![]() However, the revenue stream made from font sales gives this a disingenuous ring.Īvant Garde was not originally designed as a commercial typeface. In fact, having seen so many abominable applications by addicts like myself, I once heard Lubalin curse the day that Avant Garde was released to the public. Nobody, not even the face’s creator Herb Lubalin, could stop me. Since I had the fonts on my Phototypositor I got kicks making the most flagrantly absurd ligature combinations imaginable. Although I haven’t touched the stuff in almost thirty years, when the face was in its prime, I was hopelessly addicted. I know because I am a recovering Avant Garde abuser. The reason is a surfeit of angular ligatures that offer too many cheap tricks. But few typefaces have been victimized more than the late-sixties/early-seventies gothic Avant Garde – and the felonies persist. It still has a lot to say.Ĭrimes against typography are committed everyday. Avant Garde deserves a close investigation and appreciation. It’s a balance that magazines still strive for today. Ralph didn’t interfere in the design and Herb didn’t meddle in the editorial content. The strong content and the inventive design of Avant Garde is a testament to a close understanding that developed between Ginzburg and Lubalin, but also of a mutual respect of the boundaries set by each side. The magazine ran for 3 years, spanning 14 square-sized issues, and only folded due to Ralph Ginzburg losing his long-running legal battle with the US government over obscenity charges (partly stemming from Ralph’s and Herb’s first collaboration Eros magazine). The magazine’s logo, which inspired the typeface, is a perfect encapsulation of what the magazine represented in 1968, the year the magazine launched: exciting, vibrant, edgy, with just the right amount of playfulness to move it out of the corporateness its geometric sans serif forms might otherwise imply. A typeface that reveled in the mutability of letterforms, exhibited brilliantly by its extensive set of ligatured characters. The two previous magazines came to unexpected demise due to their candor and provocativeness, that landed them into legal trouble.Īvant Garde is the magazine that gave birth to a much maligned and equally lauded typeface of the same name. It represents the third major collaboration between Ralph Ginzburg and Herb Lubalin, the magazine’s talented art director. The magazine was the brainchild of Ralph Ginzburg, an eager and zealous publisher, even if the path that led to Avant Garde wasn’t so straightforward. Avant Garde is a seminal, but somewhat overlooked by a wider public, magazine, which broke taboos, rattled some nerves and made a few enemies.
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