Avenir Font—Epee Defeat: Designed for Graphic Designers, Master’s Self-challenge

Avenir──Epee sword for defeat

Jin Yong mentioned the sword demon Dugu Qiubai several times in Jin Yong's novels. Among them, "The Legend of Condor Heroes" has more ink. Use it to compete with the heroes of Heshuo... the epee has no sharp edge, and its great skill is useless. Before the age of forty, it will run rampant in the world." And other words, and outside the sword mound, I saw the inscription "After the age of forty, don't stay in things , grass, trees, bamboo and rocks can all be swords. Since then, I have been intensively practicing, and gradually progressing to the realm where no sword is better than a sword."

So poetic, perhaps Mr. Jin Yong used the life of Sword Demon to express his admiration for the craftsman who pursued craftsmanship all his life; and Avenir, to font master Adrian Frutiger, is the "big ingenuity", A dark iron epee that seeks defeat in a single battle.

Comparison of Avenir with the geometric designs of Futura (1927) and Erbar Grotesk (1922).

A peaceful dream in the era of explosion

"Avenir" means "future" in French. Smart classmates may have already thought of another set of classic fonts Futura (1927) that came out more than 60 years ago.

Mr. Frutiger said that he didn't mean to compete with Futura, but just associated with the language. In fact, the upsurge of geometric font style brought by Erbar Grotesk, Futura, etc. in the early 1920s was far from the age, and it was not successful in his eyes. He believes that in order to present the aesthetic quality brought by geometric shapes, this type of font sacrifices the comfort necessary for human eyes to read. This is not appropriate from the perspective of font design—at least, these fonts are difficult to apply to text.

The 1980s happened to be the return of avant-garde thinking—it was an era that accompanied the vigorous development of personal computers and electronic music technology, pursued all impacts, and was full of fantasies about the future. Avant Garde Gothic is popular in the graphic design industry A new class of geometric designs.

Therefore, Mr. Frutiger resolutely made a sound in the background of the noisy era, and published that concise and quiet tribute──Avenir. Even if it is objectively excellent, and Mr. Frutiger’s greatest energy was devoted to the design, at that time, this work undoubtedly ran counter to the trend, and it can also be said to be a product that was gambled with his identity and status. As a result, we also know that it can hardly be called a success, and his design has also been greatly reduced in production since then.

Avenir's O vs. Perfect Circle: Can You See the Difference?

One second on stage, ten years off stage—forty years of hard work

Joke that Avenir is an epee, because it is the work of the master, but it also matches his design concept.

It is mentioned in his autobiography: At first, Avenir's design started from a perfect circle drawn by a compass, in order to match the spirit of the design with the geometric school; The thickness of the ends decreases until his eyes feel that the horizontal and vertical thickness are the same, and there is no difference--until he feels "it is an O"--it is no longer a circle.

He emphasized that Avenir's O is not like Univers can tell it is an O at a glance. That is the typeface he carved out on the stubborn stone of geometric circles like a solitary begging for defeat──Avenir is the work of more than 40 years of typeface design experience. A set can only feel the thickness changes by feeling sans serif font.

The thickness and thickness of Avenir complement each other, showing the ingenuity of the master typeface. The character level system published by Mr. Frutiger in 1954 is also a typical representative of Swiss rational design at its peak: a distance of 20 between numbers represents a clear set of thick and thin fields; a distance of 10 represents complementary thickness. However, even though this hierarchical system is very practical, it was abandoned by font manufacturers at a later time because of its inhumanity.

Six trompe l'oeil games

Because of the nature of Avenir's master self-challenge, its six thicknesses are very interesting.

Perhaps graphic designers have also discovered in their daily work that if the same set of thick and thin fonts are placed on a black background, our eyes will deceive us and make the font look thicker. The information hierarchy will be messed up, which will cause a lot of trouble for designers who need to use scissors to typesetting in the era of planting characters. In case the background color needs to be added temporarily to the work, the entire layout needs to be rearranged.

Based on Avenir, it is specially designed for graphic designers. These six sets of thick and thin designs are based on the principle of trompe l'oeil, so the black and white background colors complement each other. For example, if the thickness of "45 Book" is used on a white background, it will look the same as "35 Light" on a black background. In this way, the user experience will not worry about changing due to the background color, so that the designer has a bottom line in mind.

This is undoubtedly Mr. Frutiger's caring for graphic designers──In his autobiography, he said that Avenir is basically suitable for any graphic design occasion (Note 1). For italics, from the beginning to the end, he believes that sans serifs should not have italics, so it is only for commercial needs, and only use optical instruments to distort the regular body to make italics (Oblique).

Avenir "I amsterdam" outside the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rijksmuseum_Amsterdam_1.jpg

Sounds of Amsterdam

The most well-known use of Avenir today should be the city brand image of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It complements the feeling of Amsterdam, and matches this friendly and interesting city. It is young and friendly. The true style of the model.

It’s just that it’s not as popular as its big brothers Univers and Frutiger outside of Europe. I think one of the reasons is that Mr. Frutiger emphasized its high neutrality in design, and there are not many word levels and unknown characters. , even with an interesting sense of transparency like fresh air, was neglected in the font market for many years.

The rough breakdown of Avenir and Avenir Next: In my opinion, the former is the master’s self-persistence, and Avenir Next, which Mr. Akira Kobayashi operated, successfully brought Avenir back to reality.

Avenir Next: Break Through Persistence

Then Avenir Next, which was operated by Mr. Akira Kobayashi, successfully persuaded Mr. Frutiger to give up his obsession with thickness, and brought the design concept of Avenir back to the practical level. Each level of thickness has obvious differences and uses. Awareness, X-height ratios and weight levels are also based on computer font considerations. Moreover, the extra-thick design that Mr. Frutiger put on the shelf is also officially launched, and it is paired with Italic with visual correction. With the help of Mr. Kobayashi Akira's superb font drawing skills, the skill has been improved to a higher level. Avenir font Also more complete.

It wasn't until 2012, a few years before Mr. Frutiger passed away, that Apple deliberately packaged Avenir and Avenir Next on OS X Mountain Lion. Previously, Mr. Frutiger's avant-garde consideration of thickness played a great role in the field of user experience design (User Experience Design), which is very sensitive to color background and information level, and its versatility has been eye-catching.

Even though his thoughtfulness was recognized thirty years later, this set of sans-serifs, which was once seriously underestimated, was able to walk back to the table in the end.

Mr. Frutiger’s design does not have Italic design at all, only “Oblique” made by machine, which is based on his persistence in sans-serif “no italic”; Mr. Akira Kobayashi Avenir Next rejoins italic with a full visual fix.

Postscript: 30 years ahead of font design vision

Today's visual language and the spirit of the times undoubtedly emphasize the comfort, atmosphere and white balance of the layout.

Compared with the sophisticated fonts of Univers and Frutiger, Mr. Frutiger puts away the refinement of the master, in exchange for an eternal youthful mood. The air transparency of Avenir and Avenir Next is displayed on the screen of mobile phones and tablets The performance is outstanding, which caters to the taste of a relatively young group of UX designers.

Personally, I especially like the Medium weight, because it can fully reflect the extreme craftsmanship of Mr. Frutiger and Mr. Akira Kobayashi. In his autobiography, he said: "The difference between the thickness of Avenir is not visible, but can only be felt." The uniformity of Medium thickness will not cause unnecessary gaps in feelings, warm and reassuring, which just reflects the spirit of the times in this year Bar.

The words and pictures are taken from the collection and autobiography of Mr. Frutiger: "Adrian Frutiger Typefaces. The Complete Works"

Note 1: Avenir has been widely used in Hong Kong International Airport and Taiwan Taoyuan Airport. However, Avenir is not suitable for use in the indicator system, and Mr. Adrian Frutiger designed the Frutiger font or Mr. Kobayashi Akira for help The Neue Frutiger is designed for indicator systems and is recommended.

Note: This article is authorized to be reproduced to: Hong Kong designer Xu Hanwen

Original source: https://medium.com/@juliushui/avenir-%E9%87%8D%E5%8A% 8D%E6%B1%82%E6%95%97-893a9c63c2c8