Thursday, May 15, 2008

Happy 80th Birthday, Mr. Adrian Frutiger!


One May 24th 2008, one of the most well known, and ground-breaking typographers of the twentieth century, Mr. Adrian Frutiger, turns 80! For those of you who aren't familiar with the man himself, you're likely to have come across something in design that has used one of the many typefaces he has designed, such as Frutiger, Univers, and Avenir to name a few...

Anyhow, in celebration of the man's great contributions to type design, Linotype has initiated a call for personal birthday wishes, which includes the option of attaching an image... feeling up to the challenge of creating a typographic 'birthday card' for a type legend? ;) Check out the Linotype website for more information about Mr. Frutiger, his typefaces, and their personal birthday wish initiative, visit www.linotype.com - cheers!

1 comment:

hannarama said...

Adrian Frutiger is one of my favourite typeface designers. I created a typography book in school featuring, analyzing, and experimenting with 14 of his typefaces he created between 1954 and 1993...
frutiger_bookspreads.pdf

There was a quote by him to the effect that if Helvetica were like jeans, Univers would be like a dress coat... or something like that.

I think Avenir is one of my favourite typefaces he designed... it's hard to say.

Another interesting quote of his is:
"If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful."
- Adrian Frutiger, Keynote Speech/Type90

Happy Birthday, Mr. Frutiger!