Uniqu Univers

Univers is a very unique font for many reasons. It was one of the first typefaces to have a consistent group with similar designs. The font provides different weights and has variety, and uses numbers to be designated rather than names. There are 16 different weights, positions, and width combinations the “@” sign isn’t rescaled by width in this font.

Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger, born in 1928, is a 20^th century Swiss Graphic Designer. Although he was interested in sculpting since he was young, his forte was typeface designing. Frutiger designed many typefaces including Ondine, Meridien, and Président. He also invented scripts, defying the formal cursive penmanship and taught at Swiss schools.  He recreated the Univers typeface in a font that was variant. Not only was he successful with his work at the young age of 16, apprenticing as a Compositor to the printer Otto Schaerffli for four years, but also was commissioned. The French airport authority commissioned him because of his successful modern typeface. In 1952, at Deberny and Peignot, he went to Paris and worked as a typeface designer and artistic manager. His font is very well-known and Frutiger has given numerous seminars all around the world. Some of the awards he has received throughout his career include the Gutenberg Prize, Medal of the Type Directors Club, Typography Award from SOTA, Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and Grand Prix National des Arts Graphiques. Frutiger is still doing work to this day, in 2008 he collaborated on a reworked version of his font Meridien, and was released by Linotype named Frutiger Serif in honor of him turning 80 years old

Typographic

Jan Tschihold

Jenna Hammond

Andrea Herstowski

VISC 202

26 August 2015

Jan Tschichold

            Jan Tschichold, a German typographer and author played a great role in developing 20^th century graphic design and typography. His work shows attention to detail and also has a great emphasis on lasting communication. Jan is one of the most defining voices because of his strong ideological stances. Not only was he trained as a designer, but a calligrapher at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts and Book production from 1919 to 1921. Two years later he was hired at a printing firm drawing exact page layouts to be executed by typesetters.

Jan later became a professor at a technical college for German printers in Berlin, which was headed by Paul Renner. While he lived in Berlin, he also fled to Switzerland to become a book designer after being arrested by Nazis. Starting from 1947 to 1949 he was the typographic designer for the well-known Penguin Books in London, designing over 500 title pages and specified how future typography for the series paperbacks. He also designed many books for both Swiss and German Publishers and his work and writings helped spread modernist graphic designs in many areas around the world.

Jan’s work was made to represent the rationalism of the modern age, to be functional, and of course to be aesthetically pleasing. While Tschichold was well known for typography he strongly advocated the beauty of the fonts Sans Serif and organized design 20 years before it took off.  He was greatly inspired by one of the first fonts of Rudolf Kach, Maximillian Grotesk, a very dark German font. Jan Tschichold was a very inspirational designer, giving many talks around the world and winning many awards and recognition.