The Frutiger® typestyle epitomizes the notion of “modern classic.” The design dates back to 1968, when Adrian Frutiger received the commission to develop a typeface for wayfinding at the then-new Charles de Gaulle International Airport just outside Paris at Roissy, France. Frutiger's goal was to create a sans serif typeface with the rationality and clean lines of his Univers, softened by organic, almost calligraphic, nuances. His final seminal design permanently shifted how we look at sans serif type. The Frutiger typestyle is systematic without being rigid, distinctive without being mannered. It beautifully balances warmth with sophistication.
The typeface design was completed in 1975, and the new wayfinding signage using it went public at Charles de Gaulle Airport the same year, and released as fonts of metal type the following year. Since then, Frutiger has been translated into phototype and then digital fonts, in the process becoming one of the most popular typefaces for branding, advertising and corporate communication.
Over three decades later, in collaboration with Akira Kobayashi, Adrian Frutiger accepted the challenge of revitalizing and improving Frutiger’s range. In the process, he and Kobayashi also added five new weights to the family, enlarging it to a total of 20 designs, vastly widening its range of use and improving the gradation between designs in the series. These new designs, called “Neue Frutiger,” were released in mid-2009.
Now, Frutiger and Kobayshi have gotten together again to add condensed variants to the 20 original Neue Frutiger designs. Ranging from Ultra Light to Extra Black, they give the family even greater versatility.
The complete family is available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts, allowing graphic communicators to use this design while taking advantage of OpenType’s capabilities. OpenType Pro fonts, in addition to providing for the automatic insertion of ligatures and alternate characters, also offer an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. In the Neue Frutiger family, all weights except the Condensed designs have also been expanded to include the W1G character sets that allow the setting of Greek and Cyrillic.
The end result blends all that is best about the 1975 design with refinements and enhancements to make it a classic for the 21st century.