Along the lines of Gill Sans, it was designed in the early 1960s by French typographer Roger Excoffon, an art director and former consultant to the Marseilles based Fonderie Olive.

[2] The counters and bowls, especially the letter O, resemble an olive, which is one of the characteristics which make Excoffon's typefaces unique.

Lewis Blackwell later commented on the design, "An attempt to offer a more refined sans serif than presented by Helvetica and Univers, but it was too characterful and too late to be widely adopted outside France.

"[3] The face was later made available in cold type and digital versions are now offered by Adobe Systems and Linotype.

A limited set of styles digitized by URW++ are available with GhostPDL (part of the Ghostscript project) under the Aladdin Free Public License.