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Herb Lubalin, one of the greatest designers

The designer Herb Lubalin was the creator of the Avant Garde typography.

Herb Lubalin was a graphic designer born in New York in 1918. Founder of the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) and art director of the company magazine Upper and Lower Case.

Lubalin studied at the Cooper Union School; soon he started to work as creative director for different agencies and his own studio in 1964. At the time, he was one of the innovative American typographers that rejected the European functionalistic philosophy in favor of a more eclectic and exuberant style.

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His managing of typography aimed to break with tradition and explore modern possibilities of new systems of photocomposition.

Herb was the creator of the Avant Garde and other fonts. He founded the ITC with Aaron Burns and Edward Rondthaler with the objective of designing classic typographies for photocomposition and creating new ones while take into account the possibilities of the new media.

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In 1926 they launched a font selection including the Avant Garde, created from the typographic games used in the magazine with the same name. They established their logo and enlarged the font in only 26 capital letters, taking into account the different headlines of the magazine.

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