Univers (French pronunciation: [ynivɛʁ] ⓘ) is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957.

[1] Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such as Akzidenz-Grotesk, it was notable for its availability from the moment of its launch in a comprehensive range of weights and widths.

This matched the desire among practitioners of the "Swiss style" of typography for neutral sans-serif typefaces avoiding artistic excesses.

The design concept of Univers was intended to take advantage of the new technology of phototypesetting, in which fonts were stored as glass discs rather than as solid metal type and matrices for every size to be used.

Deberny & Peignot had established itself as a leader in this technology, although as by the time of its launch metal type was still very popular, the design was also released in this form.

Univers is one of a group of neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces, all released in 1957,[6] that includes Folio and Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed Helvetica).

Frutiger envisioned a large family with multiple widths and weights that maintained a unified design idiom.

[8] In the original design, Frutiger chose obliques with the extremely aggressive slant of sixteen degrees, which was reduced to twelve in some later releases.

[11] An independent version of Univers was licensed by the Berthold Type Foundry for its phototypesetting system with adaptations by Günter Gerhard Lange; Frutiger wrote in his autobiography that he had some affection for it.

"[13] Mosley has described its even design as "rather bland" and noted that Monotype's eccentric, chaotically organised Grotesque family remained popular with more "iconoclastic" printers in the 1960s.

[16] Dutch font designer Martin Majoor, while praising Univers for its "almost scientific" range of weights, criticised it for its lack of originality: "basing a sans serif on another is rather cheap.

[26] The font was used extensively by Audi, appearing in sales literature, corporate communications, owners' documentation and even on the vehicles themselves in the instrument panel graphics and their MMI dashboard displays.

Due to some typeface manufacturers’ failure to understand and implement the system correctly, however, things have actually become more confusing.

Although Univers was originally conceived to take advantage of the cost-saving properties of phototypesetting (Deberny & Peignot, hoping to leapfrog their competitors by taking full advantage of the new technology, advertised their Lumitype glass master discs as each replacing three tons of brass matrices[29][30]), Deberny & Peignot arranged licensing deals with type foundries such as Monotype for wider release.

[33][34] This was an ultra-premium electric 'golfball' typewriter system, intended to be used for producing high-quality office documents or copy to be photographically enlarged for small-scale printing projects.

Ultimately the system proved a transitional product, as it was displaced by cheaper phototypesetting, and then in the 1980s by word processors and general-purpose computers.

Several pirate versions of Univers have been released taking advantage of the lack of copyright protection of typeface designs.

One unusual modified version was "Univers Flair", a 1970s phototype clone from Phil Martin's "Alphabet Innovations", adding ostentatious swashes.

By reworking the Univers more "extreme" weights as Ultra Light or Extended Heavy were added as well as some monospaced typefaces.

In April 2010, Linotype announced the release of Cyrillic versions of the original Univers family, in TrueType, PostScript, and OpenType Pro font formats.