1986 Adrian Frutiger

Born in Unterseen in 1928 and deceased in Bremgarten near Bern in 2015, the typeface designer Adrian Frutiger is one of the leading creators of Swiss typography. After completing his apprenticeship as typesetter at the Interlakner book and printing press Otto Schlaefli (today publisher Schlaefli & Maurer AG) and studying at the Zurich School of Applied Arts, he worked as a graphic designer. In 1962, he founded together with Bruno Pfäffli and André Gürtler his own graphic studio in Arcueil Paris. As a part time he taught at the École Estienne and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. Frutiger designed numerous typefaces, including the sans serif "Linear Antiqua Univers" and the "Roissy", which was designed for Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. Especially the "OCR-B", designed in 1968 and optimized for machine readability, made him one of the most important font designers of our time.
His book "Signs and symbols" (1978) is still considered a standard work on the theory of signs and has been translated into seven languages. Since 2003, the "ASTRA-Frutiger Standard" and the "ASTRA-Frutiger Autobahn" have been decorating the traffic signs in Switzerland. In addition to numerous honors and awards, the "font artist" received the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz and the International Gutenberg Society in 1986 for his graphic design.