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Typeface Research

Avant Garde is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1975 by Herb Lubalin for use in Avant Garde magazine. Originally intended only for the magazine logo, the director commissioned it as a full font. There were display and text versions, with the display having more ligatures and characters. When digitized, only the basic text version was used, leaving out the "perfect" design elements of the original. Avant Garde has straight stems, circular bowls, and hard angles that align across letters. Its attention to ligatures is uncommon. It is well-suited for unorthodox, experimental, or futuristic projects like those of designers and indie artists when used correctly to convey new and

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71 views

Typeface Research

Avant Garde is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1975 by Herb Lubalin for use in Avant Garde magazine. Originally intended only for the magazine logo, the director commissioned it as a full font. There were display and text versions, with the display having more ligatures and characters. When digitized, only the basic text version was used, leaving out the "perfect" design elements of the original. Avant Garde has straight stems, circular bowls, and hard angles that align across letters. Its attention to ligatures is uncommon. It is well-suited for unorthodox, experimental, or futuristic projects like those of designers and indie artists when used correctly to convey new and

Uploaded by

pragya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Typeface Research

Pragya Singh
FC SEM 3
History and Evolution
In 1975, a designer named Herb Lubalin
created this typeface for the Avant Garde
magazine. The typeface was originally meant
to be for the purpose of the logo of the
magazine only, however the director of the
magazine though the design was so futuristic,
well recognized, and perfectly fit, he wanted it
to be commissioned to be developed as an
actual font.
Originally, there were two designs of ITC Avant
Garde, one being for the sole purpose of
display, and the other for text copy. The
display version had many ligatures and special
characters, while the design for text copy
dropped all of these bonuses. It was a sad
moment in type history when Avant Garde
went digital and the only version they decided
to digitize was the text copy. This left
designers with the most basic version without
the “perfect” design elements that were
originally in the display type.
Style
Avant Garde is a sans-serif geometric typeface
designed with perfection and futurism in mind.
A lot like Futura, one will see straight stems
with circular bowls, however Avant Garde
takes another step further into the geometric
realm and creates hard angles that line up in
all the letter forms. The collection of special
ligatures also is what makes this typeface so
cutting-edge. Not many fonts have so much
attention-to-detail when it comes to how the
letters actually work together, so this is why
Avant Garde has such high remarks in the
design world
Use
Avant Garde is misused sometimes due to
people not understanding how the letters
should work together. However, when used
correctly, the font’s name itself describes how
it should be used. The term “avant garde” is
usually used in the arts meaning unorthodox,
experimental, or futuristic. All of those
descriptions were in mind when the typeface
was designed, making it a very popular font for
un-ordinary or new and confident things.
Designers like it a lot, as well as indie bands,
artists, etc. I would say if you are going to use
Avant Garde, use it in a situation where an idea
being presented is new, exciting, and different.

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