In this project, I wanted to showcase the font Bell Gothic. To give some context, Bell Gothic was designed by Chauncey H. Griffith and was commissioned by AT&T in 1938 to be used for their phone book. Some great qualities of this font is how very legible even in a very small size and how well it transfer on cheap paper.

DESIGN PROCESS

IT CAME DOWN TO...

DESIGN 1

This design highlight the design of the font. I chose these specific colors in order to highlight the history behind the font. I love the playfulness of the design and I feel like the colors worked well together. While the big letters highlight the uniqueness of the font like the well on the 'B' and the slanted top of the lowercase 'L'. It also acts like a build-up to the star of the show, Bell Gothic. The small font with descriptions highlight how legible the font is even at that size. My concern with this however, is how it doesn't incorporate the history of the font as much as I wanted so...

DESIGN 2

This design directly reference the AT&T phone book. In a traditional book, the middle is filled with a photograph, but I wanted to use the format of a page of the phone book to highlight the font instead. With this, I was able to show all the letters from A-Z (both capital and lowercase) along with the numbers. Furthermore, I was also able to incorporate all the different weights the font have to offer: Black, Bold, and Light. This design has a very old school, retro feel that may invoke the feeling of nostalgia for some. The color was once again chose using the AT&T color scheme. However, my concern with this is how it doesn't highlight the uniqueness of the design of the font the same way the previous design does so...

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

My final design is a combination of both. I was able to highlight the uniqueness of the font while also give a historical context of the font usage in the background. Instead of having a completely white background, I put the phone book page from Design 2 to fill the negative space. At first, I was concerned with how the background may be too distracting, but  by lowering the opacity, the final design came together perfectly. The off-white color also make it not too glaring for the viewer.