AVEC

Avec was inspired the distinctive sweeping graphic curves and sharp points that appear in the posters, arabesques and alphabets of Spanish émigré designer Enric Crous-Vidal. Highly fashionable in Paris, his unashamedly ornamental his type designs were also daringly modern in their rejection of conventional serif and sans serif classifications. Cassandre’s use of serifless Roman lettering for his Yves Saint Laurent monogram (1961) testifies to the chic appeal of the style.

Bold but short-lived, la Graphie Latine ended not for lack of creative will, but due to changing fashion. Always a strong flavour, the movement’s stylistic flair also limited its appeal next to more neutral neo-grotesks. Still, there’s something about those sweeping curves. José Mendoza y Almeida, whose Pascal (1962) is something of a forgotten classic of the movement, also designed the much loved Calypso (1958) with Roger Excoffon. And a more joyful celebration of the curve it’s hard to find.

Although largely inspired by expressive display type, Avec was conceived as an extended family for both display and text. The four subfamilies are optimised for a range of scales: Stencil for headlines, Curve and Sharp for larger text sizes, subheads and up, then down to as little as 6pt for the Text subfamily.

Avec’s personality is defined by the contrast between the inherent characteristics of serif and sans serif. There’s a deliberate tension between its modularity and the humanistic detailing in its varied stroke weights and angles of stress, and the meticulous adjustments applied to each letterform.

The Curve and Sharp subfamilies are two sides of the same coin. Although they share the same proportions, weight and contrast, their personalities diverge due to subtle differences in detailing: Where Curved has a refined and classically elegant personality, Sharp has a more graphic feel and a bolder attitude.

Although superficially similar to the Curve subfamily, Avec Text features significant adjustments to optimise legibility at small sizes. These include a greater x-height, higher ascenders and descenders, wider spacing, lower contrast, and a wider and more uniform uppercase.

Avec Stencil is a celebration of those distinctive graphic shapes by Enric Crous-Vidal that first inspired the design. Stencil is based on the Sharp subfamily, again with significant optical adjustments applied to each and every character.

The accompanying italics are optically corrected obliques, set at a mild 9º angle. As with other serifless romans, the italics share the same characteristics as the roman styles, allowing seamless transitions between the two. The roman and italics also share alternates, with the lowercase a and j showing an extra hint cursive detailing.