[P1]: 3

Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger is the Swiss born creator of the font Univers. Although Univers is one of his most famous fonts he has created many other fonts in his lifetime. Frutiger began his career as a compositor apprentice to Otto Schlaeffli. He attended an art school where he studied typeforms. He then went to work for Charles Peignot, of the Paris foundry Deberny Et Peignot, while worked alongside Peignot, Peignot constantly strived to create a font similar to the wildly popular Futura. However, Frutiger did not like the harshness of Futura and sought out a more natural option that would accompany many different weights. Thus Univers was born. The font has a two-digit numeration system due to all of the different options that become available when using this font. Frutiger did, however, complete a font similar to Futura in 1988 called Avenir. Similar to Univers, this font also has a large variety of weight options for the designer to choose from. In a way Frutiger is able to accomplish Peignot’s vision of creating a font similar to Futura in a way that is less confined and regimented. More recently, Frutiger has done work for Ventura creating a limited-edition watch face and he designed a wordmark for the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India.  

Phase 2

For phase two of the first project we were asked to create text hierarchy in the computer. The context of the assignment was essentially the same as our earlier explorations in cut and paste. However, since we were able to use the computer we now had the ability to add color to our designs which we previously could not do. We were still constricted to the font size and style we were allowed to use. Because of the new found use of color in the designs it was more important to understand how contrast can affect the hierarchy of text on a page. White text against a black background is more likely to stand out than grey text against a black background.