A Surfeit of Angular Ligatures That Offer Too Many Cheap Tricks

July 26, 2021 2:41 PM

A collaboration between Ralph Ginzburg (editor) and Herb Lubalin (art director), Avant Garde is partly remembered for its radical politics and embrace of erotic content ... But probably the greatest legacy of the magazine is the logo Lubalin designed, which gave birth to the Avant Garde typeface that still lives today. A Complete Digitization of the 1960s Magazine Avant Garde: From John Lennon’s Erotic Lithographs to Marilyn Monroe’s Last Photos [Open Culture; some NSFW images]
posted by chavenet (5 comments total)

Completely un-fond memories of an Amiga computer magazine that was set entirely in Avant Garde. Made the damn thing unreadable
posted by scruss at 3:03 PM on July 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yeah...As much as I love using Avant Garde, it's definitely not a font for body copy. Any designer who sets 10pt AG for text is not doing the profession any favors.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:10 PM on July 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

Excellent. I love Avant Garde, both magazine and font. And Lubalin was a genius.
posted by Liquidwolf at 3:18 PM on July 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Those magazine covers are terrific.
posted by gwint at 5:42 PM on July 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

My mom had about a half-dozen issues of Avant Garde sitting on a bookshelf; I must have been eleven or twelve when I found them. I leafed through them, amazed, and a sudden suspicion took root in my mind. I remember running to find my mom and, breathless, asking her if she'd been a hippie in the 60s.

"Of course not, sweetie," she replied. "The hippies had money."

Anyway, Avant Garde introduced me to the art of George Tooker, so that was cool.
posted by phooky at 8:59 PM on July 26, 2021 [3 favorites]