Zurich info.

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Travis15 Mar 2006

I've been looking for a little background on
bitstream's Zurich typeface and can't find all
that much about it. Anyone have any resources
that may be helpful?
I know it's a take on univers, almost identical.
Although the ampersand is drastically different
than that of Univers'. Im getting the feeling that
it is to Univers what Arial is to Helvetica;
just some company trying to get around copyrights.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated, thank you.

Cheers
Travis L.

[Moderator's Note: For continued discuss go to this thread]

Mark Simonson15 Mar 2006#

It is indeed Bitstream's version of Univers. Bitstream did a number of faithful digitizations of "industry standard" fonts in the early eighties, including Univers. In cases when they couldn't license the name, they made up their own. At TypeCon last year, it was announced that Bitstream and Linotype (which owns the rights to Univers) reached an agreement whereby Bitstream can use the name "Univers" instead of "Zurich" (and other Linotype names), though they are still calling it "Zurich" on MyFonts.com.

Univers has always had two different ampersands. The one that looks like "Et" is Frutiger's original design. Linotype did the other more conventional one apparently out of fear that customers would not accept it. Both are authentic, but both are not necessarily available in any particular version of the font.

dan_reynolds15 Mar 2006#

The completely revised, redrawn, and expanding Univesr family that Linotype developed with Frutiger in the mid-1990s, Linotype Univers, uses the "Et" ligature again instead of the alternative. Hooray!

Travis15 Mar 2006#

You guys are the best!
Thanks for the help & info.

Si_Daniels16 Mar 2006#

>TypeCon last year, it was announced

I think this was in 2003... http://www.bitstream.com/corporate/news/press_2003/type_030718_linotype....

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