Type Specimen Poster — Avenir
This was the final part of a third project for the Communication Design Fundamentals course at Carnegie Mellon. The task was to apply principles of digital typography (kerning, leading, tracking, etc..) as well as Gestalt principles to create a type specimen poster for a particular typeface. In my case, that was Avenir. Avenir was created by Swiss typeface designer, Adrian Frutiger, in 1988. It is a geometric sans serif typeface, with elements of traditional typefaces (style of the lowercase “a”). As such, it was meant to be a more legible and more humanistic interpretation of the rigidly geometric typefaces popular in the last 20th century, such as Futura. Today, Avenir can be found in mobile apps like Snapchat, and in signs all around the city of Amsterdam.
I. Sketches
My seven initial sketches experimented with highlighting certain features of Avenir (the letter “a”, the asymmetrical “o”, or the straightness of the letters). I also tried to bring in the idea of Avenir as a bridge between the past (1988) and the future, using straight guiding lines or an arrow figure created by the uppercase “A” and “V”. The first two sketches were more simplistic, and mostly content heavy, including one with an enlarged “a”. However, I decided that these wouldn’t bring justice to the geometric but traditional aspects of the typeface. The next two sketches attempted to create geometric figures using angled lines. One was meant to be a timeline between 1988 and future, however, I wasn’t sure if all the separate elements would produce a cohesive poster.
I decided to iterate on the final three sketches shown here. I liked the arrow shape created by merging the “A” and “V”, and wanted to show the variations in the typeface family as a gradient along the arrow. I also liked the geometric shape made by merging the uppercase letters of Avenir. I also liked how the change in value in the last sketch coupled with the diagonal line conveyed a sense of future. Most importantly, I liked how these could be the least content-heavy and still display as a poster.
II. Digital prototypes/Initial crit
I used Adobe Illustrator to produce digital versions of the last three sketches. The digital versions looked different from what I had imagined after putting in all of the relevant information into each poster. I spent considerable time trying to decide where to put certain pieces of text/information on each poster to create better balance or highlight features of the typeface. I also had the chance to play around with gray scale colors to bring out particular shapes. I liked the fourth poster because of its simplicity and gradient created by the typeface family, but I didn’t end up progressing further because I didn’t want to waste too much black ink to print it.
The first crit was helpful in helping me take my posters a step further. After seeing other people’s prototypes, I was sure that my posters were content-heavy, and that I did not need to include all relevant information about Avenir in a single poster. When I presented my digital prototypes to the class, there was generally positive feedback about different elements. In the first poster, the shape created by the “AV” wasn’t immediately obvious, but they liked it once they realized it was an arrow pointing to “FUTURE”. In the second poster, people liked the hexagonal shape created by rearranging the letters of “AVENIR”, feeling that it did a good job of conveying the geometric nature of Avenir. They suggested that I should fully justify or left justify the body of the text next to the hexagon, since a rectangular block of text would further convey geometry. For the third poster, people liked how the value change and diagonal line pointing upward created hierarchy. They responded negatively to the black text on dark grey, and to the vertical display of ‘1988’.
III. Digital Iterations
I decided to iterate on the third poster, since it had the strongest hierarchy and variations in value, which is something I had wanted to work on since the last project. The first thing I changed was changing the text on the dark grey panel from black to white. However, this looked garish and competed with the white “ave nir” for attention. Instead, I lightened up the grey to make the black text more legible. Next, I removed a lot of the text on the prototype (the typeface family on the grey and white panels) and rearranged the “Adrian Frutiger” and “1988”. After freeing up some space, I felt that the poster was a bit blank. I decided to add in the arrow shape created by “AV”, since people had liked that in the first crit. I experimented a lot with where to position the arrow. Initially, I aligned and placed it on the diagonal to draw the eye upward along the line. However, the figure it created was slightly busy, since it was filled with two different colors. Further, placing it on the diagonal would prevent any text being placed along the diagonal.
For the next iteration, I referred back to the prototype by bringing back “Avenir is French for future”. I liked how the difference in weights was more obvious with a complete sentence, rather than simply “FUTURE”. Following Suzanne’s advice, I placed the arrow in the background behind the text. It was close enough to the diagonal that it would still draw the eye upward from the black ave nir box to the “Avenir is French for future”, and then to the white where you would see the creator and year. I really like how this looked but knew the arrow was distracting from the main text. I also placed the typeface number/symbols family along the diagonal to frame the line and lead the eye upward.
For the final iteration, I removed the “humanistic” and “geometric” framing the black box, because I felt it didn’t add anything to the poster. I condensed the body text to italic weights and adjusted the kerning and font sizes so the line widths would match the angle of the diagonal. I adjusted the kerning of the “ave nir” in the black box so that the “v” and “i” would line up less awkwardly. I made sure to left-align the body text with the “ave nir”, line up the end of the last “future” with the right side of the box, and center-align the “1998” with the box. After condensing the body text, there was a lot of extra space in the grey portion, so I moved the arrow to the upper left and used the “A” to display the creator’s name.
In the final crit, the poster received mixed reviews. People liked the gradient created by the weighted sentences. People reacted negatively to the arrow and it’s low contrast against the grey background. Some felt that the different colored portions felt disconnected from each other, rather than one cohesive poster. If I kept iterating, I would lighten the color of “Adrian Frutiger” and fill up some of the white space instead of having the number family strictly along the diagonal. I would also add a black border because the white portion is lost in space right now.
This project was an eye-opening experience; I learned a lot about how changes in leading, kerning, tracking, serifs vs sans serifs, etc.. can affect how a message is conveyed. I have a new appreciation for typefaces and the things in everyday life that deeply consider typeface choices to provide the best user experience. I also learned new tools in Adobe Illustrator.
