5 Font Designers Still Kickin!

Adrian Frutiger
(b. 1928) France
:joined Deberny & Peignot in 1952 after moving to Paris from Zurich
:beyond Univers, designed a number of broadly used typefaces, among them Serifa (1967), Frutiger (1975), and Avenir (1988)

Ed Benguiat
(b. 1927) USA
:worked for Esquire magazine and ran his own studio
:joined Photo-Lettering Inc. in 1962 becoming head of its publishing department and designing literally hundreds of display typefaces
:credited with more than 600 typefaces, among them ITC Souvenir (1970), ITC Tiffany (1974), and ITC Bauhaus (1975)

Hermann Zapf
(b. 1918) Germany
:taught himself calligraphy and lettering through reading several books
:designed first typeface, a Fraktur black letter called Gilgengart at age 20
:served in Cartographic Unit of the German army during WWII
:designed Zapfino in 1998 for Linotype and five years later, Linotype released Zapfino Extra to take advantage of OpenType
:has been one of the few type designers to produce designs in metal, phototypesetting, and computer

Matthew Carter
(b. 1937) UK
:had yearlong punch-cutting internship at the printing house Ensechede in Haarlem, Netherlands
:freelanced for 6 years in London, first as a typemaker and later as a type designer
:established a digital type foundry, Bitstream, in 1981 with 3 colleagues

Zuzana Licko
(b. 1961) Czechoslovakia
:degree in Graphic Communications from the University of California at Berkley
:no formal training in typeface design
:created uniquely designed coarse bitmap fonts 
:developed remarkably innovative designs like Emigre, Emperor, Oakland, and Universal that paved the way for other designs
 

5 Font Designers Long Gone

Morris Fuller Benton
(1872-1948) USA
:began working in 1896 at the American Type Founders, the company established by his father, Linn Boyd Benton, in 1892
:Designed more than 200 typefaces, including a number of extensions of existing typefaces to create comprehensive type families like Cheltenham (1902)
:some of his diverse typefaces: Franklin Gothic (1904), Engravers Old English (1907), Hobo (1910), Broadway (1928), and Bank Gothic (1930)

Stanley Morison
(1889-1967) UK
:Co-Founded the Fleuron Society in 1922 with Francis Meynell, Holbrook Jackson, Bernard Newdigate and Oliver Simon- through it he published and edited The Fleuron, a journal of typography
:revived a significant number of typefaces after joining Monotype Corporation in 1923
:created Times New Roman

Eric Gill
(1882-1940) UK
:prolific sculptor, engraver, and lettercutter in addition to typeface designer
:his first typeface, Perpetua, a serif, was commissioned by Stanley Morison in 1925
:based on Johnston Sans, he created Gill Sans for the Monotype Corporation in 1927

Paul Renner
(1878-1956) Germany
:Designer, educator, and writer best known for his geometric sans serif, Futura, released in 1928

Frederic W. Goudy
(1865-1947) USA
:created more than 100 typefaces ranging from sans serif to black letters
:designed most notoriously Copperplate Gothic (1901), Goudy Old Style (1916), and Goudy Text (1928)

Adrian Frutiger and Univers font

Adrian Frutiger was born in 1928 in Unterseen, Canton of Bern and during his lifetime became a very influential typeface designer. His fonts come from linotype. He was one of the first designers who came up with the idea to have one font, but to have variations within that font such as bold, black, thin. Frutiger designed the font Univers and Frutiger, along with many others. He came up with the Univers Grid which lays out the complete variations within the Univers font in an organized way; showing changes in character stance, stroke width, size, and italic. He apprenticed in different mediums for four years from age 16 to 20, under several different printers and artists. His first commercial typeface was called President, and was released in 1954. He continued to release different fonts and in his Méridien type, Frutiger's ideas of letter construction, unity, and organic form, are first expressed together. Univers was the first of it’s kind in that it used numbers to classify different weights. Adrian was a big advocate of linotype and used it to expand his various fonts. 


Univers was the first family to use numbers as a naming system for its various weights- 21 variations when first released- built around its roman version, suited for long bodies of text, Univers 55. It uses optically even strokes as well as a large x-height that increases legibility when used very small or as large billboards and buildings can handle. 


The Univers Grid is a way to organize the many variations of the font. 

·      Even numbers are italic

·      Odds are roman (normal)

·      As you move from left to right they move from extended to condensed

·      From top to bottom they go from light to heavy

·      Rows have the same stroke width

·      Columns have the same character stance