U
Ubiquitous Univers
U
The Workhorse of Type
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Univers is a typeface that was created in 1957. Its designer, Adrian Frutiger’s goal was to fulfill the need for a utilitarian, versatile sans-serif workhorse. Univers was originally designed for the foundry Deberny and Peignot. It was then passed along to a number of other foundries and is currently owned by Linotype. The updated version, reworked by Frutiger in 1997, is called Linotype Univers. It is a font family that includes a wide variety of weights and styles, making it ideal for many types of work.
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Adrian Frutiger is one of the most important type designers to emerge since World War II.
A A
He is the designer of many notable faces—the best known being the sans-serifs Univers and Frutiger—and was one of the first designers to create type for film. Although Frutiger has said that all his types have Univers as their skeleton, he felt that when he came to design a face for the Charles de Gaulle Airport at Roissy, that Univers seemed dated, with a 1960’s feel. His airport face, originally known as Roissy but renamed Frutiger for its issue to the trade by Mergenthaler Linotype in 1976, is a humanistic sans-serif that has been compared to Gill and Johnston types.
Univers 55 Roman
Univers 55 Oblique
Univers 85 Extra Black
Univers 63 Bold Extended
Univers 67 Bold Condensed
Univers 93 Extra Black Extended
U U U U U U
Frutiger designed 21 versions of Univers, in five weights and five widths. Whereas many typographic families grow over time as they become popular, Univers was conceived as a total system from its inception.
Frutiger has created a broad range of
necessarily caused legibility problems.
typefaces including OCR-B, a type for
Frutiger himself is skeptical about theories
optical character recognition. His 1982
of legibility. He learned to read with Gothic
Breughel is an original face almost wholly
characters without difficulty and says
comprised of curves and fitting into no
legibility is solely a matter of habit.
existing type category. He has embraced new technology and used it to his advantage in faces such as Centennial, a modern type face whose fine serifs are made possible by recent improvements in definition. More than ten years earlier his Iridium had demonstrated that the classical modern face was neither outdated nor
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K ta Diagonal strokes of ‘k’ meet at the stem
Stroke modulation
Two-storied ‘a’ is the most distinctive letter, with a straight back, no baseline curl, and a perpendicular connection at the top of the bowl
‘G’ does not have a spur
Squaring of round strokes
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Built up from a geometric basis, the lines must play freely, so that the individuals find their own expression and join together in a cohesive structure in word, line, and page.
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Inspired by his study of the limitations of existing sans-serif fonts and scientific research done in the 1930’s and ‘40’s on the mechanics of eye movement during reading, Frutiger based his type family purely on geometry. Frutiger was interested in creating a functional and efficient type family. He chose to use different weights for the
horizontal, diagonals, and verticals as a response to his assessment of visual discrepancies in other type faces. Larger x-heights also
provided greater legibility, addressing the concern that sans-serif type was more difficult to read than serif type. All of these innovations contributed to the overall harmony among letters, allowing for a smooth line flow.
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UH U H Univers font was created almost
Modulated strokes give Univers more
simultaneously with other successful
character than Helvetica. It was designed as
alphabets: Helvetica (1957) and Optima
a full system of fonts with a wide range of
(1958). Whereas Neue Helvetica, created
weights, unlike Helvetica, which spawned
for Linotype in 1982 by a digital re-cut of the
variants in a rather disordered way. Univers
1957 by Max Miedinger, had a general clarity
has a somewhat smaller x-height than
and a modern, timeless and neutral effect
Helvetica, and the base font set is wider.
without any conspicuous attributes (lending to its great success), Univers expressed a factual and cool elegance, a rational competence.
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1aGHKQRtuxy
Helvetica Cap Height X-Height
Base Line
The tail of the ‘a’ and top of the ‘1’ are less rounded.
The arms of ‘K’ join at the stem.
The top of ‘t’ is angled.
Univers Cap Height
X-Height
Base Line
1aGHKQRtuxy Many of the numerals in Universe have straigt versus curved ascenders.
‘G’ is formed without an arrow head tail (called a spur).
The tail of the ‘Q’ runs along the base line.
The tail of ‘R’ is curved.
‘y’ has a straight descender.
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Univers is known for its clear lines and legibility at great distances.
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It enjoyed great popularity in the 1960’s and 1970’s. General Electric used the font from 1986 to 2004 before switching to GE Inspira. Apple Inc. previously used this typeface as well as
its condensed oblique variant for the key caps on many of its keyboards, before completely switching to VAG Rounded in August 2007 with the introduction of the new keyboards and the new iMac. Since early 2009, CNN Domestic and CNN International have adopted several weights of Univers in their on screen graphics. CNN International used Helvetica until the switch to Univers, while CNN Domestic previously used many different typefaces. The font is also used in the UK for School Tests and exams extensively, due to its clear differences between characters like I and 1, so there is no confusion.
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Bibliography
Blackwell, Lewis. 20th-Century Type. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. (A&A: Z250.A2 B59 1998 and Vault) Kunz, Willi. Typography: Macro- and Microaesthetics. Sulgen: Verlag Niggli AG, 2000. (A&A: Z246 .K86 2000 and Vault) Carter, Sebastian. Twentieth Century Type Designers. Great Britain: Lund Humphries, 2002.(A&A: Z250 A2 C364 1995 and Vault) Revival of the Fittest: Digital Versions of Classic Typefaces, essays by Carolyn Annand ... [et al.]; edited by Philip B. Meggs and Roy McKelvey, New York: RC Publications, 2000. (A&A: Z250.R45 2000) www.linotype.com www.fonts.com
References
Pincus W. Jaspert, The Encyclopaedia of Typefaces. (Poole, Dorset: Blandford Press, 1983), 69-70. Alexander S. Lawson, Anatomy of a Typeface (Boston: D.R. Godine, 1990), 304. Jennifer Gibson. Revival of the Fittest: Digital Versions of Classic Typefaces (New York: RC Publications), 171. Ibid, 173. Linotype Library GmbH, Available at www.linotype.com/7-267-7-13347/univers. html Accessed November 1, 2005
This book was created by Jill McKay for her Typography I Studio at Washington University in St. Louis in 2010. She used the Univers and Helvetica font family and the colors black and white.