Frutiger®
By Linotype
Though everyone thought he would want to use his successful
In 1976, he expanded and completed the family for D. Stempel AG in conjunction with Linotype, and it was named Frutiger.
The Frutiger™ family is neither strictly geometric nor humanistic in construction; its forms are designed so that each individual character is quickly and easily recognized. Such distinctness makes it good for signage and display work. Although it was originally intended for the large scale of an airport, the full family has a warmth and subtlety that have, in recent years, made it popular for the smaller scale of body text in magazines and booklets.
The family has 14 weights and 14 companion fonts with Central European characters and accents. Another 14 Cyrillic companion fonts are available as well.
See also the new revised version
Frutiger was originally contacted in 1968 by representatives of France’s Charles De Gaulle Airport to create a typeface for use both in and outdoors. Seven years later, Frutiger – then called Roissy – was completed and applied throughout the recently opened airport.
Frutiger set off to develop a typeface that combined the legibility of humanistic sans serif typefaces with the geometric lines of Univers. As a result, Frutiger’s namesake design is distinctive and ideal for a variety of uses. Given the intended application of airport signage, the Frutiger typeface family had to be legible from a large variety of distances and angles. The typeface was released to the public by the Germany-based Stempel typeface foundry in 1976. Frutiger has since been adopted by many corporations and governments for its modern yet warm look.
In addition to being used throughout the Charles De Gaulle Airport, Frutiger is used in the identity of brands such as the British Royal Navy, Telefónica O2, DHL and Raytheon. Passengers on California’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system may recognize Frutiger in use on signage and route maps.
Frutiger has been improved and re-released numerous times since its 1976 debut. Additional versions include Frutiger Next, Frutiger Arabic, Neue Frutiger, and Frutiger Greek variants.
Sans Serif
Condensed