Address Bell Centennial’s weight system differs from other faces in that weights are named for specific uses in phonebook. The lightest weight, used only for address is Bell Centennial Address. AT&T Inc. It is the largest provider of local, long distance telephone services in the United States, also sells digital subscriber online Internet access and also digital television. Current AT&T includes 11 of the original Bell Companies, and the original long distance division.
Bell Gothic It is a realist sans-serif designed by Chauncey H. Griffith in 1938, while heading this development program at the Linotype Company. The typeface was commissioned by AT&T as a proprietary typeface for use in all telephone directories (and should not be confused by Bell typeface, designed directly for British typefounder and graphic John Bell by the letter punchcutter Richard Austin). Bell Gothic was superseded by Matthew Carter’s Bell Centennial in 1978. Bold Listing A heavier bold weight, drawn as large and small capitals, without a true lowercase, it is called Bell Centennial Bold Listing. It would apparent in test settings so Bold Listing required a big companion font – one that was placed somewhere in between Address and Name & Number. .
Carter Matthew Matthew Carter is master typographer who has designed typefaces for over forty years. He is originally interested in fonts of the 16th century, firstly gained experience with typography under his father, Harry Carter, who is a linguist, lawyer, and type designer, presently working for the Oxford University Press as printing historian.Matthew Carter is trained in the traditional disciplines of typefounding; at the age of nineteen, he spent a year studying in type foundry in Holland, learning punch cutting from the P.H. Raedisch. In 1978 he designed Bell Centennial for a AT&T who wanted it to have modern feel, Carter has produced a Bell Centennial to solve existing visu-al and technical problems of the fonts for telephone directories.
Dot gain Dot gain is a phenomena that occur in printing and a graphic art. There is an optical dot gain. That is due to light that illuminate the paper and the printed dot. The point create a shadow through the paper that is bigger than the dot itself. The eyes can, actually, also see through the paper so they see both the dot and the shadow. The result was that what we can see is bigger than the printed area.
Economy Bell centennial is a condensed sans-serif design that maintains legibility at very small sizes, allows for clear information structures, is economical on a space, and accommodates for adverse production conditions; all while keeping it all to a well-intended typographic style.
Form The new typeface, above all else, had to be legible at very small sizes (6 point) – especially the numbers; according to Carter, the most valuable aspect of Bell Centennial is allowing for by using very open forms. To do it, Carter emphasized counter space with using square cut terminals to the letters with curved strokes, like in the a, c, e, g, and s. He also increased the white space of this letters by not using horizontal terminals, as well as straightening and shortening curves in characters like g, y, r, e, C, G, J, S, 3, 5, 6, and 9. The letters were allowed a bit more breathing spaces as far as letterspacing which could prevented characters from bleeding them together on the page.
GriďŹƒth H.Chauncey Kentucky printer and Linotype's salesman who directed a growth of the Linotype library from 1915 to 1948, he improved the look of the world’s newspapers and established Linotype as the composing machine of choice in North America. He continued as a consultant to Linotype well into his work retirement.
Helvetica
Bell Centennial
Helvetica AT&T wanted the new typeface to have more of a modern feel to it; one that would work well with Helvetica, the typeface use at the time in the AT&T corporate identity developed by Saul Bass (1920–1996). Though formal changes were made to better match Bell Centennial with Helvetica (i.e., the slanted stroke ends in Bell Gothic became squared), the new face would not simply be such adaptation. The main problem with Helvetica was that its forms lost some functionality at the small sizes used in the phone book due to its closed letter shapes.
Ink trap Ink trap is a feature of certain typefaces, where these corners or details are totally removed from all the letterforms. When the type is printed, ink naturally spreads into the removed area. Without such ink traps, excess ink would blob and ruin a crisp edge.Carter incorporated notches (called “ink traps�) at the corners for compensation. Ink traps are only needed for small point sizes and are usually only found on typefaces designed for printing on newsprint.
Justification From the assembler, the assembled line moves via these first elevator to the justification vise. The vise has two jaws which are set to the desired line width. The spacebands are now expanded to justify the line. When the line is justified, the matrices fit tightly between the jaws to forming a tight seal which would prevent the molten type metal from escaping when the line is cast.
Kaczun Alex Alex is attributed to wrapping the shapes with bezier curves to create the vector-based font in use today. Kaczun, accomplished type designer, graphic artist, has over two decades of experience in typography, graphic design, desktop publishing, electronic prepress production and, more recently, web design and commerce. Classically trained in the graphic arts, he has worked with numerous type luminaries, including, for instance Matthew Carter.
Linotype machine Linotype machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The Linotype machine operator enters text on 90-character keyboard. The machine assembles matrices, which are moldes for letter forms, into a line. An assembled line is then cast single piece, called slug, of type metal in process known as "hot metal" typesetting. The matrices were then returned to the type magazine from which they came.The name of such a machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o-type. This allows much faster typesetting ancomposition than original hand composition which operators place down one pre-cast metal letter, punctuation mark or blank space at a time.
Mergenthaler Company The Mergenthaler Company was founded in the United States in 1886 to market the linecaster invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. With the company’s primary product, the Linotype, it became the world’s leading manufacturer of book and newspaper typeseting equipment; outside North America, its only a serious challenger for book's mass production was United States and England based Monotype Corporation.
Name and Number A demi weight font, used for the entry both name and telephone number is called Bell Centennial Name and Number.
Outlines The drawings were encoded by hand and proofs were then made on Mergenthaler’s Linotron 606 digital typesetter. From there, the digitized typeface was provided to Autologic and Information International (two companies whose typesetters were widely used by Bell) for conversion into proprietary font formats that would work best with their typesetting special equipment.
Phonebook Bell Centennial is a font whose sole purpose would be for using in telephone directories.The design had to solve multiple technical and visual problems relate with the existing phonebo typeface, Bell Gothic. Bell Gothic worked fine when the phonebooks were still being composed in hot metal on the Linotype machine and printed on letterpress, but because it was designed for those production methods, it didn’t hold up under the set of limitations presented for newer technologies.It was apparently that a new typeface had to be designed to work with the newer technologies instead of trying to force Bell Gothic to work under circumstances for which it has not already designed.
Readability The phonebook’s production methods affected the design of Bell Centennial. A CRT composition removed the limitation imposed by Linotype requiring same letter in different weights to be the same width, the light M no longer had to be the same width as the bold M.With this freedom, Carter was able to improve the clarity of visual hierarchy between weights in the family. He made the Name & Number face heavier and wider, increasing prominence over other information. Also, a width of less prominent Address face was decreased; a reduction that would more than make up for the added width of Name & Number face. This allowed more information to fit in a small space.
Sub-Caption Sub-Caption was developed, and proved helpful in giving additional information about all adver tisers or in listing entries for large institutions with a wide range of departments and numbers.
Tolerance The effects of ¹0.0015� tolerance during modern photocomposition or reproduction can cause use parts of Bell Gothic characters disappear entirely. The CRT and the printing done on high speed offset lithography presses. This production greatly affected the typeface; letterforms (especially in the Light face) broke apart: its strokes became lighter, sometimes eroding completely at the intersections of straight and curved strokes.
Unusual Use Although intend for small print and lists, Mazda UK used Bell Centennial at huge sizes to striking effect in a mid-1990 ad campaign, as did the English National Opera to make advertise of their musically production for Katya Kabanova.
Vectors Vector outlines were created of Carter’s drawings to made his typface ready for mass production that was characteristic for phone directories.
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, demi weight, used for the entry name and telephone number was called Name and Number. A heavier bold we ight, drawn as large and small capitals, without a true lowercase, is called Bold Listing. This nomenclature simplifying phone book setting, perplex some new users once the typeface family was released for general use by the Linotype foundry.
X-height and baseline Predicting that advertisers will pay extra money for increased visibility, a Bold Listing weight was developed. It did not have lowercase characters and had an exaggerated capital height sitting below the baseline and utilizing space normally used by lowercase descenders. Alternate version was also developed to sit on a standard baseline, but il didn't look well.
Year of anniversary In 1976, AT&T commissioned the design of a newer typeface whose sole purpose would be for use in their telephone directories. The design had to solve multiplies technical and visual problems related with the existing phonebook typeface, Bell Gothic. The solution, named in honor of the company’s 100th anniversary, was Bell Centennial by Matthew Carter.
Zero With Bell Centennial, Carter put special emphasis on distinguishing the lowercase L from the number 1, and the letter O from the number 0. The design was so detailed that he worked with a thousandth-of-an-inch stroke weight to get everything perfect. He has stated in interviews that Bell Centennial inspired some aspects of Verdana font.