[6] Frutiger described creating sans-serif types as his "main life's work",[7] partially due to the difficulty in designing them compared to serif fonts.

[8] As a boy, he experimented with invented scripts and stylized handwriting in a negative reaction to the formal, cursive penmanship then required by Swiss schools.

After initially planning to train as a pastry chef, Frutiger secured an apprenticeship at the Otto Schlaefli printing house in Interlaken.

At the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich, Frutiger concentrated on calligraphy — a craft favouring the nib and the brush, instead of drafting tools, but also began sketches for what would become Univers, influenced by the sans-serif types popular in contemporary graphic design.

In addition, Charles Peignot set Frutiger to work upon converting extant typefaces for the new phototypesetting Linotype equipment.

[6][20] Adrian Frutiger's first commercial typeface was Président — a set of titling capital letters with small, bracketed serifs, released in 1954.

The typeface shows inspiration by Nicolas Jenson, and, in the Méridien type, Frutiger's ideas of letter construction, unity, and organic form, are first expressed together.

In 1956, he designed his first-of-three, slab-serif typefaces — Egyptienne, on the Clarendon model; after Univers, it was the second, new text face to be commissioned for photo-composition.

Impressed by the success of the Bauer foundry's Futura typeface, Peignot encouraged a new, geometric sans-serif type in competition.

To maintain unity across the 21 variants, each weight and width, in roman (upright) and oblique (slanted), was drawn and approved before any matrices were cut.

[6][25] In 1961–64, Frutiger created with André Gürtler a sans-serif font named Concorde for news use in regular and bold styles for Parisian printing company Sofratype.

[32][33] Frutiger's intention was more unusual: to create a design that could be modified by computer, through extreme slanting, morphing or changing stroke width, without seeming as if it had been distorted.

Frutiger intended the design to be a more human version of geometric sans-serif types popular in the 1930s such as Erbar and Futura, and it is named Avenir ('future' in French) as a reference to the latter.

[39] In a complete reverse, his next design Westside was a wild-west themed slab serif, inspired by reverse-contrast French Clarendons of the late 19th century.

[41] While Frutiger continued to be involved in adaptations and expansions of pre-existing families and smaller projects, he described Didot in 1998 as his "last typeface design".

[51] Through his later years, Frutiger collaborated with co-authors Heidrun Osterer and Philipp Stamm on an extensive autobiography, Typefaces: the Complete Works (2008).

[52][53] Frutiger's typefaces include:[54] In 2003, the Swiss watchmaker Ventura commissioned him to design a new watch face for a limited-edition line of wristwatches.

[73] Adrian Frutiger also designed small vignettes for the book of prayers of the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland,[74] performing the work pro bono.