The Madison Ave. family started from Madison Ave. at Fontstruct.com. As my most downloaded font, this was an easy, although not necessarily logical choice to make – regarding taking an existing free font and attempting to offer it for purchase. The font is very basic and simple in its layout, but has achieved popularity over at Dafont with almost 80,000 downloads with its cool, understated nature and inherent sophistication. The original Madison Ave. is now 95 Madison Ave. A couple of glyphs have changed from the original, but mostly the set is the same.

The big news here is the availability of multiple variations on the original. Ninety-five refers to the filter settings used to achieve the faint cross lines in the font. The sequence 95-100 provides a gradual fade to solid effect when used together. The other versions use variations on the filter settings that allow each its own distinctive flavor, while at the same time maintaining inherent characteristics of the original. Ninety-five is now joined by 55, 75, 97, 99, 100, 102, 105, 155, 175, 201, 202, and 275.

100 is the solid version which doesn’t contain the trademark lines found in 95. In 95-99, the line width varies to achieve subtle effects. 50 and 85 are distorted by reducing the filter settings in a somewhat minimizing fashion. In 102-205, these are distorted by increasing the filter settings above the normal which is what 100 represents. While some of the effects are extreme and challenge the legibility of text, these can be fun or edgy. They offer a cohesion that can be used to advantage for different projects that require the use of a modern font family.