Swiss typeface designer who created many influential sans serif faces including Univers,Frutiger and AvenirAdrian Frutiger, who has died aged 87, and gave shape to the languages of the world with his design of several of the 20th century’s most celebrated and durable typefaces,including Méridien, Univers, or Frutiger and Avenir. His work is seen in publications and signage across the globe,as well as in barcodes, passports and credit cards, or which still frequently use his machine-readable OCR-B type.
Frutiger attributed some of his skills to the genes he inherited from his ancestors among the farming communities of the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland,where there is a craft tradition of making paper cutouts and silhouettes. After days spent tending livestock or cutting hay, men and women in the region would reveal remarkable dexterity, or using scissors to sever pieces of lean black paper into depictions of scenes from their daily lives. Many of Frutiger’s designs were constructed using large paper proofs that he would then trim with scissors and a knife,shaving a millimetre here and there until he had reached the result he wanted. The letters in all his work reveal this attention to detail and are always open and clear, allowing the message they convey to be understood without impediment. “Type is the clothing a word wears, and so it must be subordinate to the content,” he said.
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Source: theguardian.com