This term we are lucky enough to be doing work-based projects where briefs are set by external designers and other professionals. The project I chose was with the studio Julia, http://www.julia.uk.com/en/, a trio of designers who met at the Royal College of Art and work on many things including books, typefaces, posters, websites, identities and exhibition design.
First, we put into groups then each group was given a different typeface from a list. My group got Bell Centennial. I must say at first I wasn't too happy about working in groups and this typeface looked a bit weird and obscure but by the end of the first day I was, to my surprise, beginning to enjoy it!
Bell Centennial was designed by Matthew Carter between 1975-78. AT&T commissioned him to design a new typeface to solve multiple technical and visual problems related to the existing phonebook typeface, Bell Gothic, that arose when AT&T went from using Linotype Letterpress to CRT offset printers. Bell Gothic printed at high speeds on the thin newsprint used in the phone book caused legibility problems because ink would bleed making it hard to distinguish between different characters. Carter's new typeface is perfectly legible at small point sizes because of it's open forms and 'ink notches' which prevented corners filling up with ink.
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