>RE:Please do NOT use alt.binaries.fonts. Type designers
>are generally nice folks who work unusually hard and don’t
>deserve to be ripped off. People’s livelihoods are involved.

If a font is impossible to find in and of the legal channels then how is going to a.b.fonts going to hurt them? If something (anything) I had created had fallen out of publishing then I would want people to be able to get it somewhere.

I managed to find an old song I had recorded and lost the demos of on an mp3 forum. I was eternally grateful.

Those forums are as much a way to keep forgotten works alive as they are anything.

I’ve put up a gallery of Avant Garde ligatures and alternates on my site. Go to:

http://www.keithtam.net

Enjoy!

K.

If something (anything) I had created had fallen out of publishing then I would want people to be able to get it somewhere.

Those forums are as much a way to keep forgotten works alive as they are anything.

But what if you preferred that something be forgotten? What if you decided to deliberately withdraw something from circulation because you were dissatisfied with it? Would you still be happy to see people trading it on newsgroup forums?

This is not a hypothetical question. The early Tiro Typeworks Type 1 retail fonts have all been withdrawn from circulation, a process that took some effort to cancel contracts etc. We did this because some of the types were going to be revised and rereleased in OpenType format, while others we were unhappy with and wanted to retire. The fact that trading those old fonts on newsgroups doesn’t financially harm me is irrelevant: the fonts are my intellectual property and I have the right to say when, how and if they are distributed.

> what if you preferred that something be forgotten?

I would say one can’t have everything one wants!  :-/

hhp

Yeah, well if one can’t have everything one wants, then Mason can’t go on some pirate site and download bootleg fonts, can he ;)

Mason, I must admit that I adamently disagree with you. Especially in this case, when it is <I>clear</I> that Advant Garde’s Alternates are still commercially available.

Many designers search fonts.com and myfonts.com, and if they don’t find their searched-for font (after a whole 10 minutes of research!) they assume that the font is dead, and that this legitimizes piracy. A little more research would prove that this font (AVG G Alt) is still commercially available, albeit through Scangraphic of FontShop Austrailia.

indeed.

mmm…
http://www.fontshop.com.au/fontdetailc.php3?ns=1&sns=2&ss=2&co=by+foundry&co2=byvendor&id=fp-2818

et al

In February of this year, when I tried to buy Scangraphic Avant Garde Alts through Font Shop I had some “problems” to get it living in Europe.

To summarize, I could not get it through FontShop Europe neither Australia. In touch with FontShop USA/Canada, they had it but told me they could not sell fonts outside of North & South America. However, they kindly directed me to Type Sales (Swipe) where I finally got it.

By the way, a very complete and very well done font (Stephen’s link about Scangraphic) with Bodytext and Headlines.

What is Type Sales (Swipe) ? I googled it but couldn’t come up with anything.

Cheers,
Chris

this is a quite interesting article about the history of avant garde.
http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=537383
someone at aiga journal is saying: “It was once part of the many ligatures available on typositor. It may no longer be available. Lubalin was not happy about the way they were used.”

Avant Garde is just waiting to be recreated in a richly featured Opentype format. Is there anyone working on it? Carnase has the right to do it. That would make for one hell of a revival.

I hope that he does do one. I don’t know if anyone is working on the design. I guess that Monotype or ITC could do one without him, but I don’t know what their OpenType plans are. Maybe someone should suggest the idea to him.

Based on the rumours I’ve heard, I’m quite sure that ITC among other foundries is moving to Open Type quite soon. That means bye bye to Freehand if Macromedia is going to react as keen as they’ve been this far.

ITC has already released a few OpenType fonts, fwiw.

T

A remastered edition of the Scangraphic font collection was recently added to MyFonts.com:

http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/efscangraphic/

Scangraphic collaborated with Elsner+Flake, among others adding Euro and @ characters.

Regards,
Adam

Stephen,

any idea why FontShop.com does not display the foundry name on Font Package Detail or Font Detail pages (like the one you pointed to?)

On the search results page:
http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=avant+garde
it is clearly indicated that the Avant Garde Alternates version is by Elsner+Flake, but this essential information is missing from the detail pages, which is a pity.

Tiffany,
Since Avant Garde Alternates is from Elsner+Flake, naturally, it goes best with EF’s version of ITC Avant Garde.

All Elsner+Flake fonts can be purchased from:
http://www.elsner-flake.com/

These alternates are not “new” by any means. EF has had them for quite some time. But perhaps they’re new at FontShop.com.

Best,
Adam

Hangin’… by a thread!  ;-)

hhp

Stephen,

thanks for the pointer. For some reason, I recollect seeing “Search Results” on the top rather than “Elsner & Flake” there yesterday. Either today it’s different or I was daydreaming yesterday. Anyhow, thanks for the fabulous animated sample

Adam

The foundry was Mannsman Scangraphics. They are now apparently out of business, and I don’t know what has happened to their “library.”

Try in “The Pirate’s Den” …

I’ve got some news.

FontShop still has a connection with Scangraphic.
Though the Avant Garde Alts aren’t online you can still
purchase by calling FS at 1-888-FF-FONTS.

FontShop.com has the Avant Garde Alternates now.

Stephen which standard version of Avant Garde does FontShop recommend to work best with these new alts?

Yes, thank you, Adam. I’ll have to go dig around at E+F …

I noticed they were E+F … I suppose I’m just hoping for someone to sell a bundle with corresponding faces.

Adam — You can find the foundry listed at the top in the breadcrumb.
That said, we’d like to get the site to a point where that that info
is in the gray sidebar.

Tiff — I’ll work up some comparisons for you soon.

As you might assume, the E+F Scangraphic AG Book matches
the AG Book Alt just right, as demonstrated in this short film:



Tomorrow I’ll test the Monotype ITC and Linotype ITC versions for compatibility.

Scangraphic out of business? Could have fooled me…

http://www.scangraphic.de/sc-about-fonts.htm

FontHaus also sells SG fonts:
http://www.fonthaus.com/products/fonts/FontFind.cfm?Function=Supplier&Search=Scangraphic

But I can’t find Avant Garde in there. :-( FontHaus does, however, have Elsner & Flake’s strange monospaced version.

The Avant Garde alts were also part of Linotype’s GX Font Collection, released back in the early 90s. It had such other oddities as “schoolbook letters” for Times, Helvetica, and New Century Schoolbook, all the swashes for Bookman, swash caps for Palatino (not the originals, but rather Ariadne, which has often been paired with Palatino’s and others’ lowercase italics) and the swash alternates for Zapf Chancery Medium Italic.

You might be able to call Linotype and see if they have any extras left that they would be willing to sell you. You can only get to the GX features through GX apps like UniQorn and LightningDraw, or one-by-one through the InDesign glyph palette. GX features do not work automatically in InDesign like OpenType features.

Good luck in your quest,
—John

P.S.
RSP99 wrote: Try in “The Pirate’s Den” …