There is little doubt that this is the one. Arguably the most impor­tant type-​related book of the decade has been released: Adrian Frutiger - Type­faces. The Com­plete Works.


Many people asso­ciate Adrian Frutiger with Univers, the type­face that made him inter­na­tion­ally known towards the end of the nineteen-​fifties. Today one encoun­ters his type­faces daily and on a global scale – in print media, on deposit slips, in adver­tis­ing, on pack­ag­ing, on TV, on the inter­net and in public spaces. But even though much has already been writ­ten about the Swiss type designer and he him­self also pub­lished reg­u­larly, his com­plete work is still not suf­fi­ciently known. Even experts have an incom­plete knowl­edge regard­ing his cre­ation of typefaces.

The book Adrian Frutiger - Type­faces. The Com­plete Works is based upon a close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Adrian Frutiger. In it one can find for the first time a com­plete and detailed essay on the design of type­faces and logos, includ­ing so-​far unpub­lished or never-​realised type­faces – from the design phase through the final draft­ing process to its real­i­sa­tion, from the idea to the mar­ket­ing stage. The more than 50 type­faces and type designs are pre­sented, explained and exam­ined in chrono­log­i­cal order on more than 460 richly illus­trated pages.

Each type­face is crit­i­cally assessed in inter­views with Adrian Frutiger and placed within its con­text. These con­ver­sa­tions are the basis for the main part of the book, besides the exten­sive research in spe­cialised mag­a­zines, archives, libraries, muse­ums and col­lec­tions of sev­eral coun­tries. Short, tech­ni­cal expla­na­tions offer back­ground infor­ma­tion on the rela­tion­ship between the design and pro­duc­tion of typefaces.

The con­cept of the book is aimed at an audi­ence spe­cialised in visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion, type­face design, typog­ra­phy, graph­ics, adver­tise­ment, print pro­duc­tion and architecture/signage – as well as the fields of type research and design at high schools and uni­ver­si­ties. The large selec­tion of type­faces on per­sonal com­put­ers also makes Adrian Frutiger’s accom­plish­ments in type avail­able to a wider audi­ence. An exam­i­na­tion of Adrian Frutiger’s type­faces there­fore is also an increas­ingly impor­tant topic for an inter­ested lay audi­ence. In its com­plete­ness, objec­tiv­ity, pre­ci­sion, diver­sity of illus­tra­tions and authen­tic­ity this book will doubtlessly become a stan­dard in the field of typo­graphic spe­cial­ist literature.

The book fea­tures intro­duc­tions by Kurt Wei­de­mann and Adrian Frutiger him­self. And the Table of Con­tents looks fin­ger­lick­ing good (see below). In between sec­tions there are chap­ters on the Pro­duc­tion of type and Logos and word­marks by Frutiger. The main con­tent ends with a Syn­op­sis of Frutiger-​Typefaces.

• Adrian Frutiger’s teach­ers and mentors
• Président
• Delta
• Phoe­bus
• Element-​Grotesk
• Fed­er­duk­tus
• Ondine
• Méridien
• Caractères Lumitype
• Univers
• Egyp­ti­enne F
• Opéra
• Alpha­bet Orly
• Apollo
• Alpha­bet Entre­prise Fran­cis Bouygues
• Con­corde
• Serifen-Grotesk/Gespannte Grotesk
• Alpha­bet Algol
• Serifa
• OCR
• Univers IBM Composer
• Alpha­bet EDF-​GDF
• Kat­a­log
• Devanagari/Tamil
• Alpha BP
• Doc­u­menta
• Alpha­bet Facom
• Alpha­bet Roissy
• Alpha­bet Brancher
• Iridium
• Alpha­bet Métro
• Alpha­bet Centre Georges Pompidou
• Frutiger
• Glypha
• Icone
• Breughel
• Dolmen
• Tie­mann
• Ver­sailles
• Lino­type Centennial
• Avenir
• West­side
• Vec­tora
• Lino­type Didot
• Her­cu­lanum
• Shi­seido
• Frutiger Capitalis
• Pom­pei­jana
• Rus­ti­cana
• Frutiger Stones/Frutiger Symbols
• Frutiger Neonscript
• Nami

Adrian Frutiger - Type­faces. The Com­plete Works
Hei­drun Osterer, Philipp Stamm, Schweiz­erische Stiftung Schrift (Eds.)
462 pp. 430 colour, 620 b/w ills.
24,5 x 31,0 cm, cloth­bound
ISBN 978-3-7643-8581-1 Eng­lish
ISBN 978-3-7643-8582-8 French
ISBN 978-3-7643-8576-7 German
© Birkhäuser

Tags: Adrian Frutiger, book, The Complete Works, Typefaces