However, it differs from ITC Avant Garde in that like Futura and Twentieth Century, Century Gothic does not have a descender at bottom right of the 'u' (making it appear like a Greek upsilon υ), whereas Avant Garde does. Century Gothic is similar to ITC Avant Garde in its pure geometry, and does not possess the subtle variation in stroke width found in either Futura or Twentieth Century. This allows it to substitute interchangeably for Avant Garde in documents, an important feature since Avant Garde is a standard font in some forms of the PostScript digital printing standard, and so Century Gothic allowed Microsoft to use it in preference to paying for an ITC Avant Garde license.Īdditionally, Century Gothic's design was based on Monotype's own Twentieth Century, which was drawn by Sol Hess between 19 for the Lanston Monotype Company.

Century Gothic was created to be a substitute font for ITC Avant Garde, designed by Herb Lubalin, and released by the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1970, so a document created in one can be displayed in the other with no change to copyfit. While many geometric sans-serif typefaces have been released to compete with the popular typeface Futura, Century Gothic is perhaps unique in its origin: it redraws one to match the design proportions of a second.

Avante garde style font