Avant Garde alternates

[headphones]

Could one of you geniuses clarify the connecting letters of Avant Garde for me? Are they ligatures? alternates? or what? How do can i use them? I've got ITC's avant garde gothic std and i'm trying to figure all this out in Illustrator. Do I need a different version of the font? Any help would mean so much.

[zumojuice]

Ligatures is the name for two lettered that join or connect. This should help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(typography)

Alternates are differing letters. For example, a typeface may have alternate 'a' which looks subtly different to the standard. They are normally accessed from the 'glyth' menu and replace characters where a letter might look a bit wrong or something?

You should find in your font options that you can turn on/off the ligatures.

[Thinkdust]

Do you mean like the ones on some of the work on our site? Thinkdust, the plastik work etc?

[headphones]

no i mean the Avant Garde tilted letters and stuff, i just dont know how to do it, or if i have the right font inoder to do it.

[zumojuice]

Ligatures I think are only in opentype fonts (denoted by an '0') - at least I think that's true