Bell Centennial is a sans-serif typeface in the
industrial or grotesque style designed by
Matthew Carter
Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside) long withPlantin's accoun ...
in the period 1975–1978. The typeface was commissioned by
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...
as a proprietary type to replace their then current directory typeface
Bell Gothic
Bell Gothic is a sans-serif typeface in the industrial or grotesque style designed by Chauncey H. Griffith in 1938 while heading the typographic development program at the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. The typeface was commissioned by AT&T ...
on the occasion of AT&T's one hundredth anniversary. Carter was working for the
Mergenthaler Linotype Company
The Mergenthaler Linotype Company is a corporation founded in the United States in 1886 to market the Linotype machine (), a system to cast metal type in lines (linecaster) invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. It became the world's leading manufacture ...
, which now licenses the face for general public use.
Design
AT&T's brief called for a typeface that would fit substantially more characters per line without loss of legibility, dramatically reducing the need for abbreviations and two-line entries, increase legibility at the smaller point sizes used in a
telephone directory
A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization tha ...
, and reduce consumption of paper. Bell Centennial was designed to address and overcome most of the limitations of telephone directory printing: poor reproduction due to high-speed printing on newsprint, and ink spread which decayed legibility as it closed up counterforms. Carter's design increased the x-height of lowercase characters, slightly condensed the character width, and carved out many more open counters and bowls to increase legibility. To anticipate and blunt the degradation caused by ink spread, Carter drew the letters with deep
ink trap
An ink trap is a feature of certain typefaces designed for printing in small sizes. At an ink trap, the corners or details are removed from the letterforms. When the type is printed, ink naturally spreads into the removed area. Without ink traps, t ...
s, designed to fill in as the ink spread onto newsprint fiber, leaving the characters' counterforms open and legible at small point sizes.
Printed in the smaller point sizes used in telephone directories, the ink traps are not visible, having done their job; filling in and smoothing out the character stroke. However at larger point sizes, and on coated paper stock there is not enough ink spread to fill in the traps and the shape of the traps remain noticeable.
Bell Centennial is an example of a typeface designed to address a particular need, much like
Chauncey H. Griffith's Bell Gothic
Bell Gothic is a sans-serif typeface in the industrial or grotesque style designed by Chauncey H. Griffith in 1938 while heading the typographic development program at the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. The typeface was commissioned by AT&T ...
(AT&T's earlier telephone directory face);
Adrian Frutiger's Frutiger, designed for signage at Charles De Gaulle Airport; or
Erik Spiekermann's FF Meta Sans commissioned by the
Deutsche Bundespost
The Deutsche Bundespost (German federal post office) was a German state-run postal service and telecommunications business founded in 1947. It was initially the second largest federal employer during its time. After staff reductions in the 19 ...
(the German federal post office), but not adopted. Bell Centennial is only one of several typefaces Carter designed to address specific technical limitations, including CRT Gothic (1974), Video (1977),
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
(1996), and
Verdana
Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography ...
(1996).
Variants and weight system
Bell Centennial's weight system differs from other faces in that weights are named for their specific uses in AT&T's telephone directories. The lightest weight, used for addresses, is called Bell Centennial Address; a slightly heavier book weight is called Bell Centennial Caption; a demibold weight, used for the entry name and telephone number, is called Bell Centennial Name and Number. A heavier bold weight, drawn as large and small capitals without a true lowercase, is called Bell Centennial Bold Listing. This nomenclature, while simplifying telephone book setting, perplexed some new users once the typeface family was released for general use by the Linotype foundry.
Visual distinctive characteristics
Characteristics of this typeface are:
* tall x-height
* prominent ink traps
* square dot over the letter i
* double-storey a; single-storey g
* narrow t and f
* dropped horizontal element on A
* horizontal top serif of 1
References
*Blackwell, Lewis. ''20th Century Type.'' Yale University Press: 2004. .
*Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. .
*Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. .
External links
{{Commons category, Bell Centennial (typeface), Bell Centennial
Linotype Bell Centennial web page
Linotype typefaces
Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces
Corporate typefaces
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1978
AT&T
Typefaces designed by Matthew Carter