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FONT LOUNGE > FONT FEATURES > ADRIAN FRUTIGER – TRACES

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After a heart operation in 1994, AdrianFrutiger began work on his professionalmemoirs, covering fifty years of his life asa type designer.Adrian Frutiger sketched out the demandsof technology change, from the firstphototype of the 1950s to digital settingwith personal computers in 1990s.He always saw himself as "a child of histime" and, being one of the very fewtypeface designers who stood at thejunction of these various technologies, heconsidered it important to write an accountof "how it all went" for the followinggeneration.

Adrian Frutiger − Traces

Brief BiographyAdrian Frutiger was born in 1928 at Unterseen near Interlaken(Switzerland). After an apprenticeship as a compositor he made furthereducation in type and graphics at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts(Kunstgewerbeschule) from 1949 to 1951 (teacher: Alfred Willimannand Walter Käch).

Frutiger was called to Paris in 1952 and worked as typeface designerand artistic manager at Deberny & Peignot. He founded his own studioin Arcueil near Paris 1961, together with Bruno Pfäffli and AndréGürtler. Frutiger was Professor for ten years at the Ecole Estienne andeight years at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Frutiger’s work has concentrated mainly on the design of printing typesand signage systems, but he has also created free forms. The book"Forms and counterforms", published by Erich Alb of Syndor Press,presents this free forms in a single volume for the first time (Cham,Switzerland, ISBN 3-908257-07-7).

He has received several awards and honours: In 1986, the GutenbergPrize of the City of Mainz (Germany); 1987, Medal of the TypeDirectors Club of New York; 1993, Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et desLettres (Paris); 1993, Grand prix national des Arts Graphiques (France).

© 1999, Textes and photos by Syndor Press, Cham, Switzerland.Downloading allowed only subject to permission of Syndor Press.

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Wanderlust to the west


Home and AbroadInterlaken, my home, lies deep in a valley in the middle of the Bernese Alps.To the east, the valley opens up to the Lake of Brienz and to the west is theLake of Thun. Sunrise comes late, the air is cold, and I did not much like theearly mornings. In winter the valley is usually shrouded in mist. Climbing upinto the sunshine did not appeal to me as my days were filled with work,play and odd jobs; I never really enjoyed going to school.

My happiest time was the evening when it was still light. Almost every daythe mist disappeared to the westward. The valley beyond the Lake of Thundraws the gaze to the pre-Alps and climbing a little higher one can see thechain of the Jura mountains. I often used to ride my bicycle to the shore ofthe lake and I still remember the wonderful romantic feelings I had on thoseevenings. From an early age I was seized by a feeling for which I knew noname but I suppose it was a kind of Wanderlust. I longed for a distant,sunny land and for a metropolis where I could achieve something "big".Twenty years later I often thought that my childhood dream had beenfulfilled, in the evenings when I crossed the Place de la Vache-Noire wherewe had our studio in the south of Paris. In Chartres, too, standing in thegarden of our old farmhouse, I loved to watch the sun going down on the farhorizon of the cornfields.

But when the summer holiday time came I felt homesickness and had to goback to Switzerland. We often spent our holidays with the children in themountains of the Valais. There I could really put out of mind everything Ihad left behind in Paris.

"I spent my youth in a narrow valley amid the mountains.This gave me a longing for distance and broad horizons, which I laterfulfilled by moving to Paris."

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Paper cutout, Bernese Oberland

Ontine, Paris 1952


Black-and-WhiteAt this point I would like to draw attention to a matter which hasconcerned me for many years. In my homeland, the BerneseOberland, in the valleys of Saanen and Simmen (where the name ofFrutiger is common and I probably have my roots) a pictorial mannerof expression became familiar in the 19th century and has developedinto a flourishing craft: the making of paper cutouts or silhouettes.Among the peasant farmers there emerged a talent for cutting outscenes from their daily lives in fine black paper.

It is astonishing with what manual skill the horny hands of peasantswere able to cut out the minutest details with absolute precision ofform. I think it is possible that a deep-seated appreciation of black-and-white contrasts, achieved through the practice of cutouttechniques, was present in the genes of the Bernese people and wasinherited by myself. I have always felt a reluctance to use black inkas a medium, preferring whenever possible to scratch, cut or engravethe material.

Ondine was one of my first typefaces, designed at Deberny & Peignot.I produced the original drawings for this typeface by black papercutouts and pasting.

The black-white contrast soon came to play an important part in myprofessional life. I remember the fascination which I experienced onfirst seeing the sign of wisdom of the Tao Te Ching, the perfectrepresentation of duality with its black and white fish bladder signsunited within a circle.

I owe another realization to an engineer in Paris, who explained tome the binary calculating method of computers: one and zero, blackand white. For me, the black-and-white contrast conveys the absoluteconstruction of an image. Taking black away means adding white. Inthis way, the space between an R and an S becomes like a sculpturefor me.

"Alfred Williman’s theory was: Do not apply black but cover upwhite, so as to make the light of the white sheet active"

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"Hulliger Script" of the Thirties

My handwriting with thirteen

My handwriting with fifteen

Adrian Frutiger, 15 years old


HandwritingAt school we were taught joined-up writing in a standardstyle, introduced by an educationist named Hulliger andadopted for all German-Swiss schools and, in my view, a badstarting-point for at least two generations of youngsters.Hulliger was of German origin. His script was pointed andsloped, forcing the pupil’s hand into a constantly flowingmovement from lower left to upper right.

When I was fifteen, something in me must have led me torebel against this pointed, tedious up-and-down style. As Iwill tell later, I had come to heroworship the young person’swriter Ernst Eberhart. The letter which he wrote to invite meto his house was for me something to be guarded like a holyrelic. I wanted to be able to write in his hand. So I trimmedmy pen down to a broad nib and wrote my first specimens.The new handwriting was upright, its letters open and round.I also tried to imitate Eberhart’s beautiful, spirited capitalletters.

"I learned to write with pen and ink in the stiff ‘HulligerScript’ from the thirties. I found its zig-zag movementsunsympathetic and looked for a rounded, flowing form."

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Walter Käch, an expert working onrubbings

Rubbing by Walter Käch, Napoli

Poster by Walter Käch, 1927 (!)


Walter Käch’s type design classesWalter Käch was born in June 1901. After an apprenticeship as alithographer at Trüb Druck in Aarau he continued his education as agraphic designer at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) inZürich. There he was taught by Fritz H. Ehmcke, Rudolf von Larisch andAnna Simons, who were all briefly members of the Zürich School staffand influenced him with their creative ideas about letterforms. Otherimportant, though indirect, sources of influence were the EnglishmanEdward Johnston, who had taught Anna Simons, and Rudolf Koch, whowas himself influenced by the Viennese Larisch.

At the Zürich School, Walter Käch taught type design for thirty years toclasses of apprentices from all branches of the graphic industry, and alsoin preliminary classes. In addition, he designed posters for manyexhibitions.

Under his instruction, we made rubbings on stiff paper from Romaninscriptions at the Museum, so as to be able to make exactmeasurements of proportions and stroke formation. Discovering theperfection of form and measure filled us with enthusiasm. Käch urged usto apply the knowledge we had gained to contemporary typefaces.

An important fact was the assumption, which grew into a certainty, thatthe Roman stonemasons had first traced out their Capitalis monumentalison the stone with a broad brush. This was the only way in which theperfection of the swelling and diminishing of the curves could have beenachieved. The slightly oblique positioning of the brush led to the rule oflight upstrokes and heavy downstrokes, still followed today.

The Humanists (Dürer, Moyllus and others) tried to find geometricalprinciples of construction in the Capitals lettering of the ancient Romans.This may be an attractive theory but it is hardly the right approach to thematter. Freehand drawing and spontaneous forming have always been aprecondition of the visual arts and nobody but a layman could believethat it would be otherwise in type design. Countless pages have beenproduced by freehand calligraphy, with rhythm and form created byaesthetic competence. Commenting on Walter Käch’s type design classes,Werner Wälchli wrote:

"For educational reasons, lettering with the broad-nibbed pen came beforetype drawing. In the few preliminary exercises which comprised elementsof the first typeface, the correct penhold had to be observed and thevertical strokes had to show the required contrast with the horizontals.The pen was filled by means of a small stick in such a way that theunderside of the tip remained blank, giving a sharp and cleanending (...)"

Type drawing, for Käch, was not the construction of type with T-squareand compasses. A circle drawn with compasses was no letter O for himbut a technical drawing. (...) We first had to draw the capital letters O, Hand E with pencil on transparent paper. Drawing was by hand and eye,not with instruments, and corrections were made with a sharp scrapingknife. The inner area first had to be completed before the outerboundaries of the letter were undertaken. The inner form made the letteras the interior space makes the jug. Completed letters were assembledinto type images and in the final analysis it was the feeling for the rightwidth that mattered. In this way, each pupil came to create his ownalphabet. (...)

"Walter Käch was fascinated by Roman inscriptions. The build-upof these ‘capital’ letters provided the groundwork for the laws ofsans-serif design."

I did not always hold the same views as Käch. His world was that ofcalligraphy and he sometimes expressed the opinion that punchcuttershad "technicized" letterforms. One ground for disagreement was theconcept of rhythm in a type line. I tried to show, with the aid of anenlargement of Nicolas Jensen’s roman, that the interior spaces(counters) of the lower-case letters had the identical width of the spacesbetween the letters, which was easy to demonstrate in a Latin text withits many straight strokes. It seemed to me that Jenson, like Gutenberg,had taken the grid pattern of black letter as the basic structure. Kächdisagreed. Later on, I designed all my serif faces in accordance with thisconcept in order to avoid unevenness in the flow of reading.

Walter Käch’s work signifies a completely new point of departure formodern type design. With his intensive study of Roman Capitals and thecalligraphic development of minuscule letters, he created the basis uponwhich sanserif faces, the leading typeface category of the 20th century,could be further developed.

After its hesitant introduction in the 19th century, it was thanks to theefforts of the Bauhaus that sanserif became an expression of modernism,which marked it out for decades. A new chapter in the history of sansthen began in the Fifties.

The deep-seated humanity of Walter Käch as a man was one of thereasons why typographers like Emil Ruder on the one hand and typefacedesigners like myself on the other had the chance to learn the basics inhis classes and build new ideas on them.

Variations of stroke thickness gave the letters the familiarappearance of a roman. The basic characteristics of Univers wereestablished with Käch.

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Lumitype (Photon), the first fototypesettingmachine in Europe

Font disk Lumitype/Photon (Detail)

Studies for a Sanserif Type, Zürich 1950/51(teacher Walter Käch)

Original drawings for Univers, 1952, withoptical corrections for fototype setting

In the D & P studio: Ladislas Mandel(standing) draws the expanded version, beingexamined by Adrian Frutiger (seated). LucetteGirard is cutting preparatory letters


UniversThe Lumitype phototypesetter was designed above all for text setting.The first typefaces which had to be adapted for it were classic textfonts such as Garamond, Baskerville, Bodoni and so on. When it cameto the choice of a sanserif, Charles Peignot had no doubt that itshould be the foundry’s bestselling Europe, the company’s name forFutura.

In the course of our discussion on this subject I suggested that Ishould design a new sans family myself, and to my delight Peignotconsented.

In my student days at Zürich, under the instruction of Walter Käch, Ihad learned to design sanserif forms in accordance with the Didotmodel; my first attempts were made as early as 1951.

Because photosetting has much more economical methods of typefaceproduction than metal setting, the styles of a typeface family could befreed from the century-old triptych of Roman/Bold/Italic in favour ofa complete and consistently structured range comprising a multitudeof styles.

I set to work with enthusiasm to design a concept with manyvariants, all related within a logical system. The French name mondewas at first used for a compilation of specimens of different styles,from condensed to expanded and light to bold.

I considered the French terms maigre (light), demi-gras (semi-bold), étroit (condensed) and large (expanded) to be too imprecise,especially in view of the need to translate them into other languages.To call one and the same typeface semi-bold, demi-gras, halbfett andso on would have produced a Babel of linguistic confusion among themany versions. I therefore decided to adopt a neutral, universallycomprehensible numerical system, arranged in the form of a star. Inthe centre of the diagram of variants is the basic text type, whichwas given the number 55. Its neighbours to the left and right, theexpanded and the condensed, have the same stroke thickness. Thevarious weights are identified by the "tens" digits and the variouswidths and positions by the singles. final numbers which are odddenote upright versions and even numbers denote italics. Because thisprinciple was maintained for all thicknesses it was necessary to add aBold 80 for the expanded and a 30 for the condensed faces. Thus allversions are related to one another and derive their forms from onebasic form.

"Something that always fascinated me about sans-serif is thesimplicity of the typeface line, which compels the artist tomatch the innerform and letterspacing precisely."

This numerical system proved popular and has also been used forother typefaces. For example, the Linotype company asked myconsent to its use for the Neue Helvetica.

The definition MediumFor normal text faces in particular, the weight of the downstroke is avery important factor in determining the basic structure of a typeface.A kind of standard for this stroke weight already existed in theCarolingian minuscule and became fully established with the firsthumanistic romans. It is a quite specific ratio of black to white whichgives the x-height band of a typeset line a grey value which thereader finds to be "normal". These proportions are perceived withastonishing sensitivity. It often happened that a typefoundry had tosupplement an existing typeface with a "Book", "Medium" or "Heavy"version, which would be accepted in text setting as "normal" or"suitable for reading". It is not easy to quantify these standardvalues. The black value is influenced by the weight of the horizontals,also the serifs in the case of roman faces. As an average value, itmay be taken that the stroke thickness is multiplied by about 5.5times in the x-height. The normal width of a sanserif face consistsapproximately of a side bearing of 3 stroke thicknesses and a lateral"beard" of one stroke thickness. If, to balance out the black value ofthe horizonal, 0.5 stroke thickness is subtracted from the x-height,the result is a theoretical x-height band of 5 stroke thicknesses. Thegrey value is composed of 2/7 surface coverage and 5/7 white space,corresponding to a density of rather less than 30 per cent.

In the planning of the various weights and positions the question alsoarose whether the round letters c e s and so on should be given thetraditional oblique terminal cut. It turned out that the only answer fora uniform appearance in all versions is a horizontal termination in theuncial style.

How the name of Univers was chosenI liked the name monde because of the simplicity of the sequence ofletters. The name Europe was also discussed; but Charles Peignot hadinternational sales plans for the typeface and had to consider theeffect of the name in other languages. Monde was unsuitable forGerman, in which der Mond means "the moon". I suggested"Universal", whereupon Peignot decided, in all modesty, that "Univers"was the most all-embracing name!

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1997, in the studio near Bremgarten-Bern

Studies for a Sanserif Type, Zürich1950/51 (teacher Walter Käch)


A New Univers FamilyMore than forty years ago, among all the trials and tribulations of thepostwar period, Univers came into existence at the crossroads of technicalachievements, a child of knowledge newly gained and a little talent. Thetypeface was completed in a relatively short time and was close enoughto the spirit of the times for the wind of fashion to blow it over manylands and into countless hands: some gifted and some not, some faithfuland some unfaithful. There were many interpretations and adaptations todifferent systems, with results that matched the original to a greater orlesser extent. Thus the name of Univers (or something similar) was givento many versions in printing and imagesetting systems.In 1995 a German finance company with worldwide branches decided touse the semi-bold Univers 65 in its original form. But the same cut is notavailable in every country and it became a problem to create thecorporate design on a worldwide basis. This brought me to some of myhappiest days, when Bruno Steinert and Otmar Hoefer came from theLinotype Library GmbH to tell me that the decision had been to redesignthe whole Univers family. They brought with them specimens of a revisedversion, newly digitized in accordance with earlier specimens fromDeberny & Peignot. They also told me that Linotype planned to extendthe Univers family, as had already been done with Neue Helvetica, andasked me if I would like to help them with the drawings for two extremeversions, ultra-light and ultra-bold. Of course I accepted the offer withenthusiasm and sat down at my old drawing-board to begin the design ofthe ultra-bold. It filled me with joy to feel once again how these formscompletely match my deepest imaginings.Between this ultra-bold version and the new 75 there were two otherweights to be inserted. The same policy applied to the condensedversions. A 97 came into being, for which I cut and pasted some prints ofthe new 67. I then drew the opposite pole, the light 27, with the aid ofpasted-up photocopies of the details. I created the italics by usingscissors to remove the distortions of the typical 16-degree sloping of theupright version.

"The decision to redesign the Univers family was something I feltas a personal gift. I produced the letterforms with the same delightas 45 years previously."

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The lettering is hardly ever read face to face. Usuallythe information has to be picked up at an angle whenwalking or driving

Scetches Concorde, by A. F. and André Gürtler (Paris,1959)

First scetch for the Roissy typeface. Paper cutout. Darkyellow panel: French text appears in black and theEnglish in white

Letters for about 10 cm height are necessary for adistance of 20 m

Construction of the Frutiger arrow.

Clear signposting for the road traffic


Charles-de-Gaulle-AirportThe air traffic of Paris was developing so rapidly that thecapacity of Orly Airport soon proved inadequate. A new,modern airport was therefore planned for a large site to thenorth of the capital.

Paul Andreu, a dynamic young architect and engineer, wasentrusted with this project. He formed an architectural studygroup comprising interior architects, color specialists,philosophers, a musician and a typographer. Long eveningsessions for brainstorming were accompanied by food anddrink.

The discussions were something quite new for me. Eachmember of the group just said the first thing that came intohis head on successive subjects. I remember one of themrecommending that the experience of take-off be made tolast as long as possible, so that passengers could truly anddeeply experience their separation from Mother Earth. Afterhalf a dozen glasses of wine we heard proposals like thedesirability of laying down a pasture for sheep at the airport.Nevertheless, Andreu always knew how to bring thediscussion back onto the right track.

I was commissioned to design the entire signage system forthe airport. Everyone thought that I would want to use theUnivers typeface, but I was aware that this kind of sanserifface had too round and closed an effect for the easyrecognition of word-signs. I took out the drawings ofConcorde, the sanserif which I had designed for theSofratype in collaboration with André Gürtler, and madesome sketches. The banana-yellow background recommendedby the color specialist was obtained by superimposingseveral transparent Letraset color foils, and we cut the word"Départ" from a rather bolder and more expanded version ofConcorde, with the word "Departures" pasted above it inblack. Proof of better legibility than Univers was not hard todemonstrate. In addition, Paul Andreu was fascinated by thethought of using a special kind of "Airport Type".

What I may say as a critic, after thirty years of the use ofRoissy (C-de-G) Airport typography, is this: that the Roissyface is too light and too closely set. Moreover there is toolittle space, too narrow, around the letters, especially in thesignage for the access roads. The first thing the driver seeson arriving is the colored rectangle.

At first, Paul Andreu was very much against the use ofpictograms and he persuaded me that the word "Bar" is justas recognizable as a drawing of a wine-glass. He startedwith the assumption that the air traveller was familiar withthe international language of airport facilities; but we soonfound out that the signs for "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" werenot always clearly understood. We resisted the idea of usingsilhouettes of male and female figures, or in the case of leftluggage lockers, a suitcase with a key.

In the space of 25 years the problem has completelychanged. Nowadays, more and more pictograms are usedfrom the series which has meanwhile been internationallyintroduced, since more than half of all passengers aretourists from every part of the globe and many of themsimply do not know the Latin alphabet. For such people, alanguage of signs is easier to learn than a set of word-images.

1998: More than thirty years later I come with the journalistand writer Anne Cuneo and a television team to make adocumentary film about my life. I am astonished to see theextent to which the building has grown. An amazing TGV railstation has been built across the chain-like pattern of theairport. The former system of yellow panels with black andwhite lettering has been retained for the first three circles ofthe building, but with a much better presentation. The yellowhas become much darker and the quality of the type isexcellent. In the newest circle, after the station, the signagehas been done anew. The Roissy face, in a light version, hasbeen engraved in thin metal sheets by laser beam, withyellow foil attached to the back. I was also pleased with theuse of display screens for information. The old Monospacetypeface has been replaced by Roissy, which is very clearand readable on the big monitor screen.Contrary to all these positive impressions, however, I mustmention the hanging central display panel, which with itsdigitally controlled 5 x 9 dot matrix illuminations iscompletely unreadable.

"The airport at Roissy was conceived as an ‘Arrival andDeparture Machine’. Signage and lettering are veryimportant owing to the short distance tothe aircraft."

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The Americans proposed a stronglystylized script, namely OCR-A

The Europeans preferred OCR-B, analphabet closer to printing type

A difficult pair: B and 8


The big OCR-B projectOne day I had a telephone call from Monsieur Racine, director of theEcole Estienne, inviting me to visit him for a meeting with Gilbert Weil, anengineer at Bull Electronics.

Gilbert Weil showed me the OCR-A alphabet (Optical CharacterRecognition) from the USA, with the comment that such "caricatureletters" were unsuitable for the demands of the European market. Thetechniques of machine-reading had been much improved in the meantimeand a finer basic grid could be used. He asked me if I could design anon-stylized OCR script which would be pleasing to the human eye as wellas readable by machine.

The meeting led to a five-year collaboration with a group of about adozen engineers from the European Computer Manufacturers’ Association(ECMA). We met four times a year at one or other of the firms concernedto examine the type drawings and plan further steps. The final result wasOCR-B, as distinct from the American OCR-A, and in 1973 the B versionwas accepted as a ISO-world standard.

Today the machine-reading of texts has become unnecessary since mostauthors deliver their texts either in the form of data on disk or as e-mail,but the figures and some symbol characters of OCR-B continue to beintensively used on items such as bank cheques and postal cheques,paying-in forms, invoices and so on. On the lower edges of these formsall the necessary data are held in one coded line, which enables thereading machine to handle about five million items per hour.

Recognition of characters based on a fine grid no longer depends onscreen dots. Each firm has worked out its own technique, the most widelyused of which is based on the recognition of space, whether closed oropen as in such cases as O and C, B and B. The external forms are called"foyers". One of the most difficult pairs of characters to distinguish is Band 8. The machine recognizes two closed interior spaces in each ofthese, with two lateral 1/4 foyers in the middle and four 3/4 foyers inthe corners. The difference is that B lacks a foyer at the left. All lettersand figures are easily recognizable and distinguishable from one anotherby these and similar features. There remain zero and capital O. We didnot want to have an O with a line through it. Right from the start wedrew the capital letters smaller than the figures. The zero is narrow andhigh, unlike the O, which is broad, lower and drawn out in the corners.

On OCR-B 25 years laterIt is a sign of our times that graphic designers look for typefaces whichare outside the framework of "normal" typography. This is done in thesame spirit with which old typewriter and blocking faces are revived inmodern print products. Headlines in OCR-B have also been used lately.There is nothing wrong with this approach. The reader leafing through acatalogue with 4000 faces can experience a surfeit of classical designsand OCR-B will catch the eye.

"The work began with sketches for a non-stylized OCR alphabetmade on wooden tables and taborets (small stools)."

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Emil Ruder

Even when I was completing my apprenticeship as a compositor in distant Interlaken, I used to seek contact with thegraphic world in the cities of Zurich and Basle. For example, the trade magazine Typografische Monatsblätter reportedon the teachings of the Basle School of Design. I was greatly impressed by the many new trends which were illustratedand explained in that publication. It was above all the contributions of the Typography class, founded and directed byEmil Ruder, which had a special appeal for me. In those pages I encountered a completely new and surprising mannerof typographic design. So during my first year in Zurich I tried to get in touch with Emil Ruder.

"Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing.No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty."Emil Ruder

I sent him one of my typographic woodcuts, to which he reacted spontaneously by inviting me to his house. My firstmeeting with him and his family was an impressive experience. Emil became my friend and I was deeply shocked by hisearly death. I wrote the following contribution to the issue of Typografische Monatsblätter which was dedicated to him:

We were friends. When our ways crossed, he was already a teacher and I was still a student. He was never officiallymy teacher, which probably made the development of our friendship easier. Our first meeting made a profoundimpression on me. Now two decades have gone by and given the event a kind of symbolic status, which is how I wouldlike to record it here.

The first thing I see is the boldly designed birth announcement: the name Martin in vivid, unexpectedly new typographyand color, which at that time was a sign of a new era for us as students of type. We met for the first time in the circleof his newly formed family: he already a mature man, his wife Susanna young and beautiful, tenderly cradling thenewborn baby in her arms. I myself was still a youth, lately arrived from my narrow mountain world, eagerly seekingall that was new. I see before me that happy family who had invited me to a midday meal (how proud and yetintimidated I was!); I see them in their home, living with modest but well-chosen everyday objects and surrounded bynoble, beautiful works of art and craft. (In this environment it first became clear to me that my father’s old weavingshuttle in our own home must be a very beautiful thing.) The food was good and new in its selection and preparation.At that time, I did not know that there was such a thing as "healthy food”. And the glass of good-quality Burgundygave the meal a fine delight, new to me. There I saw many books, old and new, also a collection of well-designedglassware; and we talked about letter-forms in detail. Afterwards, Emil played the violin beautifully, playing to his child,his wife, and a bit for me.

"Emil Ruder saw my first specimens of Univers and was so delighted with them that he designed andpublished many works with this type in association with his Basle students."

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Renovating an old shed:


The Studio in the Place d’ItalieCharles Peignot had the idea of setting up a typographic studio inassociation with his son Rémy. This gave me the opportunity toemploy André Gürtler and Bruno Pfäffli of Deberny & Peignot. CharlesPeignot had many business connections and there was no shortage ofwork for us.

However, the plan soon proved to be unrealistic. In such a largecompany, the hourly rate with all the extras made our design workmuch too expensive. Peignot also realized that I also wanted to doapplied typographical work in addition to my work at the foundry. Hegave me his consent to the establishment of a studio of my own. Inthe small courtyard of the Imprimerie Hofer in the Place d’Italie therewas a shed, which we converted at weekends with the help of somehand-workers from Deberny & Peignot. The firm also sold us somemetal type and a hand-press at bargain prices. This was the origin ofour first studio, where we carried out independent work and typefacedesign.












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