![]() It may look familiar to people of a certain age as the font used for the “Mary Tyler Moore Show.” I don’t think it has aged well. (Now here is where I get to admit that I am a type snob, and the minute I saw the name “Peignot,” I thought, what, the creators of that font? The font named Peignot, which is not the one shown above, was designed in 1937 and enjoyed a resurgence in the 1970s. After training in Switzerland, where he was born, he settled in Paris and went to work for the type foundry Deberny and Peignot. The spoon and the letter are tools one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page… When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.”įrutiger seems to have developed this approach over time. As Frutiger himself put it, “If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. One is so busy absorbing the content of the message that the actual form of the message disappears. The designer’s name is now forever attached to the typeface used at Charles de Gaulle.įrutiger’s obituary in the New York Times on September 20 quotes Erik Spiekermann, a German type designer, who notes that the Frutiger typeface “doesn’t call attention to itself…it makes itself invisible, but physically it’s actually incredibly legible.” But not everything can turned into a picture (such as, apparently, an airport lounge, judging by the image above). Now, of course, more and more airports are signed in pictograms. But the ease of finding your plane and your duty-free Veuve Clicquot depends on clear signs. You will look for your gate and the shops and move on. The resultant typeface was originally titled, Roissy, though it was named after Frutiger in 1976, when it was released for public use.When you arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, one of the first things you will see is the work of a man who died on September 10 of this year: Adrian Frutiger, type designer. He took a different approach to the matter and altered the Univers typeface and fused it with organic influences of the Eric Gill’s Gill Sans typeface. Frutiger first decided to adapt Univers typeface but then relinquished the idea considering a little outdated. He was required to design a way-finding signage alphabet and in such way that is both legible from afar and from any angle. Upon the successful reception of this modern typeface, the French airport authority commissioned him yet again to work for the new Charles de Gaulle International Airport. It was a set of capitals and numbers designed for white-on-dark-blue backgrounds visible especially under poor lighting. Moreover, he recreated Univers typeface in a variant font. Egyptienne was one of those typefaces that had him commissioned for photocomposition.ĭuring early 1970s, upon the request of the public transport authority of Paris, Frutiger inspected the Paris Metro signage. In a few years, he designed slab-serif typefaces. Frutiger clearly demonstrated his ideas of letter construction, unity, and organic form in Méridien. The typefaces were inspired by Nicholas Jenson’s work. Then Méridien appeared the following year, illustrating a glyphic, old-style, serif text face. It was followed by Ondine, a calligraphic, informal, script face which translated as Wave in French. It was designed in a manner that showcased a set of titling capital letters with small, bracketed serifs. In 1954, Frutiger’s first commercial typeface Président was released. Upon witnessing his marvelous work, Charles Peignot assigned Frutiger to convert extant typefaces for the new Linotype equipment, phototypesetting. ![]() At the foundry, he designed various typefaces including Ondine, Méridien, and Président. His wood-engraved essay illustrations displayed his meticulous skills and knowledge of letterforms. Frutiger illustrated the essay, Schrift / Écriture / Lettering: the development of European letter types carved in wood, which earned him a job offer at the French foundry Deberny Et Peignot by Charles Peignot.
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