Swiss font legend Adrian Frutiger dies

The internationally renowned Bernese designer who created the famous Univers typeface passed away on September 12 in Bern at the age of 87.  He was one of the few typographers whose worked with hot metal, photographic and digital typesetting during his long career. Besides his well-known Univers family of sans serif typefaces, Frutiger designed over 50 other fonts like Roissy, Avenir, Centennial, Egyptienne, Glyphia, Seifa and Versailles. He was also the man behind OCR-B, the standard alphabet for optical character recognition.  In Switzerland, he is best known for ASTRA-Frutiger that has been used for Swiss road signs since 2003. ASTRA-Frutiger was designed to give the eye a better hold and be clear and highly legible at a distance or using small text sizes. His skills were not just limited to road users. Air and rail travellers also benefitted from his genius for combining legibility with style. The Frutiger typeface welcomes visitors to the Charles de Gaulle ...