Avenir
Avenir is a sans-serif font created by Adrian Frutiger and released in 1988. Its name, “Avenir” means “future” in French. It drew inspiration from early 20th century fonts such as Futura and Erbar that were known to be very geometric. However, Avenir was meant to maintain the same geometric style while also being more organic. This was done with more traditional typeface details such as the double-storey “a” , curved “t”, and imperfect circles on letters such as “o”. Frutiger wanted to use 20th century influences to create a font that would appear more “human” and also meet modern “typographical needs”.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
For this exercise I played with different fonts and punctuation. I found that adding quotations could add an extra layer of meaning, such as irony.
Exercise 3
Typographical Exercise 1
Typographical Exercise 2
Typographical Exercise 4
Typographical Exercise 6
Exercise 4 — Poster
I started this project by experimenting with the letters and opacity options on illustrator. I knew I wanted the letters to be the main focus of the poster, so I incorporated the t and the a into the main design. I chose t and a because they are significant to avenir as they are important examples of the more “human” aspects of avenir. I originally wanted to go with a yellow, red, and blue color scheme to represent early 20th century influences; however, it turned out to be too messy. I instead decided to go with black letters instead. I also decided to block different parts of the background with different colors to bring out the shape of the letters.
Final Submission
For my final submission, I added a white outline to help accentuate the curves of the a and the t. I also changed the color scheme to be 3 colors, so that the poster would seem less cluttered and messy. The orange red worked nicely with the black letters, as well as having very good contrast with the white. Finally I decided to incorporate the character set into the design . I also aligned the text to the t to make the design seem less jarring.
