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Frutiger, named after its Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger (born 1928), is a sans-serif typeface. It was designed in 1968 to fulfill the need for a completely new design to replace Frutiger's Univers, released in 1957.
Originally designed by Adrian Frutiger to be used for signage at the Charles De Gaulle International Airport in Paris, it was also soon adopted by designers for use in print and advertising — deemed to have more character than the ubiquitous Univers and Helvetica — and adopted for situations where a typeface needed to be clear and legible in body text in small-point sizes.
History and reputation
Frutiger is considered one of the classics of modern typography and forms the basis of many other modern typefaces, such as Bitstream Vera and Verdana. It is currently used by the UK National Health Service for its new corporate identity.
In the Bitstream font collection, Frutiger is part of the Humanist sans-serif classification. The specific equivalent to the Frutiger family is Humanist 777.
Linotype, the type foundry which originally released Frutiger in 1976, developed a revised version named Frutiger Next in 1999, the letterforms for the italic faces having been dramatically reworked.
In 2003, the Swiss authorities decided to replace all traffic signs in Switzerland (which previously used the VSS font) with a variant of Frutiger known as ASTRA-Frutiger. All new signs will be in Frutiger and old signs will take around a decade to be completely replaced with Frutiger signs. The reason for this is that Frutiger is considered far more legible than the previous font, which was introduced in the 1960s and 1970s.
Switzerland, being home to Frutiger, uses the font very frequently. Swisscom uses it (although not for its logo), as does the Swiss Post and the Swiss-based bank UBS AG.
Frutiger is also used by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as Internet company flickr.
Frutiger was adopted in 2004 by the US National Parks Service as one of its typefaces for signs and maps. NPS Guidelines for use of Frutiger.
Frutiger Next
Frutiger Next is a typeface designed in 1997 for signage at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. It is a refinement of Frutiger, which changed a number of details and added a proper italic font set, rather than the slanted roman font of Frutiger. Typographer Erik Faulhaber has stated that he was the designer of Frutiger Next, but Linotype maintains that it was designed by Adrian Frutiger and the Linotype Design Studio and that Faulhaber was merely a temporary intern on the design team.
Takeoffs on Frutiger
Myriad is an Adobe typeface in the same vein as Frutiger, which some argue is even easier to read. Apple Computer uses Myriad as its new corporate font, after having used a condensed version of Garamond for many years (see also: Apple typography).
Monotype produced a typeface for Microsoft, called Segoe, which will be featured in Windows Vista. According to a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Linotype filed in 2005 a complaint with the European Union's trademarks and design office in Alicante, Spain, arguing that Segoe typeface was plagiarised from Frutiger Next. The EU found that the two were similar enough for Linotype's appeal to be justified, and cancelled the registration of Segoe in April 2006 *
External links
See also
"Frutiger"