Adrian Frutiger’s teachers and mentors

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12 career path/01/Logo for Frutiger Heimtextil, designed around 1985 for the family weaving and cloth business in Interlaken./03/Adrian Frutiger’s handwriting at age 13 (top) and 15 (bottom) – it became more upright, more rounded and more fluid./02/At secondary school Frutiger learnt the Hulliger Schrift handwriting system, which was introduced in 1926 by the Basel schoolteacher Paul Hulliger.Starting outAdrian Frutiger was born on 24 May 1928 in Unterseen near Interlaken in Switzerland. He grew up as the second-youngest child, with his sister Charlotte and his brothers Roland and Erich. His mother, Johanna, a baker’s daughter, raised the children and ran the house-hold. His father Johann, son of a carpenter, was at this time employed in a draper’s in Unterseen.1 The village itself is cut off from Interlaken by the river Aare, and lies on the valley floor between Lake Brienz in the east and Lake Thun in the west. Towards the south stands the imposing mountain panorama of the Berner Alps, with the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau peaks; towards the north the foothills of the Alps proper dominate the horizon. The wider world seems distant, yet the proximity of fashionable Interlaken means it is never far away. In 1934 Adrian Frutiger’s father opened a handloom workshop there, the Oberländer Webstube, whereupon the family moved to the health resort. Their house stood directly by the train tracks. To the rear could be seen a gasworks with its coal silos and loading cranes, and a little further away, the base station of a mountain cable car could be seen. Adrian Frutiger liked to look at this scenery through the window. With hindsight he has stated that this daily contact with all things mechanical – his passion for model traction engines and the interest in electricity that this awoke in him from an early age – proved to be a natural education. Even the simple Jacquard loom that his father acquired aroused his interest. This machine allowed semi-automatic weaving and, with the help of homemade punch cards, they were able to produce versions of the weaving samples that his father had collected over the years with a much finer warp and weft. Under its later name of Frutiger Heimtextil, the shop continued to be run by Frutiger’s younger brother Erich until 2006. In the mid 1980s Adrian Frutiger designed the logo for the family com-pany /01/, one of almost 100 logos and wordmarks he made during his career.Frutiger’s education began in 1935. His first years in school did little to fire his enthu-siasm. Adolescence, however, brought about a great transformation: he discovered the joys of reading, drawing and painting. The children’s books of Ernst Eberhard, with their hand-drawn ink illustrations, especially captivated him. One of these stories centred on a boy who inherited a great deal of money through his willingness to help other people. This legacy enabled the boy to attend the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Bern, and the story ended with the boy continuing his studies in far-off Italy. This story captured Adrian Frutiger’s imagination so strongly that he wrote to Ernst Eberhard, who lived in Unterseen and worked as a secondary school teacher. The reply he received, with its invi-tation to visit, was written in a beautiful script that Adrian Frutiger started immediately to imitate. Eberhard advised him to observe more closely while drawing from nature. Through yearly visits to Eberhard, Adrian Frutiger’s drawings received critical dissection. This father figure became his first mentor. In 1948, while Frutiger was working on his Die Kirchen am Thunersee, a deep friendship also developed with his former primary school teacher Franz Knuchel and his wife Leny. Inspired by them, he started reading classic literature. The works of Herman Hesse, particularly Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Gold-mund and The Glass Bead Game, left a lasting impression on him. Even as a youth, Fruti-ger already displayed a desire to travel further and wider, although home still remained important to him. After living in Paris for nearly 20 years, he still gladly designed the dust jacket for the Jahrbuch vom Thuner- und Brienzersee 19712, at the request of Franz Knuchel.At the end of secondary school, Adrian Frutiger’s interest in letterform took firm root. Something in him rebelled against the stiff up-and-down strokes of the Hulliger Schrift/02/. This style of handwriting, developed by the Basel teacher Paul Hulliger was introduced into Basel schools in 1926, and by 1936 had been adopted by ten of Switzerland’s 25 cantons. It is a reworking of Ludwig Sütterlin’s handwriting style that had been used in German schools since 1911. Frutiger straightened the joined, rightward-sloping script, and mod-elled his own rounder, more flowing hand on the writing of Ernst Eberhard /03/.At the age of 15, Adrian Frutiger decided on his career path, but his father was firmly set against the profession of a ‘starving painter’. There was also no money available for a career path adrian Frutiger’s teachers and mentors

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12 career path/01/Logo for Frutiger Heimtextil, designed around 1985 for the family weaving and cloth business in Interlaken./03/Adrian Frutiger’s handwriting at age 13 (top) and 15 (bottom) – it became more upright, more rounded and more fluid./02/At secondary school Frutiger learnt the Hulliger Schrift handwriting system, which was introduced in 1926 by the Basel schoolteacher Paul Hulliger.Starting outAdrian Frutiger was born on 24 May 1928 in Unterseen near Interlaken in Switzerland. He grew up as the second-youngest child, with his sister Charlotte and his brothers Roland and Erich. His mother, Johanna, a baker’s daughter, raised the children and ran the house-hold. His father Johann, son of a carpenter, was at this time employed in a draper’s in Unterseen.1 The village itself is cut off from Interlaken by the river Aare, and lies on the valley floor between Lake Brienz in the east and Lake Thun in the west. Towards the south stands the imposing mountain panorama of the Berner Alps, with the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau peaks; towards the north the foothills of the Alps proper dominate the horizon. The wider world seems distant, yet the proximity of fashionable Interlaken means it is never far away. In 1934 Adrian Frutiger’s father opened a handloom workshop there, the Oberländer Webstube, whereupon the family moved to the health resort. Their house stood directly by the train tracks. To the rear could be seen a gasworks with its coal silos and loading cranes, and a little further away, the base station of a mountain cable car could be seen. Adrian Frutiger liked to look at this scenery through the window. With hindsight he has stated that this daily contact with all things mechanical – his passion for model traction engines and the interest in electricity that this awoke in him from an early age – proved to be a natural education. Even the simple Jacquard loom that his father acquired aroused his interest. This machine allowed semi-automatic weaving and, with the help of homemade punch cards, they were able to produce versions of the weaving samples that his father had collected over the years with a much finer warp and weft. Under its later name of Frutiger Heimtextil, the shop continued to be run by Frutiger’s younger brother Erich until 2006. In the mid 1980s Adrian Frutiger designed the logo for the family com-pany /01/, one of almost 100 logos and wordmarks he made during his career.Frutiger’s education began in 1935. His first years in school did little to fire his enthu-siasm. Adolescence, however, brought about a great transformation: he discovered the joys of reading, drawing and painting. The children’s books of Ernst Eberhard, with their hand-drawn ink illustrations, especially captivated him. One of these stories centred on a boy who inherited a great deal of money through his willingness to help other people. This legacy enabled the boy to attend the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Bern, and the story ended with the boy continuing his studies in far-off Italy. This story captured Adrian Frutiger’s imagination so strongly that he wrote to Ernst Eberhard, who lived in Unterseen and worked as a secondary school teacher. The reply he received, with its invi-tation to visit, was written in a beautiful script that Adrian Frutiger started immediately to imitate. Eberhard advised him to observe more closely while drawing from nature. Through yearly visits to Eberhard, Adrian Frutiger’s drawings received critical dissection. This father figure became his first mentor. In 1948, while Frutiger was working on his Die Kirchen am Thunersee, a deep friendship also developed with his former primary school teacher Franz Knuchel and his wife Leny. Inspired by them, he started reading classic literature. The works of Herman Hesse, particularly Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Gold-mund and The Glass Bead Game, left a lasting impression on him. Even as a youth, Fruti-ger already displayed a desire to travel further and wider, although home still remained important to him. After living in Paris for nearly 20 years, he still gladly designed the dust jacket for the Jahrbuch vom Thuner- und Brienzersee 19712, at the request of Franz Knuchel.At the end of secondary school, Adrian Frutiger’s interest in letterform took firm root. Something in him rebelled against the stiff up-and-down strokes of the Hulliger Schrift/02/. This style of handwriting, developed by the Basel teacher Paul Hulliger was introduced into Basel schools in 1926, and by 1936 had been adopted by ten of Switzerland’s 25 cantons. It is a reworking of Ludwig Sütterlin’s handwriting style that had been used in German schools since 1911. Frutiger straightened the joined, rightward-sloping script, and mod-elled his own rounder, more flowing hand on the writing of Ernst Eberhard /03/.At the age of 15, Adrian Frutiger decided on his career path, but his father was firmly set against the profession of a ‘starving painter’. There was also no money available for a career path adrian Frutiger’s teachers and mentors

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