Avenir is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988, and released by Linotype GmbH, now a subsidiary of Monotype Corporation.
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 geometric types. While similarities 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 originally released in 1988 with three weights, each with a roman and oblique version, and used Frutiger’s two-digit weight and width convention for names: 45 (book); 46 (book oblique); 55 (text weight); 56 (text weight oblique); and, 75 (bold) and 76 (bold oblique). The typeface family was later expanded to six weights, each with a roman and oblique version.
Avenir Next
In 2004, Frutiger, together with Linotype in-house type designer Akira Kobayashi, reworked the Avenir family to address on-screen display issues. The result was titled Avenir Next. The typeface family was increased to 24 fonts: 6 weights, each with a roman and italic version, in 2 widths: normal and condensed. Frutiger's numbering system was abandoned in favor of more conventional weight names. The glyph set was expanded to include small caps, old style figures, subscripts and superscripts, ligatures.
Janna
Janna is an Arabic variant designed by Nadine Chahine, based on the original Avenir. Janna, which means “heaven” in Arabic, was first designed in 2004 as a signage face for the American University of Beirut. The Arabic glyphs are based on the previously released Frutiger Arabic, but were made more angular.
Two roman fonts, in regular and bold weights, were produced. It supports ISO Adobe 2, Latin Extended, Arabic, Persian, and Urdu characters, and tabular numerals for the supported languages.
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 as principal typeface in its corporate identity. The font was chosen when design bureau Eden Design & Communication won a city wide competition. Eden contracted Thonik for the new design.[1]
BBC Two has also begun to use Avenir as its main corporate font in its logo and identity, another shift away from the once universal use of the Gill Sans font across all of the BBC's output.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport uses Avenir extensively as a part of its way-finding signage and brand identity.
Key Bank has begun using Avenir in its advertising and signage.
Avenir 45 Book is used internally and externally throughout the Spokane, WA based Red Lion Hotel Corporation.
Philadelphia based SIG (Susquehanna International Group) uses Avenir as its main font for corporate identity and branding.
Avenir is used by the Japan Airlines group quite extensively, including the words “Japan Airlines” painted on the sides of aircraft.
In 2008, Wake Forest University adopted Avenir as its primary sans serif typeface as part of its project to update the university's visual identity, noting that the font "...conveys the balance, simplicity and strength of our University." [2]
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 of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
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