The original Frutiger font family comprising 9 font styles with a West European character set, in OpenType Std, TrueType or PostScript formats for immediate download, order above. Click here to order the 14 style Frutiger Complete Family Pack including 5 Condensed fonts.
 Single Frutiger fonts for immediate download are also available individually as follows:
Other versions of Frutiger available:
- Frutiger Pro font family, contains CE language support and additional OT features
- Frutiger Com font family, enhanced screen quality TTF flavoured OT fonts with CE language support
- Frutiger Next, redesigned Platinum version of Frutiger; the Frutiger Next W1G fonts include Greek and Cyrillic glyphs
- Neue Frutiger font family, revised and improved versions of Frutiger released in 2009
- Frutiger Central European (CE) font family in PostScript and TrueType format only
- Frutiger Arabic font family in OpenType format
Frutiger: a short history of the world's most celebrated font
In 1968, renowned Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger was commissioned to develop a sign and directional system for the new Airport Roissy, later named Charles de Gaulle Airport, in Paris. The font was bolder than original typesetting fonts in order to offer better legibility for the light boxes of the signage system. Adrian Frutiger worked carefully on the letterforms so that characters and words could be recognized even in poor light conditions or when the reader was moving quickly past the sign. He tested with unfocused letters to see which letterforms could still be identified.
The font was named Roissy after the airport. Dr. Greisner, managing director of D. Stempel AG, asked Adrian Frutiger if Stempel could make this typeface available for the Linotype typesetting machines. After slight modifications in stroke thickness, the first Frutiger font weights were produced in 1977. Over time the Frutiger typeface family grew and today consists of 14 styles.
Adrian Frutiger drew each weight by hand, a necessity before the age of computers. The difference in letter spacing can be seen when comparing the Frutiger® 45 light font to the Frutiger 55 Roman font. Linotype and Adrian Frutiger later decided to redesign the Frutiger family for the new Platinum Series, as they had done previously with Linotype Univers®. The typeface family with its more harmonized weights is now available as Frutiger Next. The italic weights have been reworked into a truer italic form than the original oblique versions.
2009’s Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this “New Frutiger” still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence.
Explanation of the Frutiger font numbering system
Adrian Frutiger developed a two digit system to differentiate the weights of his first large typeface family, Univers. The base of the system was 55, the centre of a roman upright font. The first digit of the classification expressed the thickness of the weights, for example, 4 is light, 5 is regular, and 9 is black. The second digit describes the type of weight, for example, 6 is italic, 7 is condensed.
Frutiger™ is a trademark of Linotype Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain other jurisdictions in the name of Linotype Corp. or its licensee Linotype GmbH.
|
