[3] Frutiger is a humanist sans-serif typeface, intended to be clear and highly legible at a distance or at small text sizes.

It is the text version of Frutiger's earlier typeface Roissy, commissioned in 1970/71[6] by the newly built Charles de Gaulle Airport at Roissy, France, which needed a new directional sign system, which itself was based on Concorde, a font Frutiger had created in the early 1960s.

In practice the design was drawn by his colleague (and fellow Swiss in Paris) André Gürtler as Frutiger was busy.

Gürtler too wrote of feeling that the design was innovative: "this style didn't exist in grotesques at the time, except for Gill Sans."

Frutiger had earlier created an alphabet inspired by Univers and Peignot for Paris Orly Airport, but found the experience a failure due to lack of control and the insistence that all text be in capitals only.

[7] Impressed by the quality of the Roissy airport signage, the typographical director of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company approached Frutiger in 1974 to turn it into a typeface for print.

"[6] Designing Frutiger as a print version of Roissy, this principle resulted in a distinctive and legible typeface.

The letter properties originally suited to the needs of Charles de Gaulle: a modern appearance and legibility at various angles, sizes, and distances.

This is a variant of Frutiger used by ASTRA (acronym of the Amt für Strassen, the Swiss Federal Road Office) as the new font for traffic signs, replacing VSS in 2003.

[11] It is based on Frutiger 57 Condensed, but with widening ascenders and descenders, which are intended to give the eye a better hold than the earlier version did.

The new version, Frutiger Next, changed a number of details and added a true italic style in place of the oblique roman of the original.

It is based on the Kufic style, but incorporates aspects of Ruqʿah script and Naskh in the letter form designs, resulting in what Linotype called "humanist Kufi".

Initial release of the family has twenty fonts in ten weights and one width, returning to complementary obliques.

It is a version of Neue Frutiger compliant with the German standard DIN 1450, designed by Akira Kobayashi.

[15][16] The family includes eight fonts, in four weights (book, regular, medium, bold) and one width, with a complementary oblique.

OpenType features include denominator/numerator, fractions, ligatures, localized forms, ordinals, proportional figures, subscript/superscript, scientific inferiors, stylistic alternates (two sets), ornaments, kerning.

In 2018, Monotype introduces Neue Frutiger World with several characters more than 150 languages, in Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai and Vietnamese.

[17] Adobe's Myriad and Microsoft's Segoe UI are two prominent humanist typefaces whose similarities to Frutiger have aroused controversy.

Michael Bierut commented on its common use in wayfinding systems: "Frutiger has been used so much for signage programs in hospitals and airports that seeing it now makes me feel that I'm about to get diagnosed with a brain tumor or miss the 7:00 to O'Hare.