Adrian Frutiger Craftsman | Scholar | Typographer
A student project of a book and series of posters celebrating the life's work of the late Swiss typographer and designer Adrian Frutiger.
When choosing Adrian Frutiger: A life’s work for my ISTD brief I was faced a difficult challenge. For a man who defined 20th century typography and the visual lexicon we use today, it felt like an almost impossible task to portray him in a new light. Much of his typefaces and concepts have been already well explored and examined in great detail by leading scholars and biographers.
Thus one couldn’t solely explore this typefaces. Instead after searching for a narrative which would explore a more broad interpretation of his masterworks, it was decided to focus on his multifaceted career.
No man is solely just one thing ever in his life and the intention was to explore the other aspects in Frutiger’s life, which impacted on his work as a typographer. This led to initially expressing his life’s achievements as Adrian Frutiger: A man of many faces: Scholar, Craftsman, Typographer.
Frutiger relied on the craftsmanship which he had learned working as a type composer in a Swiss printers, and also from the rich and extensive tradition of Swiss printing history. This was instilled in him and provided a craft skill set which he would call upon throughout the rest of his career.
As well his interest in the development of western type, influenced his work from choosing the correct proportions to the underlying semiotics involved in type design.
Rather than demonstrating just his type designs, the aim was to express the underlying and defining set of rules and concepts which influence his typeface design process, and the link between Frutiger’s understanding of the history of typography, its craftsmanship and development, and how it was applied in his type design.
The core ethos behind the project was to show Adrian Frutiger as the multi-faceted man that he was. As a Craftsman, as a Scholar and as a typographer, and how all three influenced and informed one another to make Frutiger’s life’s legacy
