Thursday, November 11, 2010

Price-Frutiger

The designer Adrian Frutiger created the typeface Frutiger. Born and raised in Switzerland, his early interest in sculpture was discouraged buy his father, but has influenced his typeface design overall. He primarily studied calligraphy and was recruited by Charles Peignot, of the Paris foundry Deberny Et Peignot where he crated his first commercial typefaces beginning in 1954, President, Ondine, and Meridian. In 1956, he created his first slab serifs, Egyptienne, then the popular Univers.
Due to the popularity of Univers The French public transit authority asked Adrian Frutiger to commissioned for the signage in the French, Charles de Gaulle International Airport in 1968. The Swiss designer wanted a typeface that was modern and legible at different angles, sizes and distances. He adapted a look that was clean like his own popular font Univers, but had more organic proportions like that of Gill Sans.
Frutiger designed the font and its various weights all by hand and the working title of the typeface was Roissy. Some of its features include prominent ascenders and descenders, as well as a wide aperture to easily distinguish the letters from each other. The D Stempel AG type foundry asked Frutiger to make the Roissy lettering a typeface for Linotype. He made adjustments to the stroke thickness and extended the range of weights and felt that his new sans-serif was an expression of the 1970’s and 80’s. The Roissy type was released by Linotype in 1977 as Frutiger.

My concept for the booklet, is going to be a travel guide, but not to interesting cities, but to random, boring towns, that do not have any real attractions. Or to cities that produce the most pollution. Because the type was designed for an airport signs, I thought a guide that you might find in an airport would be appropriate.

1 comment:

  1. Kristen, interesting approach to a tourist guide to boring cities. Could be quite humorous/satirical. Any particular countries? Areas of the world? Good research.

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