahn font .

Frutiger was married twice. His first wife, Paulette Flückiger, died in 1954 after the birth of their son Stéphane. In 1955 he married Simone Bickel, who died in 2008. The two daughters from this marriage, Anne-Sylvie and Annik, committed suicide at the age of 16 and 20 respectively. In their memory, the parents founded the Fondation Adrian et Simone Frutiger, which supports neuropsychological and neuropsychiatric research.

Font designs

The following fonts were developed by Adrian Frutiger:

honors and awards

  • 1986: Gutenberg Prize from the Gutenberg Society V.
  • 1987: Type Directors Club Medal from the New York Type Directors Club
  • 2006: Sota Award for life's work
  • 2007: Award Designer 2007 of the Federal Office for Culture of the Swiss Confederation for shaping the visual environment of millions of people
  • 2013: Culture Prize of the Bernese Oberland for life's work

Works (selection)

  • Man and his signs. Text editing by Horst Heiderhoff. 3 volumes. D. Stempel, Frankfurt am Main 1978/1979/1981; Short version: Marix, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-86539-907-X .
  • Type, sign, symbol. ABC, Zurich 1980 (English, German, French).
  • A life for writing. Schlaefli & Maurer, Interlaken 2003, ISBN 3-85884-015-7 .
  • Thinking about signs and writing. Haupt, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-258-06811-9 .
  • Symbols. Mysterious picture-writings, signs, signals, labyrinths, heraldry. Haupt, Bern 2008, ISBN 978-3-258-07323-1 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Adrian Frutiger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of death 10 September 2015 according to the Bremgarten municipal administration near Bern from 16 September 2015.
  2. ^ Obituary for Adrian Frutiger. Linotype, accessed September 15, 2015
  3. ↑ Erik Spiekermann : An epoch in letters. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . September 13, 2015, accessed September 14, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Ulf Erdmann Ziegler. Writing and tenderness . On the death of the Swiss typographer Adrian Frutiger. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of September 14, 2015. Page 13
  5. ↑ Fonts with world fame: Typographer Adrian Frutiger has died . Retrieved September 15, 2015
  6. ^ Adrian Frutiger , typografie.co.at, accessed on July 15, 2014, (PDF file)
  7. ↑ typografie.info: Fonts on traffic signs
  8. ^ Margalit Fox: Adrian Frutiger Dies at 87; His Type Designs Show You the Way , in: New York Times, September 18, 2015.
  9. ^ Fondation Adrian et Simone Frutiger - Historique
personal data
SURNAME Frutiger, Adrian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss type designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Unterseen
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 2015
Place of death Bremgarten near Bern