---
title: "Univers (1957) — Adrian Frutiger"
description: "Univers was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957. What it signals, where you have seen it, and how to tell it from Helvetica."
url: https://atoneplace.net/font/univers/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Univers

**Univers: Adrian Frutiger, 1957**

Sans-serif · Systematic Swiss design. The typeface for people who find Helvetica sloppy.

Released the same year as Helvetica and conceived quite differently: Frutiger designed twenty-one weights simultaneously as a coherent system and numbered them on a two-digit grid rather than naming them, so Univers 55 is the roman and 65 the bold. That numbering scheme became the model for how modern type families are organised.

## How to tell it apart

| Mistaken for | Which letters to check |
| --- | --- |
| Helvetica | Univers has slightly more open apertures and a less closed lowercase a. Set side by side Univers looks marginally warmer, which is not a description many people find useful in isolation. |

## The facts

- **Designed by:** Adrian Frutiger
- **Released:** 1957
- **Classification:** Sans-serif
- **What it signals now:** Systematic Swiss design. The typeface for people who find Helvetica sloppy.

## Where you have seen it

- Deutsche Bank
- Apple's packaging in the 1990s
- Montreal's Expo 67

## Other typefaces from the 1950s

| Typeface | Year | Designer | What it signals |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Courier | 1955 | Howard Kettler | A typewriter, a screenplay, or code written before syntax highlighting. |
| Helvetica | 1957 | Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann | Neutral corporate modernism. So common it reads as no choice at all — which was the intent. |
| Optima | 1958 | Hermann Zapf | Elegant, slightly classical. Cosmetics, memorials, luxury that does not want to shout. |

> This page describes the typeface rather than showing it. Displaying a specimen requires a licensed font file and almost none of these may be redistributed, so the descriptions name the letters to look at instead.

## Common questions

### Who designed Univers?

Adrian Frutiger, in 1957.

### What is Univers used for?

Systematic Swiss design. The typeface for people who find Helvetica sloppy. You will have seen it on Deutsche Bank, Apple's packaging in the 1990s, Montreal's Expo 67.

### What is the difference between Univers and Helvetica?

Univers has slightly more open apertures and a less closed lowercase a. Set side by side Univers looks marginally warmer, which is not a description many people find useful in isolation.

## Related pages

- [Helvetica](https://atoneplace.net/font/helvetica/)
- [Typefaces from the 1950s](https://atoneplace.net/font/decade/1950s/)
- [Akzidenz-Grotesk](https://atoneplace.net/font/akzidenz-grotesk/)
- [Franklin Gothic](https://atoneplace.net/font/franklin-gothic/)
- [Johnston](https://atoneplace.net/font/johnston/)
- [Futura](https://atoneplace.net/font/futura/)
- [Gill Sans](https://atoneplace.net/font/gill-sans/)
- [Helvetica](https://atoneplace.net/font/helvetica/)
- [Optima](https://atoneplace.net/font/optima/)
- [Eurostile](https://atoneplace.net/font/eurostile/)

## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]