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Adrian Frutiger has died

swissinfo.ch

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Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#11

Post by jeswin »

dublinben wrote: post #4
pavlov wrote: post #3

The article mentions Univers as his best known typeface. Although that is probably true historically, I think many HN readers would be much more familiar with Avenir. Avenir ships with OS X and iOS, and is widely used for startup landing pages, among a million other things (Avenir seems to be somehow very close to the 2010s zeitgeist). Posted yesterday was this beautiful product site, of course set in Avenir: http://…

> http://www.notion.so/ I love more than anything else, sites that treat me as a second-class citizen for using a non-proprietary browser. They must have so many users already, that they don't mind alienating a large portion of their audience.

The reason they probably had to do this was because contentEditable works differently in each browser, and probably even between versions. I've tried to make a similar component earlier, and it was a frustrating experience. Pretty sure they'd have supported all browsers if it was just about typical HTML and CSS.

If this is true (I don't know), we should blame the lack of standardization instead.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#13

Post by pavlov »

davidw wrote: post #10

It's interesting to compare typefaces of road signs across Europe. Frutiger is pretty nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_(typeface) I like (am used to?) the Italian one too: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_Normale (derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface) ) I don't much care for the Austrian/German ones though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451 - apparently it was designed…

Hey, don't hate on DIN :)

For a font designed in 1931, it's impressively timeless. It doesn't seem to communicate any particular era or emotion, so it suits almost anything especially in digital form.

Both Google's Roboto and Apple's new San Francisco display fonts seem heavily inspired by DIN (just IMHO of course).

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#14

Post by akamaka »

e15ctr0n wrote: post #9

Frutiger's personality and work are sensitively depicted in two documentaries that are worth watching: "Adrian Frutiger - Typographer" (1999) [0] and "The Man of Black and White: Adrian Frutiger" (2005) [1]. "Just My Type", Simon Garfield's wildly popular book on typefaces, has a chapter titled "What is it about the Swiss?" which has a whole section dedicated to Frutiger. [2] Frutiger's design philosophy is beautiful…

Thanks for sharing that quote!

It summarizes exactly what I've felt since I first encountered his fonts, which is that they have an amazing "neutralness" to them. The Avenir font started with Futura and smoothed out its distinctive quirks. I sometimes have to look closely before being sure a font is really Avenir, just because it lacks any imperfections that might betray it as something similar, like Gotham.

His fonts might never be as famous as others because their distinctive characteristic is how impeccably unobstrustive they are.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#15

Post by MrJagil »

e15ctr0n wrote: post #9

Frutiger's personality and work are sensitively depicted in two documentaries that are worth watching: "Adrian Frutiger - Typographer" (1999) [0] and "The Man of Black and White: Adrian Frutiger" (2005) [1]. "Just My Type", Simon Garfield's wildly popular book on typefaces, has a chapter titled "What is it about the Swiss?" which has a whole section dedicated to Frutiger. [2] Frutiger's design philosophy is beautiful…

Do you know where to find them? Preferably free, if they're on an archive somewhere or similar. They seem to be in german as well, am I correct in this?

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#16

Post by MrJagil »

davidw wrote: post #10

It's interesting to compare typefaces of road signs across Europe. Frutiger is pretty nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_(typeface) I like (am used to?) the Italian one too: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_Normale (derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface) ) I don't much care for the Austrian/German ones though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451 - apparently it was designed…

"Via", used on danish railways, is somewhat famous for it's iconic lowercase "g", saving space on signs which usually don't have much vertical height: http://typedesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Kontrapunkt_D...

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#17

Post by hobo_mark »

BorisMelnik wrote: post #12

very sad to hear - he at least achieved the status where people all over the world are going to miss and remember him

Exactly, and yet people look at me weird when I express that being remembered is a worthy pursuit of one's existence, and that the enjoyment of solitary creation is comparable to that of hanging out having some more socially accepted form of 'fun'

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#18

Post by irl_zebra »

The article states that some of his fonts are highly legible at distances and thus used for some road signs. I'm curious, is there an objective way to determine whether one font is more legible than another, or is it purely subjective? Obviously some fonts are clearly more legible than others, but between the "legible fonts," can one say objectively that one is more legible than another? Can a computer create a font that is the "most" objectively legible?

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#19

Post by thegeomaster »

davidw wrote: post #10

It's interesting to compare typefaces of road signs across Europe. Frutiger is pretty nice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_(typeface) I like (am used to?) the Italian one too: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_Normale (derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface) ) I don't much care for the Austrian/German ones though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451 - apparently it was designed…

Actually, DIN looks pretty well IMO. Its unusual x-height means it's not suited for all uses (I don't think it would really work for body copy), but every now and then I see it used on some sites and it looks surprisingly good. I think genius.com uses it for song titles.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#20

Post by manachar »

irl_zebra wrote: post #18

The article states that some of his fonts are highly legible at distances and thus used for some road signs. I'm curious, is there an objective way to determine whether one font is more legible than another, or is it purely subjective? Obviously some fonts are clearly more legible than others, but between the "legible fonts," can one say objectively that one is more legible than another? Can a computer create a font…

It can, and is objectively measured and tested.

Here is a great article in the NY Times magazine about the creation of a new font, Clearview, for highway signage: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html?pa...

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