While I’ve liked Futura for a while, especially having seen it around from street signage to books, I recently came across Avenir and liked the bit more comfortable look. Avenir was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988. He described it as:
…intended to be nothing more or less than a clear and clean representation of modern typographical trends, giving the designer a typeface which is strictly modern and at the same time human, i.e., suitably refined and elegant for use in texts of any length.
What’s also special is that each of its varieties (sizes and weights), were uniquely designed for versatility in different contexts, especially print where it is well regarded for use in books with large amounts of text.
Hello Reader! If you’re new here (and like my writing!), you may want to subscribe in order to get the freshest doses of business & design. Choose from either the RSS feed or get an email subscription (daily or weekly option). Thanks for visiting!
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
By remarkable (or not) coincidence, I’ve found myself turning to Avenir on the past three heavy-type jobs.
Great minds, or just fellow obsessives?
Probably both! It’s always nice to find something new and different. The semi-artDeco and utilitarian look of Futura is great, especially since I like geometric sans serif faces. But when I saw Avenir in a book recently, I jumped for joy at finding an alternative that wasn’t so staid, erect, and inflexible while at the same time not resorting to humanist measures in an attempt to relax.
I love Avenir over Futura because Futura became overused as the Helvetica alternative. Now, since you outed poor Avenir, it will likely become overused, too.
Thanks for ruining the secret, Mario.
My pleasure, more to come. Akzidenz Grotesk or Univers are great alternatives to Helvetica too.
Mario,
I know fonts are important (I’m married to a designer). But I just can’t get excited about them. I just want readable. Frankly, I think for folks over 40, especially those of us with glasses, Avenir is a difficult font to spend any time with. I would not use it at my site, nor any site whose readers weren’t skewed toward the 20/30 somethings.
Remember, it is about our readers, not about us. Love your passion, my friend.
Lewis,
I hear ya. But you know graphic designers have to think about context and intent. If the application results in less-than-acceptable performance in some regard, the design has failed. Remember, readability can also be improved through size, weight, kerning, and tracking.
Most of the fonts I display here on my site are hard to judge, because of the poor resolution at 72dpi. Hence my usual blowing them up and carefully adjusting the anti-aliasing so as to become legible. A printed example will give them their full glory.
Do you like Futura better? Is there a favorite sans serif font you like? Thanks for the compliment, btw.