You may remember my post last week about the man who didn't design helvetica, and the subsequent discussion about the typeface used on the award that he's holding.
That award was made in Boston in summer 2006 and Mark Simonson was asked to say some words in praise of Adrian Frutiger at the presentation. Mark explained how he first became interested in design and typography after preparing his high school newspaper and discovering that there was a typeface kicking around that was clean and sharp.
And how this led on to discovering that, although they were very similar in appearance, there were significant differences between Helvetica and Univers.
That Univers had been designed by Adrian Frutiger, and how he subsequently discovered Frutiger's book Type Sign Symbol.
It's a brilliant tribute to the man and his achievements and, if you ever wonder why designers can get so steamed up about whether you should use this or that particular typeface, I recommend that you read it. Mark's description of the event can be seen here, and the talk itself (which is in PDF format) can be downloaded from here.
Great entry, that PDF made my day!
While you're on the subject, a few weeks ago you said "...Univers is my favourite font, simply because it makes you work so hard to achieve elegance."
I was wondering what you meant by this, because I've heard similar things before but have never been sure what to make of it.
I've used Univers really only a handful of times, so I can only makes guesses as to its difficulty. (Unusual standard kerning? Difficult to read in body copy? I'm out of ideas!)
Posted by: Kevin McCauley | 10 July 2007 at 03:47 AM