Project Lead: New Brand Font

For a long time, The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) enjoyed a grandfathered font license for Avenir, our digital and print brand font. When the font foundry announced that they were retiring that contract, our costs were going to skyrocket. I volunteered to lead an effort to find a free or low-cost alternative font that closely resembled Avenir. 

Collaborating with a small team of designers and a web developer, we researched and critiqued a collection of candidate fonts.  I created an evaluation rubric based on Avenir’s unique system of sans-serif glyphs to facilitate the elimination of as many candidates as possible.  Once narrowed down to three fonts, we closely examined Avenir’s most distinctive glyphs to identify the closest alternative: Google’s Red Hat Text.  Our programmer tested the font on the university’s website for its digital compatibility.  We presented our work to the university administration, who approved the retiring of Avenir and the adoption of Red Hat Text.