Avenir (typeface)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Typeface | Avenir |
|---|---|
| Category | Sans-serif |
| Classifications | Geometric sans-serif |
| Designer(s) | Adrian Frutiger |
| Foundry | Mergenthaler Linotype Company |
| Date released | 1988 |
Avenir is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988, and released by Mergenthaler Linotype Company. The typeface is now licensed by Monotype Imaging.
The name Avenir is French for future, and takes inspiration from early geomeric sans-serif typefaces Erbar (1926) designed by Jakob Erbar, and Futura (1927) designed by Paul Renner. Frutiger intended Avenir to be a more organic, humanist interpretation of these highly geomteric types. While similarites can be seen with Futura , the two-story lowercase a is more like Erbar, and also recalls Frutiger's earlier namesake typeface Frutiger.
Avenir was originaly released in 1988 with three weights, each with a roman and oblique version, and used Fruiger's two-digit weight and width convention for names: 45 (book); 46 (book oblique); 55 ("roman"); 56 (roman oblique); and, 75 (bold) and 76 (bold oblique). The typeface family was later expanded to six weights, each with a roman and oblique version.
In 2004 Frutiger, together with in-house Linotype typeface designer Akira Kobayashi, reworked the Avenir family to address on-screen display issues and further increased the variants to 12: six weights, each with a roman and oblique version, in two widths: normal and condensed. The result was titled Avenir Next. Small capitals were added for every weight. In Avenir Next Frutiger's numbering system was abandoned in favor of more conventional weight names.
[edit] Usage
Avenir was immediately successful in print publishing. An improvement of hinting in Avenir Next has made for improved on-screen display, even in smaller point sizes. The city of Amsterdam uses Avenir extensively in its graphic identity.
BBC Two has also begun to use Avenir as its main corporate font for its channel logo and identity, another shift away from the once universal use of the Gill Sans font across all of the BBC's output.
[edit] References
- Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-300-10073-6.
- Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
- Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z pf Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
