Bell (typeface)
Bell Gothic and Bell Centennial are two families of typefaces designed for the Bell Telephone Company for use in telephone directories (and should not be confused with the Bell family of typefaces, designed for the British typefounder and publisher John Bell (1746-1831) by the punchcutter Richard Austin). Bell Gothic and Bell Centennial were designed to be highly legible at small sizes, economical in their use of space (and hence paper), and print well on absorbent paper stock under less than optimal conditions. Bell Gothic in particular has a number of design features that, taken out of their original context, can look strange. An example of this are Bell Gothic’s exaggerated ink traps, deep nicks that compensate for the tendency of ink to fill in in places like the bottom of the ‘v’.
The principal typefaces in the family are:
- Bell Gothic, designed in 1938 by Chauncey H. Griffith
- Bell Centennial, designed in 1978 by Matthaew Carter