What about Avenir Next? It has all of what your looking for, except the Renner alternate letterforms.

Did you consider Avenir Next?

Bah, too slow...I should've figured the Linotype employee would get the reply out faster than me. :o)

Lanston's Twentieth Century has the alts, but not the oblique.

Yeah David! What a double post!

John, I had not seen Twentieth Century before. That looks sweet! I wonder how its alternates compare with the other alternates.

Futura ND. I thought they promised the Opentype version last November…
http://www.neufville.com/

Avenir Next is very nice.
Is there anything else I'm missing?

The Foundry's Renner Architype also has all the alternates, but they are scattered in the open slots of the PS font, so they must be inserted manually.

Not really a geometric, but Gill Sans Pro has quite an extensive set (including Small Caps).

Along the lines of Gill, why not try Johnston Sans? It's hardly used, too.

But whatever Futura it is that you'll pick, make sure that it has uncompromised geometric features (e.g. a perfectly round "O"). Herr Spiekermann talked about this a year ago, I think.

On my defense of the consideration of your using Gill Sans, it is -- pardon the paradox -- both Humanist and Geometric, right?

I would say it is the first Humanist, designed as a retort to Geometric forms but undeniably owing a debt to them.

Gill is not a geometric sans. I'd say you can only consider it a humanist sans.

What about Mark Simonson's Proxima Nova?

http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/proximanova.html

ChrisL

Oops,

I was speaking in context of Gill Sans' capital characters. Aren't they based roughly on classical proportion (unequal bowl on 'B' and such), which in itself was based on basic geometric forms? I find this fact to be the only similarity between Gill Sans and Futura -- hence my defense on its usage.

How different is their capital from Grotesk? Grotesk's character widths are more similar between each other and is, in a sense, less geometric.

Have a look at this:

First line: Trajan
Second: Futura
Third: Gill Sans
Fourth: Akzidenz Grotesk
Fifth: Univers

Freight might also be worth considering...

--Michael.

------------------------------------------------------
// love what you do or do something else. //
Michael Ebert -- graphic designer, jazz saxophonist, horror movie devotee
http://homepage.mac.com/mwebert
mwebert@mac.com
--------------

That's weird, Futura seems to have more in common proportionally with the Roman caps (Trajan?) than Gill. Perhaps that explains why the Futura caps always set so nicely when letterspaced generously. I always perceived Gill's capitals as being more closely related to incised capitals, I believe he had some experience cutting letters into stone.

Just noticed this came out:
http://www.typography.com/catalog/verlag/index.html

Says it has something to do with the type on the 'Goog. I believe it was Nobel that was cited as the type on the outside of the structure, so this would be an improvement over the available versions of Nobel, as it has 3/4 height numerals and alternate characters. But unfortunately it has no small caps, and is slightly ovoid. I know this is basically a post to myself, but thought others might be interested in Verlag -- has all the genuine looks of circa 1950, but with the nice typographic touches of 2006. Except for the small caps thing.

Indeed.

Paul Renner himself stated that Futura's capital was designed to be in proportion with its Roman counterpart. The thing that nobody notices is that Roman capitals was geometric in construction because it was built on Golden Proportion and such.

So a humanist sans that is based on Roman capital proportions should also, in some sense, be geometric. It seems counterintuitive, but there you go.

Speaking of which, Mr. Gill was a stonecutter; and the example that I used -- Trajan -- was a rendition of stone inscription.

Just so. In the semi-geometric sans serif I've been working on (like, forever), the cap proportions were initially quite closely based on Trajan proportions. Of course, that still leaves some interesting questions: for instance, how you handle really heavy weights.

T

i've been kinda into the futura that's installed with OSX, actually. it's not bad. i checked out the company who cut it, and they have a (fairly pricey) OTF version; company's called neufville digital. hard to find and hard to buy, of course. complete package is sold here.

"how you handle really heavy weights"

I have the same issue with a not-so-geometric sans I have been working on. The heavy weights don't allow for narrow and wide proportions in the same font with a monoline weight. You either have to increase contrast as weight increases or widen the narrower letters to avoid plugging counters. The caps are the toughest glyphs to make work for me.

ChrisL