Digital Media

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The post on Avenir on August 17th 2010 has more written details about this investigation into the typeface.
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Avenir, designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988, was created as a more contemporary version of Futura crossed with Univers.  This infographic shows the influence ratios the Typeface’s ‘parents’ had on each letter.

Avenir!

A brief and epic history since 1988

As Reported by Stuart Ward

Adrian Frutiger was sitting in his soundproof typeface development idea-dome sometime in the mid eighties when he arrived at an interesting conclusion, it was time to make a new typeface for the future.. Although the excesses of the 80s knew no bounds, we cannot be absolutely certain that Frutiger actually owned a typeface development ideadome, or even if the specifications of his idea-dome included soundproofing.

Frutiger and decided that Univers and Helvetica were getting a little long in the teeth

after having kicked Clear and Simple Design’s ass for just over three decades, and it was time for a changing of the guard. Apparently some people didn’t get the memo, and continue to mainline Helvetica into their designs like some burnt out modernist minimaljunkie.

Before Helvetica and Univers were the only typefaces available in any design studio, 19th century sans-serifs had eclipsed, for several years, the constructivist stylings of Gill Sans and Futura.

Since Frutiger was an Alpenhorn blowing, cheese drilling Switzerlander with a penchant for Late 1920s German typefaces, he logically chose Futura as a source of inspiration for his contemporary masterpiece, and named the creation Avenir, which is French for Future, or je ne sais quoi. Genial! The ‘a’ in Futura was considered to hinder legibility due to it similarity to b, d, p and q, stated Frutiger, so it was replaced with the traditional roman style a.

New evidence has come to light regarding a dark secret to Avenir’s past: A recently discovered phone-tap recording has revealed that Frutiger tried to issue a fatwa against the Futura ‘a‘ because it’s lack of design sense led to a loss of faith. Bau-chika-Bauhaus.

Some interesting points about Avenir:

1. There is no Avenir Italic style, only oblique, created mathematically with precision reaching values close to Godly levels. Using Avenir Oblique fonts instantly upgrades your ability to be contemporary and professionally-fun. (Despite the fact that professionals’ fun in the 80s consisted of lines of cocaine on ladies’ cleavage, rolled up suit sleeves, and crimped hair, Avenir Oblique managed to soar above its 1980s roots; perhaps it’s incubation inside an idea-dome had something to do with it.)

2. After designing Versailles in the early 80s, Frutiger regretted the opulence and excess of the era, just a little, and decided to scrap the serifs for a while, sort of like giving up chocolate covered bacon for lent.

3. The ‘o’ is not a perfect circle.

4. The vertical strokes are thicker than the horizontals. Different strokes for different folks.

5. Avenir looks nothing like handwriting.

6. Avenir comes in varying thicknesses, from 35-95, including 45,55,65 and 85. The meanings of these numbers and what happened to 75 is a mystery.

7. Not content with a typeface which didn’t include condensed fonts, some Japanese guy by the name of Kobayashi worked with Frutiger to create Avenir Next. Since the rise of online type foundries, Typefaces with few fonts in the family are considered low art and campy. Plus, Typefaces with more fonts sell for more money.

8. Because Avenir wasn’t entirely immune to the anything goes lifestyle during it’s conception, the City of Amsterdam has given it a home on its corporate identity. You can take a typeface out of the 80s, but you can take the 80s out of the typeface.

Final Word: What was old is new again, with the surgical expertise of a man who has been ‘shaping our words’ for more than half a century. Avenir, truly towards a brighter future.

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I used some footage from my friend Lu’s poledance show last year in Tokyo to experiment with datamoshing. I did it the hard way, by encoding each segment with only a first i-frame (keyframe), and then proceeded to remove them too with a different piece of software. I learned about some technicalities of encoding with h264 and avi file formats, which may end up being useful some time in the future.

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All the software for osx can be found (for free too) at: http://www.court13.com/datamoshkit.zip

Thanks to the datamosher tutorial vids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYytVzbPky8 Apparently there’s an easy way, an now that I ‘understand the principle, I’ll try it in AfterEffects.