Adrian Frutiger, the foundry's art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. As its weight increases, this personality becomes more apparent. The clear, objective forms of Univers make this a legible font suitable for almost any typographic need. Think of it as a Swiss design with a French heart. It's not a very hip or forward-looking choice - some would call it a cliche - but I've enjoyed getting to know this versatile typeface, which I had overlooked.
Until recently I hadn't used Univers much (I favored Avenir) but in the past couple of years I've used it for contem por ary art series of exhibition catalogues for the Asian Art Museum. Robert Bringhurst advises mixing it with Frutigers eponymous font (rather than with his Meridien, which Bringhurst feels is not as close in structure). (But both typefaces come in many flavors.)Īlthough Univers doesn't mix well with other sans serifs, it goes well with a range of serifed fonts - perhaps best with "transitional" fonts such as Baskerville. There are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. Univers has a somewhat smaller x-height than Helvetica, and the base font sets a little wider. A typeface is the design of lettering 1 that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. The result: a brilliant and cohesive font family of 63 weights and. Univers 55 is probably the base text font - the one most similar in weight to the standard version of Helvetica anyway - but a nice thing about Univers is that the lighter weights, especially 45, have even color and can be used to set continuous text. Linotype Univers is a completely reworked version of the original Univers typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957.After a long process of painstakingly detailed revision, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed this large joint project in 1997. Universe was the first typeface in which the weights were cl assified with a numerical system.
It was designed as a full system of fonts with a wide range of weights, unlike Helvetica, which spawned variants in a rather disordered way (this disorder was addressed, much later, with the release of Helvetica Neue). Some feel that the modulated strokes give it a bit more character than Helvetica. It offers close matches to our other on-brand typefaces Roboto Light for Univers Light, Roboto Regular for Univers Roman, Roboto Condensed for Univers Condensed, and Roboto Slab for Glypha.
two-storied a is the most distinctive letter, with a straight back, no baseline curl, and perpendicular connection at top of bowlĭesigned by Adrian Frutiger and released by Deberny and Peignot in 1957, about the same time that Helvetica was released and in response to the same perceived need for a utilitarian, versatile sans serif workhorse. Roboto is a free font family available from Google Fonts.