minimalist
minimalist Avenir by Adrian Frutiger Maren Meitzer Linotype https://www.linotype.com/
2018
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Table of Contents Introduction
Chapter 1. About the Designer Chapter 2. Typeface Speciemen Chapter 3. Typeface Anatomy Colophon
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“When I put my pen to a blank sheet, black isn’t added but rather the white sheet is deprived of light. Thus I also grasped that the empty spaces are the most important aspect of a typeface.” - Adrian Frutiger
Introduction
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Adrian Frutiger, who passed away September 10, 2015, was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of digital typography in the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting, and digital typesetting eras. Aside from creating a large number of worldfamous typefaces, he also produced signets and corporate identities for various publishers and industrial enterprises.
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“The whole point of type is for you not to be aware it is there. � - Adrian Frutiger
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Chapter 1.
Adrian Frutiger
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Adrian Frutiger was born on May 24th, 1928 in Switzerland. After attending school, he was a typesetters apprentice from 1944 to 1948 at the printing press, Otto Schlaefli AG. After his apprenticeship, he attended the Kunstgewerbeschule, College of Technical Arts, in Zurich for three years. In 1952, he moved to Paris and became the art director for the Deberny & Peignot Type Foundry. After 10 years of successful work, he left the foundry to open a Graphic Design studio with Andre Grtler and Bruno Pfffli in Arcueil near Paris.
At the very young age, he began experimenting with stylized handwriting and invented scripts, defying the formal, cursive penmanship taught at Swiss schools. He was also interested in sculpture. His interest in sculpting was not met with very encouraging views by his father and teachers. However, they supported the idea of him going into the print industry.
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Consequently, he entered the world of print yet kept his love for sculpting alive by incorporating the sculpture designs in his typefaces. He began his apprenticeship, at the age of sixteen, as a compositor to the printer Otto Schaerffli, for four years. He also attended school of applied arts, Kunstgewerbeschule in Zrich. Here he thrived under the supervision of art instructors like Walter Kch and Alfred Willimann. Frutiger studied monumental inscriptions from Roman forum rubbings, although he primarily focused on calligraphy rather than drafting tools.Frutiger illustrated the essay, the development of European letter types carved in wood, which earned him a job offer at the French foundry Deberny Et Peignot by Charles Peignot. His wood-engraved essay illustrations displayed his meticulous skills and knowledge of letterforms. At the foundry, he designed various typefaces including Ondine, Mridien, and Prsident. Upon witnessing his marvelous work, Charles Peignot assigned Frutiger to convert extant typefaces for the new Linotype equipment, phototypesetting.
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In 1954, Frutigers first commercial typeface Prident was released. It was designed in a manner that showcased a set of titling capital letters with small, bracketed serifs. It was followed by Ondine, a calligraphic, informal, script face which translated as Wave in French. Then Mridien appeared the following year, illustrating a glyphic, old-style serif text face. The typefaces were inspired by Nicholas Jensons work. Frutiger clearly demonstrated his ideas of letter construction, unity, and organic form in Mridien. In a few years, he designed slab-serif typefaces. Egyptienne was one of those typefaces that had him commissioned for photocomposition.
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In 1968, Adrian Frutiger became an official advisor for D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt, Germany, and therefore also for its successor companies such as Mergenthaler, Linotype, Linotype-Hell and today the Heidelberg subsidiary, Linotype, Bad Homburg. During early 1970s, upon the request of the public transport authority of Paris, Frutiger inspected the Paris Metro signage. Moreover, he recreated Univers typeface in a variant font. It was a set of capitals and numbers designed for white-on-dark-blue backgrounds visible especially under poor lighting. Upon the successful reception of this modern typeface, the French airport authority commissioned him yet again to work for the new Charles de Gaulle International Airport.
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He was required to design a way-finding signage alphabet and in such way that is both legible from afar and from any angle. Frutiger first decided to adapt Univers typeface but then relinquished the idea considering a little outdated. He took a different approach to the matter and altered the Univers typeface and fused it with organic influences of the Eric Gills Gill Sans typeface. The resultant typeface was originally titled, Roissy, though it was named after Frutiger in 1976, when it was released for public use. Plus, his computer type OCR B for automatic reading became a worldwide standard in 1973. Adrian Frutiger was a lecturer for ten years at the Ecole Estienne and for eight years at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, both in Paris. In addition, he has given numerous seminars around the world. From 1963 to 1981, he was responsible for the design and adaptation of typewriter and composer fonts at the IBM World Fair.
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Adrian Frutiger was been an active type designer for over thirty years. In this time, ne created timeless typefaces such as Avenir, Versailles and Vectora. He also tried to expand and modify these typefaces. He created sixty-three variants of Univers and he reissued Frutiger Next as an extension ofĂŠFrutiger with true italic and additional weights. He won several awards for his contribution to typography such as The Gutenberg Prize, Medal of the Type Directors Club and Typography Award from SOTA.
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“I have learned is that
legibility and beauty
stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader�- Adrian Frutiger 16
Chapter 2.
Typeface Specimen
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HEAVY
MODERN DESIGNERS, WORKING IN THE AMBITIOUS DECADES BETWEEN THE LAST CENTURY’S TWO WORLD WARS,
EMPHASIZED AND TRANSFORMED THE TECHNOLOGIES OF MECHANICAL
22 PT 18 PT 16 PT 10 PT
REPRODUCTION.
HEAVY OBLIQUE
THEY SOMETIMES BURIED EVIDENCE
BLACK
THE MASS MANUFACTURERS 25 PT
OF THE HAND IN ORDER TO OBJECTIFY THE MACHINE.
20 PT 14 PT
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY HAD PROVEN THAT 14 PT INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION COULD REPLACE THE WORK OF
11 PT
AVANT-GARDE DESIGNERS AIMED, INSTEAD,
16 PT
TRADITIONAL ARTISANS.
BLACK OBLIQUE
TO EXPRESS THE TECHNIQUES OF PRODUCTION IN THE FORM
11 PT
MEDIUM
THEY SOUGHT TO EXPOSE TECHNOLOGY AND LOOSEN
12 PT
MEDIUM OBLIQUE
ITS CONSTRAINTS, VIEWING THE PROCESS OF MANUFACTURE AS DEVICES EQUIPPED WITH
15 PT
AND APPEARANCE OF THE OBJECT.
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OBLIQUE
CULTURAL AND AESTHETIC CHARACTER.
18 PT
BOOK OBLIQUE
MODERNISM FETISHIZED
27 PT
ROMAN
BOOK
THE VERY MEANS OF MANUFACTURE
USING THE SYSTEMS OF
18 PT
A MODE OF DESIGN THAT
27 PT
THE RULER AND COMPASS, THE CAMERA AND HALFTONE BLOCK, THE LETTERPRESS
LIGHT
30 PT
MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION TO BUILD
OPENLY ENDORSES ITS TECHNICAL ORIGINS. LIGHT OBLIQUE
20 PT
14 PT
19 PT 11 PT
SHOP AND THE OFFSET PRESS
24 PT
:THESE WERE TECHNOLOGIES CHARGES WITH
14 PT
MEANING
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ALIGN LEFT
ALIGN CENTER
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Graphic designers can use theories of user interaction to revisit some of our basic assumptions about visual communication. Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of print? It is a common assumption that digital displays are inherently more difficult to read than ink on paper. Yet HCI studies conducted in the late 1980s proved that crisp black text on a white background can be read just as efficiently from a screen as from a printed page.
Graphic designers can use theories of user interaction to revisit some of our basic assumptions about visual communication. Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of print? It is a common assumption that digital displays are inherently more difficult to read than ink on paper. Yet HCI studies conducted in the late 1980s proved that crisp black text on a white background can be read just as efficiently from a screen as from a printed page.
ALIGN RIGHT
JUSTIFY WITH LAST LINE ALIGNED LEFT
Graphic designers can use theories of user interaction to revisit some of our basic assumptions about visual communication. Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of print? It is a common assumption that digital displays are inherently more difficult to read than ink on paper. Yet HCI studies conducted in the late 1980s proved that crisp black text on a white background can be read just as efficiently from a screen as from a printed page.
Graphic designers can use theories of user interaction to revisit some of our basic assumptions about visual communication. Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of print? It is a common assumption that digital displays are inherently more difficult to read than ink on paper. Yet HCI studies conducted in the late 1980s proved that crisp black text on a white background can be read just as efficiently from a screen as from a printed page.
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JUSTIFY WITH LAST LINE ALIGNED CENTER
JUSTIFY WITH LAST LINE ALIGNED RIGHT
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Graphic designers can use theories of user interaction to revisit some of our basic assumptions about visual communication. Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of print? It is a common assumption that digital displays are inherently more difficult to read than ink on paper. Yet HCI studies conducted in the late 1980s proved that crisp black text on a white background can be read just as efficiently from a screen as from a printed page.
Graphic designers can use theories of user interaction to revisit some of our basic assumptions about visual communication. Why, for example, are readers on the Web less patient than readers of print? It is a common assumption that digital displays are inherently more difficult to read than ink on paper. Yet HCI studies conducted in the late 1980s proved that crisp black text on a white background can be read just as efficiently from a screen as from a printed page.
Minimal Minimal Minimal Minimal Minimal
72 pt
60 pt
48 pt
36 pt
30 pt
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The beauty and wonder of “white space� is another modernist myth that is under revision in the age of the user. Modern designers discovered that open space on a page can have as much physical presence as printed areas. White space is not always a mental kindness, however. Edward Tufte, a fierce advocate of visual density, argues for maximizing the amount of data conveyed on a single page or screen. In order to help readers make connections and comparisons as well as to find information quickly, a single surface packed with well-organized information is sometimes better than multiple pages with a lot of blank space. In typography as in urban life, density invites intimate exchange among people and ideas. Book 12/14 pt
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The beauty and wonder of “white space� is another modernist myth that is under revision in the age of the user. Modern designers discovered that open space on a page can have as much physical presence as printed areas. White space is not always a mental kindness, however. Edward Tufte, a fierce advocate of visual density, argues for maximizing the amount of data conveyed on a single page or screen. In order to help readers make connections and comparisons as well as to find information quickly, a single surface packed with well-organized information is sometimes better than multiple pages with a lot of blank space. In typography as in urban life, density invites intimate exchange among people and ideas. Oblique 14/17 pt
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“The material of typography is the black, and it is the designer’s task with the help of this black to capture space, to create harmonious whites inside the letters as well as between them.” - Adrian Frutiger 26
Chapter 3.
Typeface Anatomy
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EAR EYE
CAP-HEIGHT X- HEIGHT
BASELINE STEM
APERTURE
SPUR DESCENDER
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ASCENDER
BOWL
R DESCENDER
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ASCENDER
BASELINE
CAP HEIGHT
The upward vertical stem on some lowercase letters, that extends above the x-height is the ascender.
The imaginary line upon which the letters in a font appear to rest.
The height from the baseline to the top of the uppercase letters.
APERTURE
BOWL
COUNTER
The aperture is the partially enclosed, somewhat rounded negative space in some characters.
The curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved parts (counter) of some leters.
The enclosed or partially enclosed circular or curved negative space (white space) of some letters.
AXIS
BRACKET
CROSSBAR
An imaginary line drawn from top to bottom of a glyph bisecting the upper and lower strokes.
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The bracket is a curved or wedge-like connection between the stem and serif of some fonts. Not all serifs are bracketed serifs.
The (usually) horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase ‘A’ and ‘H’ is a crossbar.
DESCENDER
LINK/ NECK
TERMINAL
Any part in a lowercase letter that extends below the baseline.
Much like a counter, the eye refers specifically to the enclosed space in a lowercase ‘e’.
The end (straight or curved) of any stroke that doesn’t include a serif.
EAR
LOOP/ LOBE
X- HEIGHT
Typically found on the lower case ‘g’, an ear is a decorative flourish usually on the upper right side of the bowl.
In a double-storey ‘g’, the loop is the enclosed or partially enclosed counter below the baseline that is connected to the bowl by a link.
EYE
TAIL
Much like a counter, the eye refers specifically to the enclosed space in a lowercase ‘e’.
The height of the lowercase letters, disregarding ascenders or descenders, typically exemplified by the letter x.
The descending, often decorative stroke on the letter ‘Q’, or the descending, often curved diagonal stroke on ‘K’ or ‘R’ is the tail.
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“Typography must be as beautiful as a forest, not like the concrete jungle of the tenements It gives distance between the trees, the room to breathe and allow for life.� - Adrian Frutiger 32
Colophon
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This book was created using the typeface Avenir by Adrian Frutiger. It is printed on white gloss paper. It was designed by Maren Meitzer.
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Resources: http://www.azquotes.com/author/40523-Adrian_ Frutiger https://www.linotype.com/
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