Avenir was designed in 1988 by the Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger, in the tradition of Erbar, Futura and to a lesser extent Gill Sans. Avenir is a sans serif face designed for Linotype-Hell AG.
Based on geometric shapes, Avenir is available in six font weights.
The oblique fonts have been made by electronically slanting the roman fonts.
Suitable for small blocks of text; the heavier font weights make good headlines and display.
“These have constructed characters from which the element of a handwriting movement has been removed,” said Frutiger in an interview, adding that: “Avenir is intended to be nothing more or less than a clear and clean representation of modern typographical trends, giving the designer a typeface which is strictly modern and at the same time human, that is suitably refined and elegant for use in texts of any length”
