Ligatures & Glyphs as Design Elements
After working through the essentials of a general type specimen book design (such as samples of character sets, sizes, weights, special characters, etc), I moved onto what makes the Avant Garde font truly outstanding; its wide variety of ligatures and glyphs.
I found the diverse range of the Avant Garde typeface’s ligatures and glyphs as both a unique feature and a great design source. Through arranging these together, endless array of unique shapes were able to be made while keeping the flair of Avant Garde itself as the design was made solely with its typeface elements.
With its geometric sans serif style, it had a sense of technoloic look that was utilized to set up a sci-fi theme to the specimen book itself. Within the specimen book, I added spreads that showcase these various shapes of ligatures and glyphs along with notable quotes from science fiction novels and sci-fi authors.
Such graphic elements not only adds a surprise in the book design, but also reflects the 70s retrofuturist atmosphere of when the typeface was designed for the Avant-Garde magazine, thus delivering the backstory of the typeface in a visual manner.