ITC Avant Garde
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| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Neo-grotesque sans-serif |
| Designer(s) | Herb Lubalin, Tom Carnase |
| Foundry | International Typeface Corporation |
| Date released | 1970-1977 |
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a font family based on the logo font used in the Avant Garde magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin's design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface.
The condensed fonts were drawn by Ed Benguiat in 1974, and the obliques were designed by André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt in 1977.
The original designs include one version for setting headlines and one for text copy. However, in the initial digitization, only the text design was chosen, and the ligatures and alternate characters were not included.
The font family consists of 5 weights (4 for condensed), with complementary obliques for widest width fonts.
When ITC released the OpenType version of the font, the original 33 alternate characters and ligatures, plus extra characters were included.
Elsner+Flake also issued the ligatures and alternate characters separately as Avant Garde Gothic Alternate.
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[edit] Cold Type versions
ITC 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.[1]
[edit] ITC Avant Garde Std
It 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.
[edit] ITC Avant Garde Multilingual
It 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.
[edit] ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro
It 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.[2]
[edit] ITC Avant Garde Mono
It 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.
[edit] William Sans LET
William Sans LET is a very similar font, but the "regular" typeface is known as "Plain 1.0".
[edit] Selected usage
- ITC Avant Garde Gothic is the currently main font for the logo of Meralco and Adidas
- ITC Avant Garde Gothic is one of the main typeface for Sony Corporation including AXN Asia and Fox Asia
- ITC Avant Garde Gothic is the font of the logo/name of the french producer David Guetta
[edit] Derivatives
ITC Lubalin Graph is a slab-serif version of ITC Avant Garde, also designed by Lubalin.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Lawson, Alexander, Archie Provan, and Frank Romano, Primer Metal Typeface Identification, National Composition Association, Arlington, Virginia, 1976, pp. 34 - 35.
- ^ Ain't What ITC Used to Be
- ^ ITC Lubalin Graph Font Family - by Herb Lubalin, Ed Benguiat
[edit] External links
- ITC Classics: ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro
- What's Hot From ITC: October 2005
- Type Trading Card #11
- ITC Avant Garde Gothic Font Family - by Herb Lubalin, Tom Carnase
- Paratype: ITC Avant Garde Gothic font
- FontShop: Avant Garde Gothic Alternate
- ITC Avant Garde Mono - now a suspended page
- Adobe - ITC Avant Garde Gothic Std Full Family
