Bell Centennial [SEP] designer
Bell Centennial
Bell Centennial is an realist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter in the period 1975–78. The typeface was commissioned by AT&T as a proprietary type to replace their then current directory typeface Bell Gothic on the occasion of AT&T’s one hundredth anniversary. Carter was working for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company 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
.
Evolution of use.
Bell Gothic remained in uninterrupted use for AT&T telephone directories for forty years. Following AT&T's adoption of Bell Centennial, the Mergenthaler Linotype foundry licensed Bell Gothic for general use. Beginning in the early 1990s Bell Gothic became popular and associated with avant garde experimentation with type at places like the Cranbrook Academy of Art the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and RISD. The typeface was used as a display and caption face by "Metropolis" magazine, by Canadian graphic designer Bruce Mau in designing