As a boy, Adrian Frutiger dreamed of traveling abroad: “I longed for a distant, sunny land, and for a metropolis where I could achieve something big.” While his travel was always to be modest, he did, indeed, accomplish big things.

Frutiger was born in 1928 in Unterseen, near Interlaken, Switzerland. He grew up in a green valley bordered by lakes amid the Bernese Alps. In his youth, Frutiger became acutely aware of letterforms. At 15, he rebelled against the strict Hulliger method of handwriting taught in German-Swiss schools. He grew interested in the work of writer and teacher Ernst Eberhart, preferring to emulate his freer method of handwriting.

Frutiger cut his pen down to a broad nib and made his letterforms open and round. Those first specimens started him on the path to finding his unique style. He maintained an interest in calligraphic lettering, researching the evolution of the roman script in school and drawing the Herculanum®, Rusticana™ and Pompeijana™ scripts later in his career.

After compulsory school, Frutiger apprenticed as a compositor, then continued his training at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) from 1949 to 1951. In 1952, Charles Peignot invited the young Frutiger to oversee the drawing office at Deberny & Peignot in Paris. The foundry produced metal type and fonts for the revolutionary Lumitype/Photon phototypesetting systems.

Although living away from his homeland, Swiss traditions still marked Frutiger’s work. He was interested in woodcut techniques and in the Bernese Oberland tradition of making paper silhouettes. He was amazed at the intricacy and precision of the forms that peasant farmers could cut from black paper. “I think it is possible that a deep-seated appreciation of black-and-white contrasts, achieved through the practice of cutout techniques, was present in the genes of the Bernese people and was inherited by me,” Frutiger says. “I have always felt a reluctance to use black ink as a medium, preferring whenever possible to scratch, cut or engrave the material.”