Frutiger, named after its Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger (born 1928), is a typeface, belonging to the sans-serif family. It was designed in 1976 to fulfill the need for a completely new design to replace Frutiger's Univers, released in 1957.

Originally designed to be used for signage at the Charles De Gaulle International Airport in Paris, it was soon adopted by designers for use in print and advertising also, having more character than the ubiquitous Univers and Helvetica.

Frutiger is considered one of the classics of modern typography and forms the basis of many other modern typefaces, such as Bitstream Vera and Verdana. It is currently used for its new corporate identity by the UK National Health Service.

In the Bitstream font collection, Frutiger is part of the Humanist sans-serif classification. The specific equivalent to the Frutiger family is Humanist 777.

Linotype, the type foundry which originally released Frutiger in 1976, developed a revised version named Frutiger NEXT in 1999, the letterforms for the italic faces having been dramatically reworked.

In 2003, the Swiss authorities decided to replace all traffic signs in Switzerland (which used to use the VSS font) with a variant of Frutiger known as ASTRA-Frutiger. All new signs will be in Frutiger and old signs will take around a decade to be completely replaced with Frutiger signs. The reason for this is that Frutiger is considered far more legible than the previous font, which was introduced in the 1960s and 1970s.

Switzerland, being home to Frutiger, uses the font very frequently. Swisscom uses it (although not for its logo), as does the Swiss Post .

Frutiger is also used by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Takeoffs on Frutiger

Myriad is a take-off on Frutiger which some argue is even easier to read. Apple Computer uses Myriad as its new corporate font, after having used a condensed version of Garamond for many years (see also: Apple typography). Adobe also uses Myriad as a font, although it is in a condensed version.

Sample

The following paragraph is in Frutiger, or Bitstream Humanist 777 if one of them is installed on your machine. If not, a monospace font is used:

Related articles

• Univers
• Typography