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
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