Jill Bell

Jill Bell | Started working in 1980

Bell started working in the 1980s in Los Angeles. She studied at UCLA and Otis/ Parsons while working for Saul Bass. Her designs have been publicly exhibited and published in American trade journals like ‘How to Step-by-Step’ and Letter Art Review. She demonstrated her affinity for calligraphy and her appreciation of spontaneous forms, individual particularities, and irregularities in the script and type design. Her typefaces are distributed by ITC, Creative Alliance, Agfa, Fontek, and Adobe. She also created brand lettering for corporate clients like Disney and Johnson & Johnson. She has lectured widely and has spoken at prominent conferences including; TypeCon, ATypI, TypoTechinca, and TypoBerlin. She is also a jury member for the TDC and Linotype’s Type Design Contests. Jill Bell produces a monthly digital newsletter on topics related to typography and lettering. She also works as a graphic artist with a specialty in creating letterforms, logos, and fonts for over two decades at her company; Jill Bell Brandlettering.

Typefaces

• Smack (1995) • ITC Caribbean (1996) • Bruno JB (2000) • Carumba Hellenic • PL Davison Zip • Swank (1995) • Gigi (1995) • Hollyweird (1995) • Carumba (1995) • ITC Clover (1997) • ITC Stranger (1997)

Sources

Bartelsheim, Sabine, et al. Women in Graphic Design 1890-2012 . 2nd ed., Jovis Verlag GmbH, 2012.

Carter, Rob. American Typography Today. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993.

Crull, Alyssa. 5 American Type Designers: Cynthia Hollandsworth, Kris Holmes, Zuzana Licko, Judith Sutchiffe, Carol Twombly. limited ed., Spurius Press, 1995.

Tselentis, Jason. Typography, Referenced: a Comprehensive Visyal Guide to the Language, History, and Practice of Typography. Rockport Publishers, 2012.

Webber, Laura. “Women Typeface Designer” Rochester Institute of Technology, 1 May 1997, scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4844&context=theses.