The Klingspor Museum organized an evening with three talks to honor the late type designer Adrian Frutiger. I was one of the speakers and came by to discuss the planning, when the museum staff was searching for a visual to accompany the invitation. I said, I knew exactly what we should use, if they could provide me with a title consisting of 21 letters.
The invitation postcard reveals the underlying systematic approach behind Univers, one of the first typefaces Frutiger designed. The letters morph from light to bold, from wide to narrow, from regular to italic, with Frutiger’s corresponding numbering on the back. The design pays homage to the diagram for the typeface (link) by Bruno Pfäffli, who was Frutiger’s studio partner in the 1960’s.