Adrian Frutiger Case Study Book
- Client
Personal Project - Size
5" x 10" pages, 24 pages total, accordion fold (20 feet long unfolded) - Date
Spring 2004
This book took a look at the life’s work of Adrian Frutiger. While studying Frutiger’s work I was amazed at the precision and control he was able to maintain throughout his designs, as well as his grand vision and perfect, unified execution of that vision.
When Adrian was creating type, he was doing so with imperfect technology, yet his type designs were extremely clean. That was the main thing I tried to portray in the imagery of the book. A cleanliness and orderliness yet with a distressed feel to it, such that would occur with imperfect technologies.
The text from the book was created solely from quotes directly from the mouth of Adrian Frutiger (found through researching various interviews he had done along with the text of his grand work, Sign, Symbol, Image). I felt that these helped describe Adrian’s motivations and his work greater than any analysis I could offer, so I strove to tie in each quote with the design of the spread.
Finally, in putting the book together I decided to create it as an accordian fold that when unfolded it formed a single strip that was 5” tall and 20’ wide. A single quote ran across the bottom of this single, unfolded page and the reader was forced to lay this out in a hallway and walk up and down the piece, taking the whole thing in. When looking at the life’s work of a designer who achieved so much and made such an impact, the only way to truly take it all in is through a similar process of stepping back and moving yourself through it all. The book became a timeline of Adrian’s life and each spread blended seamlessly from one to the next.