Isabel Willason

Neue Frutiger World is designed for global use with an impressive range of 10 weights, from Ultra Light to Extra Black, with matching italics. It embodies the same warmth and clarity as Adrian Frutiger’s original design, but allows brands to maintain their visual identity, and communicate with a consistent tone of voice, regardless of the language. Neue Frutiger World supports more than 150 languages and scripts including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai and Vietnamese.

“Before Neue Frutiger World it was not an easy task for western brands to find families in Arabic, Hebrew, Thai and Vietnamese which match with their Latin,” says Monotype type director Akira Kobayashi, who led the Neue Frutiger World project. “They may find a type with closer expression, but there was no guarantee if the bold version in the non-Latin family matches the bold in their Latin. Neue Frutiger World offers a better solution.” In addition to Neue Frutiger World’s linguistic versatility, it works hard across environments – suited to branding and corporate identity, advertising, signage, wayfinding, print, and digital environments.

The Neue Frutiger World fonts can be paired with Monotype’s CJK fonts: M XiangHe Hei (Chinese), Tazugane Gothic (Japanese) and Seol Sans (Korean). These were all designed to address brands’ needs to expand into Asian cultures and solve for global typographic challenges.

The M XiangHe Hei Traditional Chinese typeface merges traditional brush strokes with modern letterforms to carefully balance traditional calligraphy with humanist design. Named for the smooth movements of a flying crane, the M XiangHe Hei typeface is designed to glide across the page, and features strokes that are partly derived from the Kaishu calligraphic style – an everyday script which dates back hundreds of years.

M XiangHe Hei TC features Neue Frutiger for its Latin glyphs, and works harmoniously Neue Frutiger World and Monotype’s CJK typefaces: Tazugane Gothic (Japanese) and Seol Sans (Korean). M XiangHe Hei TC is a great choice for global brands using sans serif Latin typefaces looking to maintain their visual identity, and communicate with a consistent tone of voice with Traditional Chinese.

The M XiangHe Hei TC fonts have over 19,000 glyphs, and support the BIG5/HKHCS and CP950 character sets for Traditional Chinese.

Tazugane Info is a screen-ready Japanese font family, that follows on the debut of Monotype’s first original Japanese typeface – Tazugane Gothic. It offers a more restrained personality, with calligraphic design details pared back to create a geometric letterform – a good alternative for designers looking for a matter-of-fact alternative to the warmer Tazugane Gothic tone of voice.

“While Tazugane Gothic fits perfectly when your job requires an organic and friendly tone of voice, Tazugane Info provides a more solid look,” says Kobayashi. “I hope that having two options will make it easier to choose an appropriate tone of voice to convey information or brand messaging.”

Its strokes create a smooth uninterrupted flow that’s designed for use on-screen. Although books, newspapers and magazines are traditionally set vertically in Japan, smartphones, information panels and car navigation systems are all set horizontally – and Tazugane Info has been tailored to this environment, featuring a new set of kana phonetic symbols.

Tazugane Info is available in 10 weights, and includes the complete set of kanji and latin found in Tazugane Gothic.