Adrian Frutiger, the designer of Vectora, believes firmly that the functionality of a font stands hand in hand with its aesthetic characteristics: without one, there cannot be the other. Born in Switzerland in 1928 and encouraged to go into the world of type from an early age by his high school teachers and father (rather than sculpture, which was seen as a much less reliable form of creative expression, at least financially), Frutiger has changed the world of typeface design from the inside out.

In his early work, Frutiger was employed to rekindle older, metal typefaces, bringing them out of the press and into the newer, graphic format. When it came time to create a “Grotesk” style typeface however, Frutiger had his own ideas. Consequently, the Univers® typeface was born and from it came various others, including the Glypha® and Serifa® font families.

Vectora was designed as a need arose to find a suitable contemporary sans-serif typeface for use in very tiny circumstances. With its open counterspaces, exaggerated x-heights and very balanced lines, Vectora fulfilled that purpose perfectly. It is still a humanist font face, however, having retained some calligraphically inspired styling, which can be seen on the glyphs and the adjoining strokes.

References
Linotype: Vectora Font Family
Typedia: Vectora
Identifont: Vectora
Linotype: Font Designer – Adrian Frutiger
Dasauge: Adrian Frutiger
Thinking for a Living: Adrian Frutiger - Typefaces

In any situation requiring small lettering, Vectora is an elegant, modern choice. It retains a certain character even at very little sizes, which is refreshing in an arena where choice of style is often restricted by the miniature nature of the work. In his creation of the font, Frutiger was inspired greatly by the early twentieth century typefaces designed by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders, including Franklin Gothic and News Gothic.

Newspapers, magazines and certain books have all made very good use of Vectora for their layouts. But they are not the only ones: Vectora has progressively made its way into logotype as well. With its unusually tall quality, the font has a certain presence which at times lends itself well to corporate branding.