Almost any graphic designer knows about Herb Lubalin and his legendary font face Avant Garde that he designed for the magazine with the same title back in the sixties. Avant Garde is a difficult face to use in texts, but it’s ligatures and unique cuts are juicy and makes a great headline with lots of character.

I had been searching for the alt versions of Avant Garde for a while before I finally found it via Font Shop. The alt versions contain most of the ligatures Lubalin designed and comes in four different weights. The alts, or ligatures are based on the famous Avant Garde logotype. While searching for the digitalized alt versions, I stumbled upon a small collection of scanned Letraset dry transfer lettering sheets containing some alt versions of the font. While looking through the pages I noticed two alts I have’nt seen before in the digitalized versions: Two beautiful ligatures of “SS” and “Co”.

Apparently, Lubalin did not want to release all of the alternates because he thought they where being misused. So I did my own digitalization of the two lost ligatures in illustrator for you to download as an .eps file and use them in your own designs. Unfortunately I only found the bold version of the ligatures, but it’s still the most common variant for thick headlines. There are probably a lot more ligatures that where lost on their way to digitalization, and I would love to encounter some more letters from this lovely face.

If you’d like to see more of Lubalins work, check out A Tribute to Herb Lubalin.

Links:

• Herb Lubalin (Wikipedia)
• Lost ligatures (eps)
• Letraset dry transfer lettering sheets
• Medalist: Herb Lubalin (AIGA)
• A Tribute to Herb Lubalin