Notes

In the 15 short years since Design with Type first appeared, the type trade had changed significantly. Photo-type was well on its way to replacing metal and a good many people in the trade could see that it was only a matter of time before the computer would replace both, even if they didn’t know the exact form that would take. But Carl Dair was already involved in another major transformation, one that was more cultural than technological. The trade he had always known as typography and with it, typographic design, had evolved into the broader field of graphic design. Type was now part of a much larger profession and to reflect that change his book would have to be completely rewritten.

Dair was certainly influenced by the work of the French/Hungarian pop artist Victor Vasarely, but his cover for the second edition of Design with Type is also a purely typographic idiom. The rows of black squares are common to both individual pieces of metal type and old typecases. (The four rotated squares that break the otherwise static pattern is Vasarely.) Dair had used a simplier version of this motif on the cover of the 1963–64 Prospectus for the Ontario College of Art, so he had been playing with this concept for some time.

Dair insisted that the typesetting for the book be carried out by union typesetters, which added to the production costs for UTP. To offset that extra cost he offered to do the paste-up and assembly himself, ably assisted by his daughter Willa who, at that time, was also a graphic designer. One of the most interesting stories about this edition concerns the hyphen. Many designers have pet issues that they champion, it may be something as arcane as the need for ligatures, or as far reaching as spelling reform. For Dair it was end-of-line hyphens. He simply did not like the ragged indents produced by hyphens in justified settings. His solution was fairly radical; he designed a special vertical hyphen to replace the standard horizontal hyphen at the end-of-line breaks. He had even included a vertical hyphen in his typeface Cartier, but the fonts used in photo typesetting were severely limited as to the number of characters they could contain, so the vertical hyphen had to be left out (it is in his original drawings). Not to be deterred, Dair still wanted to use his vertical hyphen in his book and, incredibly, Marsh Jenneret, the Director of UTP, agreed. They had a an 11-point Monotype matrix for the vertical hyphen engraved to match the typeface Bembo. Few publishers have gone to such lengths to accommodate a designer’s whim. We do not know if Dair’s vertical hyphen was used in another book but as Bembo was a popular face at UTP it is possible that someone else would have tried it.

Design with Type was published in January 1967, as was his typeface, Cartier. Except for one brief interlude it has remained in print ever since. Perhaps not surprisingly, Design with Type is now only available as a soft-cover print-on-demand book. But if you want to see it as Dair intended then look for a copy in a used bookstore.

In September 1967 Design with Type was selected as one of the AIGA Fifty Books of the Year. One of the classic books on designing with type, it is still considered an important book for students. On September 28 Carl Dair died suddenly on a flight to Toronto from New York, never getting to fully enjoy the success his book achieved. – Rod McDonald

Artifact Text, jacket, inside flap; about this book

The first edition of Design with Type appeared in 1952 and was immediately acclaimed by professional designers, printers, art directors, and graphic design teachers. In preparing this new edition Mr. Dair has rewritten most of the text to include discussion of current trends in the use of typography, and even to project possible developments which may result from major technological changes taking place in typesetting methods.

This new edition, which retains the basic material of the first, takes the reader through a study of typography that starts with the individual letter and proceeds through the word, the line, and the mass of text. The contrasts possible with type are discussed in detail, along with their applications to the typography of books, advertising, magazines, and information data. New chapters discuss the various contending schools of typography, and are copiously illustrated with the author’s selection of over 150 examples of some of the most imaginative typography being done throughout the world today.

Design with Type differs from all other books on typography in that it discusses type as a design material as well as a means of communication: the premise is that if type is understood in terms of design, the user of type will be better able to work with it to achieve maximum legibility and effectiveness, as well as aesthetic pleasure. Everyone who uses type, everyone who enjoys the appearance of the printed word, will find Design with Type informative and fascinating. It provides, too, an outstanding example of the effectiveness of imaginative and tasteful typographic design.

Artifact Text, jacket, inside back flap

Carl Dair (1912–67) was for over thirty-five years a keen student and user of type, both as a working type compositor and as a designer. A prolific writer of articles and monographs on the subject, his work has been reproduced in more than a dozen countries in Europe, Africa and the Far East. Awarded the Medal of the Royal Canadian Academy for distinguished achievements in the Arts in Canada, 1963, Carl Dair also won the Silver Medal, Leipzig International Book Exhibition, 1959, and numerous awards in Art Directors’ Exhibitions in Montreal and Toronto. He was on the jury of Typomundus 20, was an Honorary Fellow of the Typographic Designers of Canada and Member of the Board of Directors of the International Center for the Typographic Arts, New York. This edition of Design with Type has won several major design awards: it was one of the “Fifty Books of the Year 1967” selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts; it was chosen for exhibit at the 1968 Association of American University Presses Book Show and at the New York Type Directors Club Show TDC XIII; and it won the Silver Eagle at the Nice Book Fair 1969, The Graphic Designers of Canada Certificate of Excellence 1968, and a Graphic 68 Award of Merit. Mr. Dair taught typography and design in Toronto, Montreal and Jamaica.