Type & Hierarchy: Avenir Typeface
Illustrator Poster
2019
Individual Project
About the Project
For the final project, I was tasked with creating a poster that highlights a specific typeface and its unique characteristics by using my knowledge type and hierarchy. My typeface was the sans serif font, Avenir. Avenir was founded in 1988 by Adrian Frutiger. It was modeled after Futura, a futuristic, geometric font, created in the early 1920s. Frutiger took a more organic, humanistic approach when designing this new concept. Ultimately he combined the traditional aspects of the geometric type face with stylistic developments in the late 1900s, and named the font Avenir, which is French for ‘future’. Avenir’s defining characteristics are the ‘O,’ which is not a perfect circle but optically corrected, vertical lines that are thicker than the horizontal ones, the tail on the ‘Q’ that is horizontal, squared off V-shapes, and the curved tails of the ‘j’ and ‘y.’ All of these modifications are in place to make the typeface easier on the eye than Futura and exude a more humanistic feeling. Avenir is used as the principal typeface in Amsterdam. In addition, it could be seen in the Maps App and Siri screens in iOS 6 for Apple. Currently it is featured in the Snapchat App.
Final Product
For the final product I angled the text of the typeface title vertically and emphasized the unique shape of the letters by extending specific lines. The importance of each text snippet is accentuated by the hierarchy and weight. The repeating pattern of the gray triangles in the background draws the eye down throughout the whole composition. The fact that they are not completely evenly spaced and the heights are not even give a more humanistic feel to the piece. I feel these design choices emphasize Avenir’s sense of geometric-oriented font while still being easy on the eye for the viewer.
Interim Crit
I was given a lot of helpful feedback on this piece during the interim critique. Many commented on the fact that the extended letters of the N and I section off the bottom portion of the composition. I also felt that this cut off the flow of the piece such that the eye is unable to continue down the whole composition. Furthermore, the text snippets were positioned close to the edge of the canvas and were very large in comparison to the rest of the poster. Another person noted that the ‘Future’ text was very out out of context and confusing. I took all of these thoughts into consideration as I made the changes to the final composition.
Project Process
I focused a lot on the geometric aspect of the typeface. This can be visualized in most of my brainstorms and conceptualizations. Many of my initial compositions have many vertical lines and diagonal lines or the outlines of shapes. I maintained a simple black and white color scheme because I felt this allows the composition to be the main focus.
Sketches
I focused on the unique aspects of the letter in the title ‘Avenir.’ This was mostly focused on the ‘A’ and how the vertical lengths of the letter are different widths than the horizontal. In addition, I applied some of the common usages of Avenir into the poster like the Apple logo.
END OF FINAL PROJECT
Exercise 1: In this first exercise, I drew letter-forms by hand via tracing paper. Through this experience I was able to examine various features of each typeface like weight and proportions.
Exercise 2: In this exercise, I explored the effects that specific typeface has on the meaning, emotion and feeling of the word. I chose three words (melancholy, bright, and serendipity) and experimented with typeface to discover which one best describes the words selected.
Melancholy
When playing with different typefaces to depict melancholy, I experimented with serif and sans serif fonts, italicized and bold-weighted strokes. Ultimately, I believe Figure 3 gives the most feeling of melancholy. This is due to the strong stroke weight, and slightly italicized slant of the characters. The outline of each letter is not precisely straight which also gives the word a Gothic-era feeling. Overall this font makes me feel the sadness and desolation of melancholy.
Bright
When describing the word bright, I imagined the various applications to real world scenarios — stars, light, sun, optimism. I believe what all these concepts have in common is being light and airy. This is why I feel that Figure 5 most closely exhibits the feeling of bright. The thin lines give the word a weightlessness and the large open space within each letter emphasizes the importance of the bright, white space.
Serendipity
I examined a few different type faces to describe serendipity. I ended up choosing a lot of cursive fonts because I felt the flow from one character to the next was evident. In Figure 9 the typeface gives a whimsical feel when the weight of the line varies and the heights and angles of the characters vary in a serendipitous way.
Figures 9–13 (top to bottom). Typeface I chose to represent serendipity
