John Baskerville is best know as a British printer in Birmingham who specialized in producing many typefaces with similar characteristics. He was born in 1706 and at the age of seventeen was engraving tombstones. By the age of twenty he was teaching and running a small engraving business and by the age of thirty two he had made himself wealthy off of the popular japanning (coating with black varnish) trays and snuff-boxes business. He worked for Cambridge University in 1758 and printed a folio Bible despite his atheist views. This work is characterized by clear and careful presswork rather than ornament, making them a fine example of the art of printing. Baskerville was a member of the Royal Society of Arts and was admired by Benjamin Franklin who took his designs back to the United States and used them for most federal government documents. Baskerville's work was revived in the 1920s and released to the public mostly with the name "Baskerville." This typeface is still used today and prized for its clarity and balance. His death was controversial due to his strong atheist beliefs. He was buried in his garden until he had to be moved due to canals built on the property.

Baskerville is unique because he was fairly unappreciated during his time and was not fully praised until later after his death. He is now recognized as a key person in helping to transform English printing and type founding. Not until the 1920s was Baskerville widely used and a common typeface in major foundaries.

Adrian Frutiger was born in 1928 in Unterseen, which is near Interlaken, Switzerland. As a boy he dreamed of travling abroad, "I longed for a distant, sunny land, and for a metropolis where I could achieve something big." He also was known for rebelling against the strict Hulliger method of handwriting taught in German-Swiss schools. Instead Frutiger emulated the freer method of writing of Ernst Eberhart a writer and teacher. This sparked his interest in typeface and pushed hi to experiment with unique styles and pens. He later earned an apprenticeship as a compositer and then went on to studying type and graphics at Zurich School of Arts and Crafts from 1949 to 1951. He studied under two profound professors, Alfred Willimann and Walter Kach. In 1952 Frutiger moved to Paris and worked as a typeface designer and artistic manger at Deberny & Peignot. He later founded his own studio in Arcueil near Paris and worked as a Professor for eighteen years a the Ecole Estienne and the Ecole Nationale Superleure des Arts Decooratifs, Paris.

Universe is unique because of Frutiger's use of legibility and beauty. It is a san-serif font, which makes it a modern, yet human typeface, that is accessable to all people and designs. Universe features a higher x-height and even stroke weight, which improves legibility. Frutiger introduced the numbering system with this font opposed to using names. He also introduced the Univers Grid, which was a chart that explains the different variations of the font and organize them in order of stroke, weight, and kerning.