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CIRCLES ARE PRAISED, NOT THAT ABOUND IN LARGENESS, BUT THE EXACTLY ROUND. EDMUND WALLER
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CONTENTS 5 FUTURA 6 GILL SANS 9 AVANT GARDE 1O AVENIR 13 GOTHAM
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PAUL RENNER
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V The goal of every attempt to give shape is to make out of different things a whole, out of diversity a unity, and not to reduce a whole to disconnected parts.
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FUTURA Paul Renner, a leading proponent of the New Typography movement, designed Futura with Bauhaus’s typographic communication principles in mind. He believed that typography should be, at the root of all things, functional; and from that principle, Futura was born in 1927. First drawn using only t-squares and compasses, this simple geometric typeface is comprised of near perfect circles, triangles and squares. Renner eliminated all flourishes, creating a stream-lined typeface that, 90 years after its creation, is still acclaimed for its distinctly modern look.
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GILL SANS Stanley Morison commissioned Eric Gill to create Gill Sans in 1928 to combat the deluge of sans-serif designs— particularly Futura, Erbar and Kabel—coming out of Germany. But it also takes inspiration from the signage alphabet in the London Underground, the creation of Gill’s longtime mentor Edward Johnston. One of the most humanistic of sans-serif fonts, Gill Sans was based on Roman letter forms not geometric shapes. It is also distinguished by its higher contrast in stroke widths than most sans-serif fonts.
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You don’t draw an ‘A’ and then stand back and say; there, that gives you a good idea of an ‘A’ as seen through an autumn mist. Letters are things not pictures of things.
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ERIC GILL
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HERB LUBALIN
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What I do is not really typography, which is essentially a mechanical means of putting characters down on a page. It’s designing with letters..
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AVANT GARDE Designed to capture Ralph Ginzburg’s innovative, creative vision for his magazine Avant Garde, ITC Avant Garde was intended for one logo. But due to high demand, Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase developed the full typeface in 1970. ITC Avant Garde’s many ligatures and geometric forms—particularly circles and straight lines—made it a recognizable, futuristic and desirable type face. However, it was quickly misunderstood and became what Tony DiSpigna, an ITC partner, described as “the most abused typeface in the world.”
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AVENIR Adrian Frutiger designed Avenir in 1988, intending it to be a “clear and clean representation of modern typographical trends, giving the designer a typeface which is strictly modern and at the same time humane.” Unlike Gill Sans, Avenir mostly maintains its geometry, except for a few distinguishing letters like the classically drawn ‘a.’ Using the stylistic developments of the 20th century and the linear structures of typefaces like Futura, Frutiger created a highly legible, modern typeface that lives up to his intentions and its name—“avenir” is French for “future.”
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I have learned that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.
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ADRIAN FRUTIGER
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TOBIAS FRERE-JONES
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We see type as the clothes that words wear. You have more than one outfit in your closet because you don’t wear the same thing to the office that you wear to the beach.
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GOTHAM Tobias Frere-Jones was originally commissioned by GQ in 2000 to create a typeface that emulated the magazine’s tone—masculine, new and fresh—but Frere-Jones was inspired by and wished to preserve old New York and its lettering. Gotham was created to do both. Its 1920s era sans-serif influences gave it an honest and confident tone, but allow it to maintain its modernity. Gotham now marks the cornerstone for the freedom towner at the world trade center site.
COPYRIGHT 2012
RACHEL WEEKS SOURCES PAUL RENNER BY LOGAN DELANGE A BRIEF HISTORY OF AVANT GARDE BY DUANE KING GILL SANS BY FONTS.COM AVENIR NEXT BY FONTS.COM GOTHAM BY TYPOGRAPHY.COM