Address

Bell Centennial’s weight system differs from other faces in that weights are named for specifi c 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. Griffi th 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 Bell Gothic was superseded by Matthew Carter’s Bell Centennial in 1978.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 some-where in between Address and Name & Number..

Carter Matthew

Matthew Carter is master typo-grapher who has designed type-faces for over forty years. He is originally interested in fonts of the 16th century, fi rstly gained experience with typography un-der his father, Harry Carter, who is a linguist, lawyer, and type de-signer, presently working for theOxford University Press as prin-ting historian.Matthew Carter is trained in the traditional discipli-nes of typefounding; at the age of nineteen, he spent a year stu-dying in type foundry in Holland, learning punch cutting from theP.H. Raedisch. In 1978 he desig-ned 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 thefonts 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 illumi-nate 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 pa-per 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, all-ows for clear information struc-tures, 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 Cen-tennial 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 in-creased the white space of this letters by not using horizontal ter-minals, as well as straightening and shortening curves in charac-ters 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 bleed-ing them together on the page.

Griffi th H.Chauncey

Kentucky printer and Linotype's salesman who directed a growth of the Linotype library from 1915 to 1948, he improved the look ofthe world’s newspapers and esta-blished Linotype as the compo-sing machine of choice in North America. He continued as a con-sultant 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 corpo-rate identity developed by Saul Bass (1920–1996). Though for-mal changes were made to bet-ter match Bell Centennial with Helvetica (i.e., the slanted stro-ke ends in Bell Gothic became squared), the new face would not simply be such adaptation.The main problem with Helveti-ca 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 not-ches (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.

Justifi cation

From the assembler, the assem-bled line moves via these fi rst elevator to the justifi cation vise. The vise has two jaws which are set to the desired line width. The spacebands are now expanded spacebands are now expanded to justify the line. When the line to justify the line. When the line is justifi ed, the matrices fi t tigh-is justifi ed, the matrices fi t tigh-tly between the jaws to forming tly between the jaws to forming a tight seal which would prevent a tight seal which would prevent the molten type metal from esca-the molten type metal from esca-ping when the line is cast.ping 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, accom-plished type designer, graphic artist, has over two decades of experience in typography, grap-hic design, desktop publishing, electronic prepress production and, more recently, web design and commerce. Classically tra-ined in the graphic arts, he has worked with numerous type lu-minaries, including, for instan-ce Matthew Carter.

Linotype machine

Linotype machine is a "line cast-ing" machine used in printing.The Linotype machine operator enters text on 90-character key-board. The machine assembles matrices, which are moldes for letter forms, into a line. An as-sembled 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 maga-zine 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 ancom-position than original hand com-position which operators place down one pre-cast metal letter, punctuation mark or blank spa-ce at a time.

Mergenthaler Company

The Mergenthaler Company was founded in the United States in 1886 to market the linecaster in-vented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. With the company’s primary pro-duct, the Linotype, it became the world’s leading manufacturer of book and newspaper typeseting equipment; outside North Ame-rica, 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 In-ternational (two companies who-se typesetters were widely used by Bell) for conversion into pro-prietary 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 de-sign had to solve multiple tech-nical and visual problems relatewith the existing phonebo type-face, Bell Gothic. Bell Gothic wo-rked fi ne when the phonebooks were still being composed in hot metal on the Linotype machine and printed on letterpress, but because it was designed for tho-se production methods, it didn’t hold up under the set of limita-tions presented for newer tech-nologies.It was apparently that a new typeface had to be design-ed to work with the newer tech-nologies instead of trying to for-ce Bell Gothic to work under cir-cumstances for which it has not already designed.

Readability

The phonebook’s production me-thods affected the design of Bell Centennial. A CRT composition removed the limitation imposed by Linotype requiring same letter in different weights to be the sa-me 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 wid-er, 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 informa-tion to fi t in a small space.

Sub-Caption

Sub-Caption was developed, and proved helpful in giving additio-nal information about all advertisers or in listing entries for lar-ge institutions with a wide range of departments and numbers.

Tolerance

The effects of ±0.0015” toleran-ce during modern photocompo-sition or reproduction can causeuse parts of Bell Gothic charac-ters disappear entirely. The CRT and the printing done on high speed offset lithography presses. This production greatly affected the typeface; letterforms (espe-cially in the Light face) broke ap-art: 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 strik-ing effect in a mid-1990 ad cam-paign, as did the English Natio-nal Opera to make advertise of their musically production forKatya Kabanova.

Vectors

Vector outlines were created of Carter’s drawings to made his typface ready for mass produc-tion that was characteristic for phone directories.

Weight system

Bell Centennial’s weight system differs from other faces in that weights are named for their spe-cifi c uses in AT&T’s telephone directories. The lightest weight, used for addresses is called Bell Centennial Address, a slightly he-avier book weight is called Bell Centennial Caption, demi weight, used for the entry name and tele-phone number was called Name and Number. A heavier bold weight, drawn as large and small capitals, without a true lowerca-se, is called Bold Listing. This no-menclature 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. Alter-nate version was also develo-ped to sit on a standard baseli-ne, 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 direc-tories. The design had to solve multiplies technical and visual problems related with the exi-sting phonebook typeface, Bell Gothic. The solution, named in honor of the company’s 100th anniversary, was Bell Centenni-al by Matthew Carter.

Zero

With Bell Centennial, Carter put special emphasis on distingui-shing 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.