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FRUTIGER ............................................................. 03 HISTORY ............................................................... 04 INFLUENCES ........................................................ 07 USES ...................................................................... 10 CHARACTER ......................................................... 13 AVENIR NEXT ....................................................... 17
AVENIR IS INTENDED MORE NOR LESS THA CLEAN REPRESENTAT TYPOGRAPHICAL TR THE DESIGNER A TYP STRICTLY MODERN A TIME HUMANE, I.E. S AND ELEGANT FOR U ANY LENGTH.
D TO BE NOTHING AN A CLEAR AND ATION OF MODERN RENDS, GIVING PEFACE WHICH IS AND AT THE SAME SUITABLE, REFINED, USE IN TEXTS OF –ADRIAN FRUTIGER
FRUTIGER
Avenir is the French word for “future�, which Adrian Frutiger presumably had in mind when he designed his typeface of the same name. Frutiger was born in 1928 in Unterseen, Switzerland, a city located in the Canton of Bern. At a young age, he experimented with designing scripts and stylized handwriting, a practice quite the opposite of the formal penmanship required by Swiss schools at the time. Frutiger also showed an early interest in sculpture but was encouraged into the world of print by his father and school teachers. Even though Frutiger pursued a career in print design, he maintained a love of sculpture which is evident in his type forms. Left: Adrian Frutiger, contemporary Swiss graphic designer, typographer and type designer of imagination and consummate craftsmanship.
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HISTORY
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When he was sixteen, Frutiger apprenticed as a typesetter for printers Otto Schaefelli and later studied at the school of applied arts in Zürich. During his time there, from 1948 to 1951, he focused mainly on calligraphy as he favored the pen and brush instead of traditional drafting tools. Upon graduating from the school, Frutiger was recruited by Charles Peignot for the French typefoundry Deberny Et Peignot. Peignot had seen a brochure designed by Frutiger, called History of Letters, and was impressed by Frutiger’s skill in wood-engraving and his knowledge of letterforms. At the time, Deberny Et Peignot required a typeface to be adapted for use with the new photosetting technology. Because of this, Frutiger went on to design his most well known typeface, Univers, inspired by Paul Renner’s Futura.
Right: The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, where Frutiger was recruited by French typefoundry Deberny Et Peignot.
Qq Futura Univers Avenir
INFLUENCES
The invent of Univers in 1957 was the basis for many of Frutiger’s later typeface designs, including his namesake typeface, Frutiger, and the more modern, Avenir. Avenir is a Swiss sans serif typeface designed in 1988 as a more humanistic approach to Futura, as Frutiger felt Futura to be too rigid and geometric for his liking. In an interview conducted by Linotype, Frutiger discusses the reasons he felt compelled to design Avenir. “Looking back on more than 40 years of concern with sans serif typefaces, I felt an obligation to design a linear style of sans serif, in the tradition Left: Avenir in comparison to its primary ancestors, Futura and Univers. Next page: The ‘I amsterdam’ letters at the Museumplein, in front of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
of Erbar, Futura, and to a lesser extent Gill Sans. These have purely constructed characters from which the element of a handwriting movement has been removed.”
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USES
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Because of Avenir’s relevance, clarity, and versatility, it has been used in a wide range of real life applications. One of the most substantial uses of Avenir can be found in the city of Amsterdam, which adopted the typeface for its corporate identity in 2003. The slogan “I amsterdam” is written in Avenir and can be seen anywhere from on key cards designed for tourists to a typographic sculpture on the street. LG Electronics currently uses Avenir as the primary typeface on their cell phone keypads and BBC Two now uses Avenir in their logo, replacing BBC’s once universal usage of Gill Sans. Avenir’s easy readability makes it an appropriate, modern typeface for airport signage as well, as it is used in both Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Hong Kong International Airport. Interestingly enough, Adrian Frutiger’s namesake typeface, Frutiger, was designed specifically for Charles De Gaulle International Airport in France.
Right: City of Amsterdam branding in Avenir, as seen on the side of a truck. The Amsterdam xxx symbol dates back to the year 1505 and has used Avenir since 2003.
Aa Ee Rr Aa Ee Rr
CHARACTER
When designing Avenir, Frutiger looked to both the past and the future in hopes of creating a versatile typeface that would remain relevant well into the twenty-first century. Based on the critical acclaim Avenir received upon its release, it appears Frutiger succeeded.
Left: Avenir characters shown in different weights: 55 Roman on top and 95 Black on bottom.
Avenir is an aesthetic mix of both classic and contemporary, though it is designed primarily to be a modern, futuristic typeface. For example, Avenir uses a classically drawn “a” as opposed to the metrically constructed “a”common to most sans serif typefaces. In addition, Avenir’s “o” is not a perfect circle, whereas Futura’s is. Frutiger has reduced the vertical stroke lengths so that Avenir is more legible because the eye flows easier across horizontals. Also, that “absolutely linear characters are difficult to read in continuous text because purely geometrical letters do not unite harmoniously.” It is details such as these that set Avenir apart from other modern typefaces and is why Avenir is very much still relevant today.
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LOOKING BACK ON M YEARS OF CONCERN TYPEFACES, I FELT AN DESIGN A LINEAR STY IN THE TRADITION O AND TO A LESSER EX THESE HAVE PURELY CHARACTERS FROM W ENT OF A HANDWRIT HAS BEEN REMOVED
MORE THAN 40 WITH SANS SERIF N OBLIGATION TO YLE OF SANS SERIF, OF ERBAR, FUTURA, XTENT GILL SANS. CONSTRUCTED WHICH THE ELEMTING MOVEMENT D. –ADRIAN FRUTIGER
AVENIR NEXT
In 1988, Avenir was originally released in 6 weights and used Frutiger’s unique two-digit weight and width naming system. In order to improve Avernir’s role as a versatile sans serif typeface for the twentyfirst century, Frutiger, in collaboration with Akira Kobayashi, completely reworked the typeface in 2004. The result is Avenir Next. Avenir Next comes in 4 versions: Regular, Italic, Condensed, and Condensed Italic, each of which include 6 different weights for a total of twenty four options. Because of this redesign, “Avenir Next represents a full-fledged contemporary typeface, providing professional graphic designers with the greatest degree of typographical flexibility and optimal legibility.” Left: Akira Kobayashi and Adrian Frutiger. In 2004 Frutiger completely reworked the Avenir type family in close cooperation with Kobayashi, Type Director at Linotype.
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WORKS CITED
“About Avenir Font Family.” Linotype Type Gallery. Web. “Adrian Frutiger.” Digital image. Web. <http://picasaweb. google.com> “Akira Kobayashi and Adrian Frutiger.” Digital image. 24 Mar. 2006. Web. <http://pingmag.jp> “Avenir (typeface).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Mar. 2012. Web. Consuegra, David. Classic Typefaces: American Type and Type Designers. New York: Allworth, 2011. Print. “Genealogical Study of Avenir.” Digital image. 19 May 2011. Web. <http://www.typetoken.net> “I amsterdam.” Digital image. Web. <http://www.panoramio.com> “Interview with A. Frutiger.” Linotype Type Gallery. Web. Lieberman, J. Ben. Type and Typefaces. New Rochelle, NY: Myriade, 1978. Print. Miller, Jeremy. “Eiffel Tower.” Digital image. Web. Miller, Jeremy. “Gemeente Amsterdam.” Digital image. Web.
Natasha Aggarwal 2012 Alberta College of Art + Design