ITC Avant Garde

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a geometric sans serif font family based on the logo font used in the Avant Garde magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, and then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin's design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface.

ITC Avant Garde
CategorySans-serif
ClassificationGeometric sans-serif
Designer(s)Herb Lubalin, Tom Carnase
FoundryInternational Typeface Corporation
Date released1970-1977

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 five weights (four 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.

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]

Digital versions

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]

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.

William Sans LET

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

Derivatives

ITC Lubalin Graph is a slab-serif version of ITC Avant Garde, also designed by Lubalin.[3]

Uses

Rede Globo

Since 1976, Rede Globo uses a custom version of the ITC Avant Garde font for its wordmark and for another of its logos. [4]

PBS

The 1971 PBS logo uses this font for its full broadcaster name text.

Master of None

The Netflix TV series, Master of None, famously used the font for its title cards. The title itself uses ITC Avant Garde Gothic with alternatives.[5]

Rock Band

The video games, one through three, use the font for its menus. In the first game, the alternative characters are mainly used.[6][7]

Defected Records

Defected Records uses the ITC Avant Garde Bold font for their Logos and Posters.[8][9][10]

Stranger Things

Used in the show's title sequence for the actors' and actresses' names fading in and out.

Eurovision Song Contest 2011

Main font of the show. Used in slogan and voting scoreboard.[11]

Miscellaneous

Royal Air Force logo uses Avant Garde typeface with alternatives until 2014.

The Macy's logo uses Avant Garde typeface in its extra light style until 2019.

Vehicle registration plates of Texas used Avant Garde typeface for the state name on Passenger base plates from 1986 to 1990, and until 2002 on handicap and personalized plates.

Similar
  • URW Gothic L is a similar font with identical metrics, intended for use as a replacement for ITC Avant Garde in the PostScript Base 35 fonts for the Ghostscript program. The font has since been released under free and open source terms.
  • TeX Gyre Adventor is an open-source extension of the above font adding many new characters, and special alternate glyphs.

See also

References
  1. Lawson, Alexander, Archie Provan, and Frank Romano, Primer Metal Typeface Identification, National Composition Association, Arlington, Virginia, 1976, pp. 34 - 35.
  2. Ain't What ITC Used to Be
  3. ITC Lubalin Graph Font Family - by Herb Lubalin, Ed Benguiat
  4. "Por que não se deve usar a fonte AvantGarde • IFDBlog". IFD Comunicação (in Portuguese). 2006-04-25. Retrieved 2020-02-17.
  5. "Master of None Logo?? - forum | dafont.com". www.dafont.com. Retrieved 2018-07-21.
  6. "Rock Band Fonts — Harmonix Forums". forums.harmonixmusic.com. Retrieved 2018-12-30.
  7. "Rock Band Credits Part 1". Retrieved 2018-12-30.
  8. "Fonts Logo » Defected Logo Font". fontslogo.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  9. "Font ?! - forum | dafont.com". www.dafont.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  10. "YOU ARE DEFECTED - forum | dafont.com". www.dafont.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  11. "The Branding Source". brandingsource.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2020-01-13.
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