Avant Garde

Created by Herb Lubalin in 1968, this font family was based on the font used for the logo of Avant Garde Magazine. 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 font family consists of 5 weights (4 for condensed), with complementary obliques for widest width fonts.

In 1964, Lubalin started his own design consultation firm named Herb Lubalin, Inc. (mighty original). During these years, he collaborated with Ralph Ginzburg on Eros, Fact and Avant Garde where he served as creative director and designer for these publications.

Lubalin’s letterforms with tight-fitting combinations reflected Ginzburg’s desire to capture the advanced, the innovative and the creative in a font. The character fit was so perfectly tight that they created a futuristic, instantly recognisable identity for the publication.

Later he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin’s design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface.

“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.”

Tony DiSpigna, one of Lubalin’s partners and co-creator of ITC Lubalin Graph and ITC Serif Gothic, has been quoted as saying, “The first time Avant Garde was used was one of the few times it was used correctly. It’s become the most abused typeface in the world.” Ed Benguiat, one of type’s legends and a friend of Lubalin’s, commented,

“The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde. Everybody ruins it. They lean the letters the wrong way.”

Steven Heller also noted that the “excessive number of ligatures were misused by designers who had no understanding of how to employ these typographic forms,”
further commenting that
“Avant Garde was Lubalin’s signature, and in his hands it had character; in others’ it was a flawed Futura-esque face.”

I disagree with this statement, while the initial intent of the font has changed. I’d argue that it’s evolved. While it doesn’t have the symmetry of it’s original design. I rather like the sporadic yet uniform nature of the typeface, making it more novel and exciting in my opinion.

Because of its decorative nature, Avant Garde hasn’t been widely used in advertising. It has a retro feel while still having a modern look. It’s extremely tight fitting with very little gap between lettering and it’s slopping nature makes it even more compact. Its chic, a little bit euortrash and very eyecatching.


References

http://www.rightreading.com/typehead/avant_garde.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Avant_Garde
http://www.itcfonts.com/Fonts/Classics/AvantGardeGothicPro.htm
http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/147

-Ray Ali