The Avenir (French for “future”) font was produced as another real alternative to the Futura design and the original face was available in three weights with accompanying italic variants. Various other fonts followed after the Univers creation including Serifa®, Glypha® and the self titled Frutiger®.
Preferring a more humanist approach to typeface creation, he persuaded his then-employer Charles Peignot to allow him to create a new face based on different criteria. Frutiger did not feel comfortable with the manner in which Futura sat upon the page, feeling it was too disciplined.
Very creative from an early age, Frutiger dabbled in sculpture and type design, in particular, alternatives to the stiff, formal cursive taught at his native Swiss schools.Īrguably, Frutiger’s most famous font, the Univers® family, was produced as a reaction to Paul Renner’s 1927 Futura® typeface. It was an expanded reworking of the original font family (released as an OpenType font with both oldstyle and lining figures) and received considerable acclaim upon its publication by Linotype in 2004.Īdrian Frutiger was destined for typographical greatness well before his entrance into the world of commercial typeface production. The Avenir® Next font family was designed by Adrian Frutiger in collaboration with Monotype Type Director Akira Kobayashi.
