Among typography aficionados, Herb Lubalin’s name is inextricably linked to one font above all others. His Avante Garde typeface is considered, retrospectively, either an innovative, trendsetting typeface or, conversely, the epitome of soulless formalism. A fifty-year-old Lubalin designed the Avante Garde font in 1968 for the newly founded lifestyle magazine of the same name. Born in 1918 in New York City, the son of a Jewish musician, Lubalin graduated from a typography programme at Copper Union college in Manhattan and went on to earn a living working for a series of New York advertising agencies.

 In 1964 Lubalin went out on his own, becoming one of the most stylistically influential and highly distinguished graphic designers of the 1970s, largely on the basis of his creative partnership with the publisher and publicist Ralph Ginzburg. In 1974 his company International Typeface Corporation (ITC) launched the typography magazine Upper and lower case. As a typeface designer who often worked within a collaborative team dynamic, Lubalin developed, alongside Avante Garde, such fonts as Busorama, Ronda and Serif Gothic.