ITC Anna was little more than a gleam in the eye of designer Daniel Pelavin in the mid-1980s, when he drew a few letters for an Aramis Cologne holiday promotion. Pelavin continued to use these letters for various projects, adding more characters to the alphabet as needed.
The design became a family matter when Pelavin’s wife, graphic designer Lorraine Louie, used the alphabet on their wedding invitation in 1988. “Then,” says Pelavin, “we used it again – for the birth announcement of our daughter, Anna, a year later.”
It was alphabet Anna’s appearance on Louie’s business stationery that first brought the design to ITC’s attention. In 1990, ITC asked Pelavin to develop a typeface based on the letterforms, and ITC Anna was released as a single design in 1991.
A couple of years later, Pelavin created a suite of swash and alternate characters for the design. Eventually, ITC asked Pelavin to draw a bold weight to complement the original release. ITC Anna Extended is the result.
This new weight adds versatility to this distinctive, Art Deco-flavored yet contemporary typeface. ITC Anna has left the “family” and taken its place among ITC’s most useful display designs.