In drawing the Avenir® typeface, Adrian Frutiger looked to both the past and the future for inspiration. His goal was to reinterpret the geometric sans serif designs of the early part of the 20th century in a typeface that would portend aesthetics of the 21st century. He succeeded handsomely. In doing so, Frutiger added a bit of organic humanism to the design, freeing Avenir from the rigid geometric overtones of the earlier designs. Avenir is employed on signage at Dallas Fort Worth and Hong Kong international airports. The city of Amsterdam adopted Avenir as its corporate typeface in 2003. The original Avenir family is made up of designs with gradual weight changes in order to satisfy the needs of specific text applications. While the book and light weights have similar stroke widths, the book weight is well suited for body text, whereas the light was designed for captions and subhead text. Featured in: Best Fonts for Resumes

Modern typefaces refer to designs that bear similarities to Bodoni and other Didone faces, which were first created during the late 1700s. Ed Benguiat developed ITC Modern No. 216 in 1982 for the International Typeface Corporation (ITC). Showing a high degree of contrast between thick and thin strokes, as well as a large x-height, this revival is more suited to advertising display purposes than the setting of long running text, or books. Many traits in Benguiat's design are worth further notice. The thick stems of the roman weights have a very stately, solid presence. Their thin serifs have been finely grafted on, a masterful solution to the challenge of bracketing presented by Modernist designs. The italic weights have a very flowing, script-like feel to them, and the letters take the form of true italics, not obliques. The ITC Modern No. 216 family contains the following font styles: Light, Light Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Heavy, and Heavy Italic.

In B-movie awesomeness, Air began as Grotesk vs. Grotesque. I was trying to unify the prevailing traits of German and English Grotes(que/k)s in order to make something different but familiar. I am NOT trying to reinvent Helvetica (snore), so get that out of your system. From the onset, I intended this typeface to be a true workhorse that offers infinite options and flexibility for the user. At its core, it is the maturation of the Aaux Next skeleton I developed years ago. I worked out Aaux Next to settle my issues and love for Akzidenz. With Aaux Next, I strove to be mechanical, cold and unforgiving with it. I was single, young, cocky and it fit. Now I'm married, kids, dog and have found that I've turned into a big softy. When I look at Aaux Next (and have for the past few years) I see another typeface trying to eek out. I wanted it to avoid the trappings of robotic sans, quick tricks and compromises. The typeface’s DNA needed to be drawn and not just generated on a screen — so I set aside a year. I love type. I love working with type. I hate when my options for a slanted complement is only oblique or italic. I set out to produce both to balance usage — there are more than enough reasons to prepare both and I want the user to feel free to consciously choose (and have the option to choose) the appropriate typeface for print, web, etc. That flexibility was central to my decision-making process. The Oblique is immediate and aggressive. The Italic was redrawn at a less severe angle with far more movement and, as a result, is far more congenial when paired with the Uprights. Condensed and Compressed. Yep, why not? I know I would use them. There are nine weights currently available. The logical progression of weights and the intended flexibility demanded I explore a number of light weights and their potential uses — this has produced a number of ‘light without being too light’ options that really work based on the size. The result is a robust 81-font superfamily that is functional, professional, and highly legible without compromising its personality. Pair that with over 900 characters per font that includes ligatures, discretionary ligatures, stylistic alternates, fractions, proportional/tabular lining and proportional/tabular oldstyle figures, numerators, denominators, ordinals, superiors, inferiors, small caps, case-sensitive functionality and extensive language support and you have a versatile superfamily well-suited for any project.