Avant Garde Gothic Alternates Are Back

ITC Avant Garde Gothic’s alts are a trade­mark of ’60s and ’70s design, but have seen a huge resur­gence of late. Maligned by some, sought by many, Herb Lubalin’s logo-turned-typeface has become a go-​to font for hip­sters and fash­ion mags the world over. Thanks to our part­ner, Elsner+Flake, The Avant Garde ligs and alts are now back in dig­i­tal form. Now you too can com­bine ‘P’ and ‘R’ in a most unnat­ural way. Yum.

Here are some more exam­ples of design­ers who have fallen victim to the charms of the Avant Garde alter­nates and ligatures:

SystmEdit Magazine by Getty Imageslogo for Dominant
Keith Tam's gallery of old Avant Garde Letraset dry transfer sheetsposter for folk singer Damien Ricealbum cover for Travis

Release announce­ment in our Feb­ru­ary Newslet­ter »
The rest of the Avant Garde Gothic family »
Jürgen Siebert (of FontShop Ger­many) on Avant Garde »
Alex White on Avant Garde »

UPDATE

By using the new ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro and its built-​in Open­Type lig­a­tures and alter­nates you have a far easier access to all the spe­cific pos­si­bil­i­ties than using a sep­a­rate font.

FontShop’s ACS

But this new release comes with a caveat: The ital­ics in this ver­sion are simply-​slanted obliques, so if proper ital­ics are more impor­tant than access to alts and ligs, the savvy shop­per should still choose the E+F version.

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8 Comments:

I’m lovin’ all these new Avant Garde alter­nates. But don’t you think that it is odd set­ting a book about Kubrick’s archives with it? I mean, didn’t he have a pro­found obses­sion with Futura? Yes, I know that the two are sim­i­lar, and I know that Avant Garde just oozes 70s hip­ness, but still… I would have spec’d Futura here. Or?

Posted by Dan Reynolds on Sep. 9, 2005

Are the met­rics from these alter­nate lig­a­tures com­pat­able with ITC’s Avant Garde? Or do have to buy E+F ver­sions to be con­sis­tant?

Posted by Mike Diaz on Sep. 12, 2005

Mike - This Alter­nate family was designed to be used with the Scan­graphic SH ver­sion of ITC Avant Garde Gothic, so that’s the only ver­sion I can con­fi­dently rec­om­mend with­out tweak­ing.

Posted by Stephen Coles on Sep. 13, 2005

Thank you so much for the rapid response. I’m glad I asked the ques­tion because there is so much dis­par­ity amongst foundrys. Take gara­mond for instance. Every­one make this type­face yet there are all incom­pat­able with each other.

I’m not rich. So I have to choose the best iter­a­tions from the best foundries oth­er­wise I’ll be stuck with col­lec­tion of bad type that I can’t use.

While I’m here, I need to say that I find it odd that the most excep­tional aspect of the Avant Garde family are the Alter­nates. Why is it that ITC has neglected this typo­graphic gem? It’s not even on their own web­site!

As cited in your graphic exam­ples, the Alter­nates have a rel­e­vance and an edge that other face cannot approach.

Mike

Posted by Mike Diaz on Sep. 16, 2005

I’m look­ing for a font sim­i­lar to Avant Garde Gothic, that has a weight between extra light and book. Any ideas?

Posted by Kate on Feb. 23, 2006

Here are a few ideas, Kate. The Light weights of Futura, Prox­ima Nova, Avenir, and Futura Maxi.

Posted by Stephen Coles on Feb. 26, 2006

Now I have a ques­tion regard­ing these. The images uptop in your post, what is the font used along with the alter­nates? I viewed the com­plete set of the alter­nates and the let­ters don’t look like that. I’m specif­i­cally asking about the Dom­i­nant and Edge Dark images.

Posted by Kay on Feb. 12, 2009

Hi Kay. Some of these lig­a­ture sam­ples were custom made by the graphic designer, not all come directly from the font.

Posted by Stephen Coles on Feb. 12, 2009

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