Stylistic sets in ITC Avant Garde

Adam Jagosz
Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
edited November 2019 in Technique and Theory
ITC Avant Garde Gothic Font Poster 1
You can only set the typeface's name as it appears on posters with manual composition. Not only are the needed A and V placed in mutually exclusive stylistic sets, but the G_A ligature doesn't kick in with the stylistic set enabled.
Any sensible reason for such half-assed implementation? Other than that the font is old and digitized hastily and carelessly by people who had no emotional relationship with it? Was it to avoid huge gaps when kerning is off? (I think that would still be less jarring.)
Are there other digitizations?

Tagged:

Comments

  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,436
    edited November 2019
    I think it was simply digitized before OpenType support was established. 
    EDITED TO ADD: but I guess if there are stylistic sets within the file, OpenType updates have been made at least. 
  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,436
    But I would also say it's a design that asks for manual decisions on alternates. It isn't the case that you'd want every NT that happens to appear in your text to ligate.
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    edited November 2019
    I agree these features are at user discretion, but the proper way to ensure that is to put them in the discretionary ligatures feature. Not stash them across three different features so that the user has to select every glyph separately and dive into those submenus of submenus.
    I believe it would be better if discretionary ligatures did it all at once, so that I can just select the whole word, and enable dlig, period. Stylistic alternates are also welcome, but they should be congruent, and should still interact with the other features that they can interact with (like dlig).
  • Jim Parrillo
    Jim Parrillo Posts: 10
    I will forever be scarred by Avant Garde because of this issue...

    I had to do a poster on ligatures for a type class, so I chose this exact version and bumped into the exact same issues. Not only that, but the school had Avant Garde in the type library (but that didn't include the ligatures).... 

    So as a poor student, I ended up having to spend about $150 just the alternates so I could complete the project. At least I got an A  on it... :neutral:




Categories