AVANTGARDE

Q

Interesting Fact:“I asked him to picture a very modern, clean European airport (or the TWA terminal), with signs in stark black and white,” Ginzburg’s wife and collaborator, Shoshana re-called, “Then I told him to im-agine a jet taking off the run-way into the future. I used my hand to describe an upward diagonal of the plane climbing skyward. He had me do that several times. I explained that the logos he had offered us for this project, so far, could have been on any magazine but that Avant Garde (adventuring into unknown territory) by its very name was something nobody had seen before. We needed something singular and en-tirely new.”

“I asked him to picture a very modern, clean European airport (or the TWA terminal), with signs in stark black and white,” Ginzburg’s wife and collaborator, Shoshana recalled, “Then I told him to imagine a jet taking off the runway into the future. I used my hand to describe an upward diagonal of the plane climbing skyward. He had me do that several times. I explained that the logos he had offered us for this project, so far, could have been on any magazine but that Avant Garde (adventuring into unknown territory) by its very name was something nobody had seen before. We needed something singular and entirely new.”-AS TOLD TO HERB LUBALIN.

CONTENT• TypeFoundry-ITC

• BirthofAvantGardeGothic

• Aboutthetypeface-Classification

• VersionsofAvantGarde

• Howwillyouidentify

AvantGardeGothic?

• Comparisonwithsimilarlooking

Typefaces

• UsageandApplication

• Saywhat?

• Bibliography

• Acknowledgement

T THEINTERNATIONALTYPEFACECORPORATION.ITC

By far, the most influential and successful type foundry of the 1970s and well into the 1980s was International Typeface Corporation(ITC). ITC began as Lubalin , Burns and Co and called itself “the first typo-graphics agency.”Aaron Burns, Lubalin’s partner in the company,was one of the most successful type salespersons and marketers of the 1960s. One of the first companies, Aaron Burns and Co, was actually a division of one of New York’s then largest and most successful type-

setting houses. While Aaron Burns and Co was a good money-maker, burns still longed to have his own company.In 1970 Burns and Herb Lubalin joined forces to sell phototypeset-ting, lettering and typographic design services to New York advertising agencies and design studios. Their company, cleverly called Lubalin ,Burns and Co, also offered several typeface designs created by Lubalin and his staff that could be purchased nowhere else.Jobs poured into the company.

Burns the consummate promoter and businessman- figured that if his exclusive typesetting company could be successful in New York, it would be equally so in other large cities. Shortly after Lubalin ,Burns and Co was formed, Lubalin, Burns Affiliates, Ltd was also launched. The idea was that there would be an existing typesetting house, which would be provided with an ongoing stream of new typeface designs.The Typesetting house would then pay a fixed monthly fee for the fonts. The problem was , Lubalin and Burns

did not have the capabilities to make phototype fonts-especially for text setting equipment.In an attempt to solve the dilemma, Burns approached his good friend Mike Parker, who was then Director of Typeface Development at linotype. Burns pitch to Parker was that Linotype manufacture fonts of his and Lubalin’s typefaces and provide them to one Linotype typesetting shop in each major American city. Parker wisely saw that if Linotype provided exclusive fonts to just one customer in a city, every other

Linotype customer would be upset.Parker counseled instead ,that Burns take his idea to the next level, “Why not license your designs to every manufacturer of phototypesetting equipment,” he suggested, “and let them pay you a royalty on every font they sell that has one of your designs?”ITC was born out of this conversation. within three years ,virtually every manufacturer of phototypesetting was offering ITC fonts to their customers.

BBIRTHOFAVANTGARDEGOTHICHistory

Avant Garde Gothic was first used as the logo for a new mayazine by the publisher and poet Ralph Ginzburg.Herb Lubalin, the art director for the publication, showed several sketches for the logo to Ginzburg but none captured the concept of the magazine- to be called AVANT GARDE. Finally, for his historic solution, Lubalin adapted gothic pas and changed the angles of “ A” and “V” so they fit together like a wedge in a pie. He angular-ized the second “A” so that its right stem is parallel

with the left of the “N” and halved the “T” so that one half of it was part of the “N”. The perfectly round “G” carved into the angular “A” in GARDE and “D/E” combination was made into ligature. Both words were tightly letter-spaced to be perfectly stacked , and thus could fit as a block anywhere on the cover.Lubalin turned his rough sketch to type designer Tom Carnase his partner at Lubalin Smith Carnase , who rendered the final form. Since Lubalin wanted all department heads

for the magazine to be consistent with the logo, Carnase designed additional characters and created more ligatures . After making a handful of these headlines , he realized there were almost enough characters to complete an entire alphabet- and Avant Garde Gothic was born.ITC Avant grade Gothic’s ligatures and alternate characters captured the imagination of art directors and graphic designers - who used them with glee. Fonts sold like virtually no

other typeface and Avant Garde was used to set everything from diner menus to annual reports.Originally, there were two designs of ITC Avant Garde Gothic, a design for setting headlines and one for text copy. The difference between the two was subtle- except that the display design contained the ligatures and alternate characters and the text design did not. When it came to the time to make the first digital fonts, however, only the text design was chosen.

Opentype has allowed ITC to , once again, release an all-singing version of Avant Garde Gothic and graphic designers can once again take advantage of the full breadth of Lubalin and Carnese’s design. All the ligatures and alternate characters have been made available. A gaggle of additional cap and lowercase alternates , and more ligatures were drawn along with a suite of Biform characters (lowercase letters with cap proportions).

Lubalinadaptedgothiccapsandchangedthe

anglesof“A”and“V”sotheyfittogetherlikea

wedgeinapie.Heangular-izedthesecond“A”

sothatitsrightstemisparallelwiththeleftof

the“N”andhalvedthe“T”sothatonehalfof

itwaspartofthe“N”.

Logo For the Magazine ‘AVANT GARDE’

Category-Sansserif

Classification-Geometricsansserif

Designer(s)-HerbLubalin,TomCarnase

Foundry-ITC

ABOUTTHETYPEFACEClassification

SANS SERIF In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif, san serif or simply sans typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called “serifs” at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning “without”.In print, sans-serif fonts are used for headlines rather than for body text. Before the term “sans-serif” became standard in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these outmoded terms for

sans serif was gothic, which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in font names like Century Gothic or Trade Gothic. Sans-serif fonts are sometimes, especially in older documents, used as a device for emphasis, due to their typically blacker type color.

For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs can be divided into four major groupsGrotesque,Neo-grotesque or Transitional or Realist,Humanist,Geometric (Futura, ITC Avant Garde, Century Gothic, Gotham, or Spartan).

GEOMETRIC sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes. Note the optically circular letter “O” and the simple construction of the lowercase letter “a”. Geometric sans-serif fonts have a very modern look and feel. Typefaces in this category often have their elements boiled down to two simple forms: circles or other rounded forms, and straight lines. Use them to represent sleek movement, dynamism, or the future.

The design of Avant garde is reminiscent of the work from the 1920s German Bauhaus movement. Letterforms built of circles and clean lines are highly effective for headlines and short texts. The condensed faces have the same modern look, while retaining legibility in lengthier texts.Because of its large x-height, extensive set of alternative and ligatured characters and strong design personality, the face also broke new stylistic ground for typeface creation.

VERSIONSOFITC Avant Garde Gothic

Cold Type versionsITC Avant Garde was never cast into actual foundry type, appearing first only in cold type. Alphatype, Autologic, Berthold, Compugraphic, Dymo, Star/Photon, Harris, Mergenthaler, MGD Graphic Systems, and Varityper all sold the face under the name Avant Garde, while Graphic Systems Inc. offered the face as Suave.

ITC Avant Garde StdIt is an OpenType version sold by Adobe. The font family consists of 5 weights, with complementary obliques for all weights and widths. It supports Adobe Western 2 character set. However, the alternate characters, ligatures (except linguistic), and extra characters found in the ITC fonts are not included.

DerivativesITC Lubalin Graph is a slab-serif version of ITC Avant Garde, also designed by Lubalin.BirthofAHero A font released from Gyom over at the Last Soundtrack, Birth of a Hero seems to be geometric and grungy and is derived from Avant Garde Gothic.

ITC Avant Garde MultilingualIt is a version with Cyrillic support from ParaType. Cyrillic glyphs were developed at ParaType (ParaGraph) in 1993 by Vladimir Yefimov. Alternates and ligatures were added in 2008 by Olga Umpeleva.The family consists of 4 fonts in 2 weights (book and demi) in 1 width, with complementary obliques.

ITC Avant Garde Gothic ProIt is an OpenType variant of the original ITC Avant Garde Gothic, plus a suite of additional cap and lowercase alternates, new ligatures, unicase glyphs. It supports ISO Adobe 2, Adobe CE, Latin Extended character sets.In addition, the obliques are altered from the original, where optical corrections are no longer used.

ITC Avant GardeMonoIt is a monospaced version designed by Ned Bunnel in 1983.Digital version was produced by Elsner+Flake. The family consists of 4 fonts in 2 weights (bold and light) in 1 width, with complementary italics.

William Sans LETWilliam Sans LET is a very similar font, but the “regular” typeface is known as “Plain 1.0”.

HHOWWILLYOUIDENTIFYAVANTGARDEGOTHIC?Characteristics And Features.

A distinctive geometric display face, which Lubalin said should be set very tight. A good version comes with a number of unusual uppercase ligatures. The face retains some of the flavor of the late sixties/early seventies.

Identifying Characteristics-bowl of R doesn’t close, but P does-curve on tail of cap Q-abbreviated descenders (esp. g)-low crossbar on G-rectangular dots over i and j-single storey a nd g.-Flat ends for W/w.-Descender in the lowercase ‘u’.- O , G and Q are perfect circles.

TiTTLELINE WEIGHTSANS SERIFCROSS BARS H O U L D E RSMALL CAPSSPINE STEMTAIL BOWLT E R M I N A LV E R T E X

L E G

R has an Open Counter , bowl doesnot close

Curve on the tail of capital Q

Abbreviated descender in g Low crossbar on G

Square tittle on i .

Single storey a and g.Arms of K meet at the mid-point of the stem.

Flat ends in M and W.

Square tittles on j.

Ga W

gRKi j Q

A B C D E F G H I J K L MN O P Q R S T U V W X Y Za b c d e f g h i j k l mn o p q r s t u v w x y z1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. , < > ? / ” ( ) ! # $ %^ & \ ; : é ê ë ï í å ä ø ý μ π ˆ ˇ ˉ ˘ œ Š Ÿ Ω ¼ ½ ¾ √ ∑ Ω ∂ wGlyph Set - ITC Avant Garde Regular 4opt

A B C D E F G H I J K L MN O P Q R S T U V W X Y Za b c d e f g h i j k l mn o p q r s t u v w x y z1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. , < > ? / ” ( ) ! # $ %^ & \ ; : é ê ë ï í å ä ø ý μ π ˆ ˇ ˉ ˘ œ Š Ÿ Ω ¼ ½ ¾ √ ∑ Ω ∂ w

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is known for its Ligatures.

Avant Garde Extra Light CondensedAvant Garde Extra Light Condensed ObliqueAvant Garde Extra LightAvant Garde Extra Light ObliqueAvant Garde Extra Light Condensed ObliqueAvant Garde Book CondensedAvant Garde Book Condensed ObliqueAvant Garde BookAvant Garde Book ObliqueAvant Garde Demi CondensedAvant Garde Demi Condensed ObliqueAvant Garde DemiAvant Garde Demi ObliqueAvant Garde Bold CondensedAvant Garde Bold Condensed ObliqueAvant Garde BoldAvant Garde Bold Oblique

ITC Avant Garde Gothic 25pt

ITC Avant Garde - Line weights and Styles

READABILITYANDLEGIBILITYITC Avant Garde Gothic

ITC Avant Garde is legible at all point sizes. ?? 11pt

ITC Avant Garde is legible at all point sizes. ?? 20pt

ITC Avant Garde is legible at all point sizes. ?? 6 pt

ITC Avant Garde is legible at all point sizes. ?? 8pt

READABILITYANDLEGIBILITYITC Avant Garde Gothic

ITC Avant Garde is legible at all point sizes. ?? 20pt

ITC Avant Garde is legible at all point sizes. ?? 8pt

Letterforms built of circles and clean lines

are highly effective for bigger point size. 15pt,30 pt

Avant garde is not preferred for body text due to the extreme geometric shapes and width of the letterforms which create readability issues. Avant garde is not preferred for body text due to the extreme geometric shapes and width of the letterforms which create readability issues. Avant garde is not preferred for body text due to the extreme geometric shapes and width of the letterforms

which create readability issues,and visual fatigue. Avant garde is not preferred for body text due to the extreme geometric shapes and width of the letterforms which create readability issues. issues. Avant garde is not preferred for body text due to the extreme geometric shapes and width of the letterforms which create readability issues. Avant garde is not preferred for body text due to the extreme geometric shapes and width of the letterforms which create readability issues. 10pt

It cannot help but

draw attention to

itself, and is

therefore ideal for

display text. 15pt

ITC Avant Garde is a display fontmeant to be used for headlines and short texts. 30pt

CAvant garde Gothic can be compared with Futura and Century Gothic based on their shared similarities and differences which cannot be overlooked.All the three typefaces belong to the same family of Geometric Sans serif typeface.

Century Gothic is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed for Monotype Imaging in 1991. It is a digital typeface that has never been made into actual foundry type.Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renne.

COMPARISONWith Other Similar Typefaces

Century Gothic is a version of the successful Futura typeface, but with a larger x-height and more even stroke width. The Century Gothic face is distinct for its single-storey lowercase a and g. Century Gothic is more closely related to Avant Garde Gothic, designed by Herb Lubalin, and released by the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1970.

Century Gothic is similar to ITC Avant Garde in its pure geometry, and does not possess the subtle variation in stroke width found in either Futura or Twentieth Century. However, it differs from ITC Avant Garde in that Century Gothic does not have a descender on lowercase u (making it appear like a Greek upsilon ), whereas Avant Garde does.

THIS IS CENTURY GOTHIC.

THIS IS FUTURA.

THIS IS AVANT GARDE.

Century Gothic also has larger, rounder tittles on letters such as i and j, whereas Avant Garde keeps the tittles square and the same width as the letter strokes.

Oa a aO O

AVANT GARDEFUTURACENTURY GOTHIC

Distinct for its single-storey lowercase a and g.

Being Geometric typefaces ,all these typefaces have O’ s that are almost perfect circles.Avant Garde in its pure geometry, and does not possess the subtle variation in stroke width found in Futura.

Oa

M M

u u ui i i

M

Century Gothic and Futura does not have a descender on lowercase u , whereas Avant Garde does. Century Gothic has a larger x-height and more even stroke width as compared to Futura.

The M and the W of all the three typefaces are different in terms of the angle of the stems which are perpendicular in Avant garde and flared in Century Gothic and Futura.

Century Gothic and Futura have larger, rounder tittles on letters such as i and j, whereas Avant Garde keeps the tittles square and the same width as the letter stroke.

U

USAGEANDAPPLICATIONOFITC Avant Garde Gothic

Experience has shown that it truly does only work in carefully crafted combinations that balance the tight requirements of the letterspacing with legibility.

ITC Avant Garde is a display font, meant to be used for headlines and short texts. Use it if you need a retro 70’s look or want something that really stands out. It can be pretty difficult to actually use this font the way it was intended to be used.

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is the currently main font for the logo of Meralco and

The T.V series ‘glee’ uses ITC Avant Garde in lowercase for their identity.

Bold and Contemporary

Modern , Dynamic

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is the font of the logo/name of the french producer David Guetta

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is the typeface used for, Roparosa , fashion by Roos Van Der Kamp.

Fashionable

Modern, Classy

Logo for a Chocolate cafe uses Avant Garde Gothic for their identity.

Logo for premium award winning salon in Manly, Syd-ney.2009 - IdentityClient- CraniumDesign- Toko

Futuristic, Bold, Elegance

Legibility, Organisation, Construction

City Church Welcome pack2009- Corporate Identity, Information packClient- City Church BelfastDesign- Sort Design

Designers Institute of New Zealand- ‘09 Best Awards CampaignDesign- Everything DesignPhotography- Sandii McDonald

Simple and clean

Classic, modern

Open Studios Cornwall2007-2009-Event Identity and Marketing materialClient- Creative Skills, Cornwall, UKDesign-Two‘Avant garde was a natural choice.Its distinctive capital ‘O’ is a perfect circle. It looks clean, crisp with good legibilty.’

Strength of its character shapes

Weight and geometry

S SAYWHAT?People and their Opinions

StevenHeller,oneofLubalin’sfellowAIGA

medalists,notesthatthe“excessivenumberof

ligaturesweremisusedbydesignerswhohadno

understandingofhowtoemploythesetypographic

forms,”furthercommentingthat“AvantGardewas

Lubalin’ssignature,inhishandsithadcharacter;

inothers’itwasaflawedFutura-esqueface.”

“This is a bicameral stick-and-ball sanserif with very large x-height.” -Robert Bringhurst

“The world’s most abused typeface.” -Tony DiSpigna, a partner of Lubalin

“A collection of such extreme shapes causes fatigue at text sizes and cannot help but draw attention to itself, which is arguably the greatest sin a typeface can commit.”

“If an elegant sans serif font is needed for both display and text, I recommend the Interstate family from the Font Bureau and Franklin Gothic from ITC for text and the less homogenized versions from Bitsream for display.” - Alex W. White

“For use in extensive text the font’s rigid, uniform strokes will create eye problems right away. Additionally, the perfect circles in the round characters begin to form light spots or ‘holes’ in the text that disturb the calm texture of columns of type.” -Fred

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AlltheinformationpresentedintheBooklet

hasbeencompiledfromthefollowingsources.

Links:

www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/147

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Avant_Garde

www.rightreading.com/typehead/avant_garde.htm

typedeck.com

http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/display-text-

type/

Images taken from:

google.com

http://pinterest.com/chiliwasabi/avant-garde-typeface/

Book Referred:

I Love Type Series Vol. 2 ( I Love Avant Garde)

Firstly I would like to thank our guide,Tarun, for giving me such a wonderful typeface for my study and research and for being extremely patient and helpful throughout the course of this entire booklet, and making it an enlightening experience. I would also take this opportunity to express gratitude towards the Designers of Avant garde Gothic, Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase, for creating something that would be so “Avant Garde” and providing the world with an addictive Typeface that had ‘come to stay’. I also want to thank Mahendra Bhai for his technical guidance regarding the softwares and my seniors for their help and feedback and lastly all my batchmates for their constant motivation and support in the journey.

Thank You.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Noopur ChoksiGDPD Graphic DesignSem 3, 2012-13

TypographyGuide : Tarun Deep Girdher