University of Kentucky Brand Font Transition

Phasing out Avenir, Trade Gothic and Surveyor is necessary for a few reasons: 

Rising costs:

The cost to license these fonts has increased substantially and it is no longer feasible to continue purchasing on behalf of the university. The current license expired, and we elected to phase out the use of those fonts. The new brand fonts — Usual, ATF Alternate Gothic and Bodoni PT Variable — are available via our Adobe license and therefore do not require additional licenses.

Changing Model:

Due to the high cost, we would only be able to purchase a limited number of licenses to distribute to campus on a request basis. Additionally, the pricing model changed. For instance, we previously could purchase Avenir as a font and use all the variations within the font family.  The new pricing model would require us to purchase Avenir bold, Avenir italics, etc. separately.  

Compliance:

We have a large campus that produces a lot of great content — print and digital. Because we produce so many assets for our university’s numerous communication channels, it has proven increasingly difficult and resource-intensive to manage the font licenses and ensure campuswide compliance with the licensing agreements. Moving to these Adobe-sourced fonts will relieve much of the liability that comes with paid font licenses. 

Your website 

If your website uses Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor, please exchange it for a web version of the new fonts for web. Our web team can provide instruction on how to do that if needed. Contact them here. 

Your printed materials 

If you received Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor print fonts from University Marketing under its license, you should stop using these fonts in new printed materials beginning April 1, 2023. They should be replaced with the new brand fonts.  

If you are designing new printed materials  you must use the new fonts. 

If you have already-printed materials with Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor (such as handouts, promotional items, or a banner), you may continue to use them until they run out or you naturally retire them. However, once you need to reprint those materials, you should replace those fonts with new brand fonts in your documents. 

Your digital files 

If you have used Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor to create PDF documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos, or other digital files, please update them by September 30, 2023. 

UK’s brand standards and templates, such as PowerPoint, have been updated, as have all stationery and business card templates. You may access those here https://www.uky.edu/prmarketing/branding-resources/brand-assets

UK’s ITS team did a great job putting together these helpful how-to primers. 

How do I uninstall non-Adobe fonts?

How do I install Adobe fonts?

How do I deactivate Adobe fonts?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for Windows?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for macOS?

Where can I download UK branded templates?

For some Mac users, three versions of Avenir (Avenir, Avenir Next and Avenir Next Condensed) were pre-loaded to some systems as part of the MacOS operating system license. You will not need to deactivate those, and in fact, the system will not allow you to uninstall them. But not all systems came with that font and because of the cost concerns, we were not able to purchase enterprise-wide licenses.

No, but this is a wonderful opportunity to start using official brand fonts and branded templates.  

How do I uninstall non-Adobe fonts?

How do I install Adobe fonts?

How do I deactivate Adobe fonts?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for Windows?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for macOS?

Where can I download UK branded templates?

Sure. We recommend using Arial or Georgia. Both are readily available system fonts.  

While we highly recommend using official brand fonts for consistency and brand recognition, there are additional fonts that can be used for your website. University Adobe licenses as well as Open-source collections such as Google Fonts provide a wide range of fonts that are available to use and can be alternatives to the official brand fonts. However, please note that it is important to be mindful of licensing restrictions when using non-brand fonts from these libraries.