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Adrian Frutiger has died

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Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#31

Post by derefr »

pavlov wrote: post #13
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).

> "It doesn't seem to communicate any particular era or emotion"

I'm not wholly sure about that; the strict adherence to line thickness and limited set of curvature angles make me feel like it was adapted from the "font" created by necessity when using road-painting equipment to write asphalt road signs. It which lends the font a "we couldn't do better in one case so let's at least unify on something" feeling that's slightly modernist, similar to logos from the 70s that use unnecessary all-caps to look "digital" because they work with green-screens that don't display lower-case.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#32

Post by theoh »

derefr wrote: post #31
pavlov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> "It doesn't seem to communicate any particular era or emotion" I'm not wholly sure about that; the strict adherence to line thickness and limited set of curvature angles make me feel like it was adapted from the "font" created by necessity when using road-painting equipment to write asphalt road signs. It which lends the font a "we couldn't do better in one case so let's at least unify on something" feeling that's…

I can't give you chapter and verse on this, but when the first autobahns were built, they were composed of straight sections and constant curvature bends. This was perceived by engineers to be the rational way. Landscape designers (who were also involved) eventually convinced the engineers to adopt more sinuous curves, which of course also create transitions (clothoid or Cornu spiral sections) which made the roads easier to drive on.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#33

Post by ghaff »

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…

The US and a variety of other [EDIT: countries] use the FHWA Series fonts (aka Highway Gothic) which, in their original form, date to 1948.

Tobias Frere-Jones came up with a typeface called Interstate in 1990s that's quite similar but adapted for print and screen. It's a nice typeface. Red Hat released a FOSS variant called Overpass. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overpass_Fonts

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#34

Post by ghaff »

MrJagil wrote: post #15
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?

If you haven't seen it, there's also a documentary (in English) called Helvetica that isn't about Frutiger but certainly gets into a lot of discussion about the international typographic style more broadly.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#35

Post by amyjess »

quink wrote: post #30

Gill Sans and Zapf's Optima were the first big humanist fonts, but they are really best used sparsely. Zapf died earlier this year, by the way. But with Adrian Frutiger's Frutiger the whole world was blown open. Helvetica had a predecessor fairly like it in Akzidenz Grotesk, but Frutiger was something else entirely. Grotesques had been around for decades prior to Helvetica. Frutiger was a revolution. I and everybody…

> Zapf died earlier this year, by the way.

Somehow, I missed that news.

Damn, the world of typography lost two of its biggest visionaries this summer alone.

I always preferred Zapf's fonts to Frutiger's by a wide margin (I always favor serif fonts over sans serifs), but they were both brilliant men, and typography won't be the same without either.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#37

Post by pavlov »

derefr wrote: post #31
pavlov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> "It doesn't seem to communicate any particular era or emotion" I'm not wholly sure about that; the strict adherence to line thickness and limited set of curvature angles make me feel like it was adapted from the "font" created by necessity when using road-painting equipment to write asphalt road signs. It which lends the font a "we couldn't do better in one case so let's at least unify on something" feeling that's…

True, DIN certainly is a compromise. Of course the version we're accustomed to is never the 1931 standard committee's original take, but a digital modernization.

The de rigueur digital version is FF DIN by FontFont, which was released in 1995:

https://www.fontshop.com/families/ff-din

The changes made in this 1995 version are described thus:

"The shape of the new FF DIN differs from the original mostly by thinner horizontal strokes and by more fluent curves."

So, sounds like you're absolutely right -- line thickness and curvature were reworked to make the typeface more generally useful. (To my taste, all the weights of FF DIN look excellent on a high-dpi screen.)

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#39

Post by barrkel »

542458 wrote: post #5
dublinben wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> treat me as a second-class citizen I think you're being a little excessively hyperbolic. They don't support your browser yet and state as much - that's hardly malicious or demeaning to you. They also promise support is coming soon. It's a very early phase product that uses a lot of newer and less universal APIs. It's not that they have so many users that they don't care - rather, it's that they're still beta testin…

You only get one chance to make a first impression, etc.

I have a similar antipathy for Quora for requiring facebook logins to view their content (not actually theirs, their users' content) that came up during search results.

I believe they've now dropped the facebook login requirement, and I think they now show a lot of content from organic search traffic, but I plan on ignoring them anyway for as long as possible.

Re: Adrian Frutiger has died

#40

Post by theoh »

theoh wrote: post #32
derefr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It doesn't seem to communicate any particular era or emotion" I'm not wholly sure about that; the strict adherence to line thickness and limited set of curvature angles make me feel like it was adapted from the "font" created by necessity when using road-painting equipment to write asphalt road signs. It which lends the font a "we couldn't do better in one case so let's at least unify on something" feeling that's…

I can't give you chapter and verse on this, but when the first autobahns were built, they were composed of straight sections and constant curvature bends. This was perceived by engineers to be the rational way. Landscape designers (who were also involved) eventually convinced the engineers to adopt more sinuous curves, which of course also create transitions (clothoid or Cornu spiral sections) which made the roads ea…

Found a reference: Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Autobahn. p.130 onwards.
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