CENTRAL ave

Central Avenue was originally created for the graphic identity of an exhibition celebrating Birmingham’s infamous 1886 exhibition of Local Manufacturers and Natural History. The core identity of the typeface stems from the bespoke design based on the hand-painted signs from the original 1886 exhibition. The typeface style employed wasn’t the typical decorative Victorian face, it was a simple sans serif — much more industrial and much more relevant for a contemporary exhibition of its kind.

Our primary focus was to retain the essence of the original design, which risked being lost through digitalization, by preserving the distinct awkwardness and personality of the hand painted letter forms. Staying as close to the original design inspiration as possible, rather than imagining the lowercase characters, Central Avenue maintains its Victorian heritage through a superscripted alternative that enables the user to create their own word logos.

Central Avenue is available in one weight — Bold.  It is available to license in both Standard (‘STD’) and Professional (‘PRO’) variants, the latter containing a range of additional OpenType features.