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ITC Avant Garde Gothic’s tight-fitting and overlapping alternates and ligatures are a trademark of ’60s and ’70s design, but have seen a huge resurgence of late. Maligned by some, sought by many, Herb Lubalin’s logo-turned-typeface has become a go-to font for hipsters and fashion mags the world over.

There are two ways to get these special characters for Avant Garde. Each version is based on the original film-based design, but are digitized slightly differently.

1. ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro by ITC
By using the new ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro and its built-in OpenType ligatures and alternates you have far easier access to nearly all the extras of the original typefaces without needing to switch to another font.

But this new release comes with a caveat: The italics in this version are simply slanted obliques.

2. ITC Avant Garde Gothic and Alternative by E+F
Elsner+Flake’s Avant Garde has a smaller selection of alternates and ligatures and they are stored in a separate font, so it’s a little more work to access the special glyphs. But this version does have the original optically corrected italics. The E+F version does not include as many of the original alternates, however.

In short: If you want the most complete version of Avant Garde possible, get ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro from ITC. If you want better obliques or you are using an app that doesn't support OpenType features, get the Elser+Flake fonts and their Alternative companions.