THE ARE
AVANT-GARDE PEOPLE OR WORKS
THAT ARE OR
EXPERIMENTAL
INNOVATIVE,
PARTICULARLY WITH
RESPECT TO
ART, CULTURE, AND POLITICS. THE AVANT-GARDE
PUSHES THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IS AS THE
NORM
PRIMARILY IN THE
ACCEPTED
OR THE
STATUS QUO,
CULTURAL REALM.
CONTENTS Birth of Avant Garde 4 Herb Lubalin & Tom Carnese 8 The Typeface - ITC Avant Garde Gothic 12 Comparison 20 Usage & Application 22
BI RT H OF AV AN TG AR DE
Avant Garde was not originally Exasperated, Ginzburg and his wife Ginzburg continues, “The next morning, designed as a commercial typeface. It was the logo for a magazine that its editor and publisher Ralph Ginzburg explains was “a thoughtful, joyous magazine on art and politics” aimed at people ahead of their time. In other words, it was Avant Garde — thus the magazine’s title, coined by Ginzburg’s wife and collaborator, Shoshana, was Avant Garde. Ginzburg sent a lengthy editorial outline to help the art director of the publication, Herb Lubalin to develop the design scheme. Ginzburg recalls, “He came up with two beautiful logos, but they were all wrong for the publication I had in mind. One was based on the typeface used on the old original CocaCola bottles, another on Hebrew letters.
Shoshana visit Lubalin at his studio to explain the concept of the magazine to him one last time. “I asked him to picture a very modern, clean European airport (or the TWA terminal), with signs in stark black and white,” 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.”
driving to work from his home in Woodmere he pulled over to the side of the road and phoned me (the first time he ever did that). ‘Ralph, I’ve got it. You’ll see.’ And the rest is design history.” For his historic solution, Lubalin adapted gothic caps, something between Futura and Helvetica, and angular-ized the “A” and “V” so they fit together like a wedge of pie. He halved the “T” so that one half of it was part of the “N.” The perfectly round “G” carved into the angular “A”, which overlaid the mid-stroke and the second “A” in avant was an inclined extension of the “A” in garde, Both words were tightly letter-spaced to be perfectly stacked, and thus could fit as a block anywhere on the cover. According to Shoshana, “The distinctive slant of the “A” was exactly the line I had made in the air when showing him that ascending jet.” 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 crated more ligatures. After making a handful of these headlines, he realized there were almost enough characters to complete an entire alphabet and Avant Garde was born. 5
Left: Avant Garde Vol. 8 cover Right: Avant Garde Vol. 13 cover
HERB LUBALIN
TOM CARNASE
Lubalin designed startling Eros in the early 60s, intellectually and visually astringent Fact in the mid-60s, lush and luscious Avant Garde late in the same decade, and founded Upper and Lower Case in 1973. Lubalin’s typeface was a landmark design of the late 1960s with its fresh approach to letterforms and their interaction.
Herb Lubalin
Herb Lubalin was born in New York in 1918 and died in 1981. He studied at the Cooper Union, New York. In 1939, he produced work for the world exhibition in New York and was the art director for Deutsch & Shea Advertising. In 1945, He became the vice president of Sudler & hennesey Inc. New York. He founded Herb Lubalin Inc. in 1964. Later in 1970, he co-founded the International Typeface Corporation with Aaron Burns. Lubalin was a brilliant, iconoclastic advertising art director. Recipient of medal after medal, award after award, and in 1962 named Art Director of the Year by the National Society of Art Directors, he has also been a publication designer of great originality and distinction.
both of which influenced a generation of graphic designers. Some of his most significant early work came out of the design agency Lubalin, Smith, Carnase, Inc. (1969 - 1979) including Avant Garde. The design was based on initial sketches by Herb Lubalin for the magazine’s masthead design. Carnase, however, developed and drew many of the additional letterforms necessary for a full typeface, as well as additional weights and styles. In 1980, Carnase co-founded the World Typeface Center (WTC). He later opened an independent design studio in which he used his extraordinary lettering skills to create logos and corporate identity work that perfectly captured his clients’ products.
Tom Carnase has produced some of the most memorable product lettering and logographic designs of the last 50 years for a Who’s Who of corporate clients, including Brooks Brothers, Calvin Klein, Saks Fifth Avenue, Consumer Reports, Fortune magazine and L’eggs. In addition, he has designed, or co-designed, over 100 typefaces, including the iconic ITC Avant Garde Gothic and WTC Bodoni,
Tom Carnase
9
A trade advertisement designed by Lubalin to introduce the Avant Garde typeface. An excellent example of his work with the typeface’s tricky kerning and ligatures.
An undated photograph showing the principals who formed the International Typeface Corporation: Herb Lubalin, Edward Rondthaler and Aaron Burns.
11
THE TYPEFACE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC
ABCDEFGHIJKLM N O P Q R ST UV W XY Z abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 .,< > ? /“ ( ) ! # $ % ^ & \ ;:
Avant Garde was the first typeface release by International Typeface Creation (ITC) when the company was founded in 1970 by Herb Lubalin, Edward Rondthaler and Aaron Burns.The font family is classified as a geometric sans serif design, meaning that its basic shapes appear to be constructed from circles and straight lines. The design of Avant Garde is reminiscent of the work from 1920s German Bauhaus movement. ITC Avant Garde is characterized by its geometrically perfect round strokes and short lines. Nearly every letter that involves a curve—such as the “a” or “p,” for example—consist of perfect circles and small, straight lines. These lines are subtle, heightening the dramatic roundness of the curved aspects of each letter.
Avant Garde
is an intelligentsia that develops new or experimental concepts especially in the arts.
14
Letterforms built of circles and clean lines are highly effective for tight layouts, bold 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 alternatives and ligatured characters and strong design personality, the typeface also broke new stylistic ground for typeface creation. The ITC Avant Garde Gothic family is made up of five weights and four condensed designs, all with corresponding italics (obliques). The condensed designs were drawn by Ed Benguiat in 1974, and obliques were designed by André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt in 1977.
R WG K Q
R has an open counter, bowl doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t close
Flat ends in M and W
Low crossbar on G
Arms of K meetat the mid-point of the stem
Curve on the tail of capital Q
g p q y ij Descenders of g, p, q, and y are short
Square titles on i and j
IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS 15
ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC X LIGHT ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC X LIGHT OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC X LIGHT CONDENSED ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC X LIGHT CONDENSED OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOOK ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOOK OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOOK CONDENSED ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOOK CONDENSED OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC MEDIUM ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC MEDIUM OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC MEDIUM CONDENSED ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC MEDIUM CONDENSED OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC DEMI ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC DEMI OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC DEMI CONDENSED ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC DEMI CONDENSED OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOLD ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOLD OBLIQUE ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOLD CONDENSED ITC AVANT GARDE GOTHIC BOLD CONDENSED OBLIQUE 16
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is legible at all point sizes. 6 pt
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is legible at all point sizes. 8 pt
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is legible at all point sizes. 10 pt
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is legible at all point sizes. 12 pt
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is not preferred for body text due to extreme geometric shapes and width of the letterforms which create readability issues. 14 pt
IT CANNOT HELP BUT DRAW ATTENTION TO ITSELF AND IS THEREFORE IDEAL FOR DISPLAY TEXT. 20 pt
Letterforms built of circles and clean lines are highly effective for bigger point size. 24 pt
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a display font meant to be used for headlines and short texts. 28 pt 17
In typography, a ligature is a special character consisting of two or more joined letters. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are a part of a more general class of glyphs called “contextual form” where the specific shape or a letter depends on content such as surrounding letters or proximity to the end of a line.
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. When ITC released the OpenType version of the font, the original 33 alternate characters and ligatures, plus extra characters were included.
One of the most attractive yet misunderstood characteristic of Avant Garde is its ligatures. This sets it apart from similar geometric fonts. These designs push the typeface’s geometry profile even further allowing it to be more than just a static font. Avant Garde’s ligature were designed to deal with fitting the text into tight spaces and was strictly used for titles on headings, never for content.
Steven Heller, one of Lubalin’s fellow AIGA medalists, notes that the “excessive number of ligatures were misused by designers who had no understanding of how to employ these typographic forms”. Regardless of Avant Garde’s future uses, Lubalin’s original magazine logo was and remains highly influential in typographic design.
18
19
CO M
N O I PARIS
This is Avant Garde. This is Century Gothic. This is Futura.
a a a u u u i i i M M M
Century Gothic
Futura
Avant Garde
ITC Avant Garde Gothic can be compared with Futura and Century Gothic based on their shared similarities and differences which cannot be overlooked. All three typefaces belong to the same family of geometric sans serif typeface. Century Gothic is geometric sans serif typeface designed for Monotype Imaging in 1991. Futura is geometric sans serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renne.
Being geometric typefaces, all these have Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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. Century Gothic and Futura does not have a descender on lower case u, whereas Avant Garde does. Century Gothic has a large x-height and more even stroke width as compared to Futura. Century Gothic and Futura have larger, rounder titles on letters such as i and j whereas Avant Garde keeps the titles square and the same width as the letter stroke.
The M and W of all the three typefaces are different in terms of the angle of the stem which are perpendicular in Avant Garde and flared in Century Gothic and Futura.
21
USAGE & APPLICATION
Avant Garde is a deceptively difficult typeface to use well, and many designers lacked the necessary understanding of Lubalinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s letterform to make it work. Experience has shown that it truly does only work in carefully crafted combination, that balances the tight requirement of the letterspacing with legibility. After being released commercially, the font quickly became overused. However, Avant Garde remains extremely popular to this day. Avant Garde is mordern, dynamic, bold, contemporary, fashionable, futuristic, and clean. ITC Avant Garde Gothic is currently the main font for the logo of ADIDAS and MERALCO. It is the font of the logo/ name of the French music producer DAVID GUETTA, Canadian singer JUSTIN BIEBER, British singer ADELE, Spanish singer ENRIQUE IGLESIAS. The TV series GLEE uses Avant Garde in lower case for their identity. ITC Avant Garde appears in the logo/ name of the 1986 FIFA WORLD CUP.
The 1975 AUDI FOX advertisements used the Avant Garde Gothic family of fonts. 23
“Avant Garde was Lubalin’s signature, in his hands it had character; in other’s it was a flawed Futura-esque face.”
—STEVEN HELLER
“THE ONLY PLACE AVANT GARDE LOOKS GOOD IS IN THE WORDS
AVANT GARDE.” —ED BENGUIAT
“THE WORLD’S MOST ABUSED TYPEFACE.” —TONY DI SPIGNA
“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.”
—ALEX W. WHITE
—HERB LUBALIN
Vishakha Shah Lab Pro 2014-2015 Ecole Intiut Lab, Mumbai Guided by: Minal Nairi