Frutiger (typeface)

Distinctive characteristics

Characteristics of this typeface are:

Lowercase

square dot over the letter i; double-storey a, single-storey g. Wide, open apertures on letters such as a, e and s. Very high x-height, (perhaps too high for body text) but increasing its clarity for headings.

Uppercase

Wide A with a very low centre bar, though less obvious in bold weight. Q with a stroke below the circle only. Univers-like M, square and with centre strokes descending to the base of the letter.

Figures

monospaced numbers; diagonal serif on the 1; closed 4.

Oblique

The slanted version is an oblique in which the letterforms are slanted, rather than a true italic. Some versions not drawn by Frutiger do add a true italic (see Frutiger Next below).

History

Frutiger is a sans-serif typeface by the Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger. It is the text version of Frutiger's earlier typeface Roissy, commissioned in 1970/71 by the newly built Charles de Gaulle Airport at Roissy, France, which needed a new directional sign system, which itself was based on Concorde, a font Frutiger had created in the early 1960s.

The beginning of Frutiger starts from Concorde, a sans-serif font Frutiger was commissioned to design in 1961-4 by the minor metal type company Sofratype. Frutiger was asked to create a design that would not be too similar to his previous Univers, a reinvention of classic 19th-century typefaces. In practice the design detail was partly created by his colleague (and fellow Swiss in Paris) André Gürtler as Frutiger was busy. Frutiger wrote of it: "I felt I was on the right track with this grotesque; it was a truly novel typeface." Gürtler too wrote of feeling that the design was innovative: "this style didn't exist in grotesques at the time, except for Gill Sans." Despite Frutiger and Gürtler's enthusiasm, the design failed to sell well and was discontinued with the end of the metal type period: Frutiger wrote that Linotype, who bought Sofratype, "weren't aware of the fact that with Concorde they had a totally up-to-date typeface."

Some years later, Frutiger was commissioned to develop a typeface for Roissy Airport. Frutiger had earlier created an alphabet inspired by Univers and Peignot for Paris Orly Airport, but found the experience a failure due to lack of control and the insistence that all text be in capitals only. As a result, he proposed a modified version of Concorde, refining it following research into legibility. The Roissy typeface was completed in 1972. Impressed by the quality of the Roissy airport signage, the typographical director of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company approached Frutiger in 1974 to turn it into a typeface for print.

In designing the typeface's predecessors Concorde and Roissy, Frutiger's goal had been to create a sans-serif typeface with the rationality and cleanliness of Univers but the organic and proportional aspects of Gill Sans. Frutiger: "What was important, was total clarity – I would even call it nudity – an absence of any kind of artistic addition.". Designing Frutiger as a print version of Roissy, this principle resulted in a distinctive and legible typeface. The letter properties originally suited to the needs of Charles de Gaulle: a modern appearance and legibility at various angles, sizes, and distances. Ascenders and descenders are very prominent, and apertures are wide to easily distinguish letters from one another. Improvements on Roissy included better spacing.

The Frutiger family was released publicly in 1976 by the Stempel type foundry in conjunction with Linotype. Frutiger's simple and legible yet warm and casual character has made it popular today in advertising and small print. Some major uses of Frutiger are in the corporate identity of Raytheon, PharMerica, O₂, the British Royal Navy and British Army, the London School of Economics and Political Science, Deutsche Post and its subsidiary DHL Express, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Conservative Party of Canada, the Banco Bradesco in Brazil, and the Finnish Defence Forces, and on road signs in Switzerland. The typeface has also been used across the public transport network in Oslo, Norway, since the 1980s. In 2008 it was the fifth best-selling typeface of the Linotype foundry.

Frutiger was also released by Bitstream under the name Humanist 777 and by Fontsite as FrontPage.

Frutiger Linotype

This is a version of the original Frutiger font family licensed to Microsoft. This family consists of Frutiger 55, 56, 65, and 66. It does not include OpenType features or kerning, but it adds support to Latin Extended-B and Greek characters, with Frutiger 55 supporting extra IPA characters and spacing modifier letters. Unlike most Frutiger variants, Frutiger Linotype features old-style figures as the default numeral style.

Frutiger Linotype can be found in Microsoft products featuring Microsoft Reader and in the standalone Microsoft Reader package.

ASTRA-Frutiger

This is a variant of Frutiger used by ASTRA (acronym of the Amt für Strassen, the Swiss Federal Road Office) as the new font for traffic signs, replacing VSS in 2003. It is based on Frutiger 57 Condensed, but with widening ascenders and descenders, which are intended to give the eye a better hold than the earlier version did.

A family of two fonts were made, called ASTRA-Frutiger-Standard/standard and ASTRA-Frutiger-Autobahn/autoroute.

Frutiger Next

The Frutiger family was updated in 1997 for signage at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The new version, Frutiger Next, changed a number of details and added a true italic style in place of the oblique roman of the original.

Frutiger Next was commercially available in 2000 under Linotype. The family include six font weights, with a bonus Ultra Light weight in the OpenType version. It supports ISO Adobe 2, Adobe CE, and Latin Extended characters. OpenType features include small caps, old style figures, superscript and subscript, ordinals, proportional lining figures, and case forms. Font names are no longer numbered with the Frutiger system. Frutiger Black was renamed to Frutiger Next Heavy, and Frutiger Ultra Black was changed to Frutiger Next Black. Condensed fonts no longer include italic variants. In addition to italic type, characters such as the cent sign (¢), the copyright symbol (©), the ampersand (&), the at sign (@), the sharp S (ß), Omega (Ω), and the integral symbol (∫) were redesigned. Cyrillic letters had not been produced until Frutiger Next W1G.

While Frutiger Next added considerably to Frutiger's feature set, it added a modish true italic (not drawn by Frutiger) instead of the sharper oblique Frutiger preferred throughout his career. In his autobiography, Frutiger commented that in resigning himself to it "Maybe I was too soft to say what I really felt...I didn't have the strength and patience anymore."

Frutiger Next Greek (2005)

This is a variant of Frutiger Next designed with Eva Masoura for Linotype, originally published as a TDC2 2006 entry.

Frutiger Next W1G (2009)

This is an expanded version of Frutiger Next W1G. It added Greek (from Frutiger Next Greek) and Cyrillic character sets, but advertised OpenType features were reduced to superscript and subscript. Only an OpenType version has been produced.

Frutiger Arabic (2007)

This is a font family designed by Lebanese designer Nadine Chahine as a companion to Frutiger in consultation with Adrian Frutiger. It is based on the Kufic style, but incorporates aspects of Ruqʿah script and Naskh in the letter form designs, resulting in what Linotype called "humanist Kufi". The fonts consist of Basic Latin and ISO-Latin characters derived from the original Frutiger family, with Arabic characters supporting presentation forms A and B. Four font weights were produced.

Frutiger Serif (2008)

This is a serif font family designed by Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi. It is a re-envisioning of the metal type version of Meridien, a typeface first released by Deberny & Peignot during the 1950s.

The family consists of roman and italic fonts in five weights and two widths each.

Neue Frutiger (2009)

This is an expanded version of the original Frutiger family designed by Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi. Unlike the original family, the Frutiger numbering scheme is not used.

Initial release of the family has twenty fonts in ten weights and one width, with a complimentary oblique. It supports ISO Adobe, Adobe CE, and Latin Extended characters. OpenType features include subscript and superscript.

Neue Frutiger Condensed (2010)

On April 7, 2010, Monotype Imaging Holdings announced condensed versions of the Neue Frutiger fonts. Designed by Akira Kobayashi, the expansion of the family includes twenty fonts in the same weight and style combination as the original release, in OpenType Pro font format.

Neue Frutiger W1G (2011)

This version supports Greek and Cyrillic characters.

The family includes forty fonts in ten weights and two widths, with a complimentary oblique.

Neue Frutiger 1450 (2013)

It is a version of Neue Frutiger compliant with the German standard DIN 1450, designed by Akira Kobayashi.

The family includes eight fonts, in four weights (book, regular, medium, bold) and one width, with a complimentary oblique.

OpenType features include denominator/numerator, fractions, ligatures, localized forms, ordinals, proportional figures, subscript/superscript, scientific inferiors, stylistic alternates (two sets), ornaments, kerning.

Similar types

Adobe's Myriad and Microsoft's Segoe UI are two prominent typefaces whose similarities to Frutiger have aroused controversy. Frutiger described Myriad as 'not badly done' but said that the similarities had gone 'a little too far'. However, in an interview, Adrian Frutiger commended the work of Myriad's designer, Robert Slimbach: "except the unnecessary doubt concerning Myriad, his work is also very good." Additionally, the Italic style of Myriad is cursive, while the original version of Frutiger uses a slanted Roman style rather than a true Italic.

In the 1970s, Frutiger designed Icone, a wedge-serif design with mild stroke modulation, which has many similarities in basic letter structure to Frutiger, and in overall effect to Albertus.

Awards

Frutiger Next won the bukva:raz! competition in the Latin category.

Frutiger Next Greek won the TDC2 2006 award under the Type System / Superfamily category.

Use in branding

The Frutiger font is used as an official typeface by many institutions around the world. A number of these are listed here.

Universities and colleges

Central Washington University uses Frutiger as its official typeface, along with Hoefler Text.

Claremont McKenna College uses Frutiger as its official typeface, along with Janson.

Cornell University uses Frutiger as its secondary typeface, along with Palatino.

Emmanuel College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with its sister Dartmouth and Lowell (but not Boston), use Frutiger as their official typeface, along with Sabon.

The German Karlsruhe Institute of Technology uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

Halton Healthcare, a hospital corporation in Ontario, Canada, uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

The London School of Economics service uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

The NYSED uses Frutiger heavily on its state mathematics tests.

Ohio University uses Frutiger as its official typeface, along with Galliard.

Temple University uses Frutiger as its official typeface, along with Goudy (and Garamond for body text correspondence).

The University of Iceland uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

The University of Lausanne uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

Heriot-Watt University uses Frutiger as one of its official typefaces, along with Garamond.

The University of Miami uses Frutiger (Linotype) as its primary sans-serif typeface.

The University of Southern California uses Frutiger as its official typeface, along with Caslon 540.

Xavier University uses Frutiger as its official typeface, along with Bembo.

Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad uses Frutiger as its official typeface, along with Bembo.

National University of Singapore uses Frutiger as its primary typeface, with Times New Roman as its secondary.

California Institute of Technology uses Frutiger as one of its two "primary fonts," along with Adobe Garamond.

The University of Southern Denmark uses Frutiger as its secondary typeface, with Trajan as its primary.

The State University of New York at Buffalo used Frutiger in its logo and as an official typeface until 2016.

Utrecht University uses this font in official communication, along with Bembo.

Companies and organizations

Alcatel-Lucent used Frutiger in its logo.

Amtrak uses Frutiger for signage and as a display type in printed documents, as well as for numbering on some of its fleet.

Aviva uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

Bandai Namco uses Frutiger in its logo.

The British Army uses Arial for internally produced documents, but Frutiger for external publications, especially recruiting materials.

CDI Corporation uses Frutiger as its official typeface, according to the CDI Identity Guide.

CareFusion uses Frutiger as part of its logotype carefusion.com

The Citizens Advice service uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

CityRail (Rail operator in Sydney, Australia) uses Frutiger for railway station signs in Sydney and across their network, however it is now being superseded after the city's transport network rebranding.

Connexions in the UK uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

The Empresa Brasil de Comunicação the Brazilian government-owned corporation, uses this font for all of its logos.

The ETAS Group uses Frutiger LT as its official typeface.

Gecina, a real estate investment trust, uses Frutiger in its logo.

Halton Healthcare, a healthcare organization in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, uses Frutiger as its principal font, excluding its logo.

The Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Hong Kong uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

Kieser Training AG and Kieser Training Australia use Frutiger as their official typeface.

The British band Muse use Frutiger in their band logo.

England's National Health Service uses Frutiger as its standard typeface. Frutiger was also used by the British Department of Social Security/Department for Work & Pensions for many years.

Nederlandse Spoorwegen uses Frutiger on their signs, rolling stock and most printed publications.

Northwest Airlines used Frutiger in their final logo before their merger with Delta Air Lines.

Much of the advertising and collateral for Old National Bank uses Frutiger.

The Panda Express logo is typeset in Frutiger.

Polaroid used a slightly modified Frutiger in its logo.

Rotary International uses Frutiger as its official primary font.

Schindler Group uses Frutiger as part of its brand. The company name is in Frutiger in the official website.

SS Great Britain uses Frutiger as its official sans-serif based typeface, along with Trajan.

TVC, a Russian television channel now known as "TV Center", used Frutiger as one of its primary fonts (the second being Futura) in 2002-2006.

URENCO Group, a nuclear fuel company operating several uranium enrichment plants in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, uses Frutiger as its official typeface for all marketing materials.

UBS, a Swiss financial services company.

The UK Scout Association uses Frutiger as its primary font for body text.

Other uses

Bay Area Rapid Transit, a rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area, uses Frutiger for all signage.

The Dutch emergency services use Frutiger for their vehicle striping.

The Finnish Defence Forces uses Frutiger as its official typeface.

The US National Park Service uses Frutiger as one of two fonts across the entire agency.

Schiphol Airport uses Frutiger for all signage.

The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung uses Frutiger wherever possible for all printed matter.

Zarząd Transportu Miejskiego, the transport authority in Warsaw, Poland uses Frutiger since the 2014 information system change caused by launching the second metro line

The majority of PlayStation 2 games in the PAL region use this font on the spine of the keep case, unlike other regions which generally use the game's logo. It should be noted that the serial number at the bottom of the spine is however in Univers.

Michael Bierut commented on its common use in signs where a highly readable but friendly font is required: "Frutiger has been used so much for signage programs in hospitals and airports that seeing it now makes me feel that I'm about to get diagnosed with a brain tumor or miss the 7:00 to O'Hare."

Other 'Frutiger' fonts

A number of other designs by Frutiger carry his name without having any connection to the Frutiger typeface itself. They are listed here for reference.

Frutiger Stones (1998)

This is a family of casual fonts inspired by natural elements. Using polished pebbles as the boundary, the family consists of regular, positive, and negative fonts. Frutiger Stones Positive is Regular without the stone outline, while Negative is a reverse fill of the Regular.

Frutiger Symbols (1998)

This is a family of symbol fonts. The fonts contain plants, animals, and stars, as well as religious and mythological symbols. The naming convention follows Frutiger Stones.

Frutiger Capitalis (2005)

This is a family of casual fonts that consists of regular, outline, and signs fonts. Frutiger Capitalis Outline is the outline version of Frutiger Capitalis Regular. Frutiger Capitalis contains ornamental glyphs of religions, hand signs, and astrological signs.