Adrian Frutiger

Among other things, Adrian Frutiger was a Swiss born typist torn away from his love of sculpture at an early age to become one of the most influential typographers still alive today. The use of sculpture in his type occupation has most definitely made his typefaces interesting and useful in interpretation today.
Frutiger was born in Switzerland near Interlaken. Early in his design career he was chosen to be an apprentice. At age sixteen he studied in Zurich and once done with that moved to France to study under Charles Peignot who was amazed with Frutiger's work on an illustrated essay on text in Europe.
Though Adrian Frutiger created many typefaces and still works to find more he is most famous for his neo-grotesque typeface called Univers. Univers is one of three sans-serif typefaces that is designed in the Swiss design style. It is easy to read even far away and is designed using numbers instead of names. The main reason this typeface is so unique is due to the numbering system. Basically the weight of a letter is increased heading toward the number ten, yet the width and position become increasingly condensed as they travel the number ten. Adrian Frutiger also used a grid system to design his texts. The grid is basically a set of different fonts focusing around Frutiger's original Univers typeface. The other typefaces vary in weight, width, and other attributes. To summarize, Adrian Frutiger was and is an influential typeface designer driven by his love of sculpture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=+frutiger+univers+grid&ns0=1&fulltext=Search
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers
http://typophile.com/node/12118
http://www.identifont.com/show?110
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/univers/familytree.html