A Typographic Quest, Number Three, 'Type to be Read' – Westvaco, Carl Dair, 1965

In issue three, type to be read, Carl Dair looks at text types. Typically, text faces are tasked with doing the bulk of the work on most projects. Dair maintained that, unlike display faces, style is not always the most important consideration when choosing a text face. Rather, it is how that typeface is set and arranged on the page that will largely determine whether a person can, or will, read the text. He lays out the basic rules on how to set a block of text to ensure that the reader can read it – without too much difficulty. Regardless of whether it is a bothersome sales brochure or potentially life-saving instructions, if a person has trouble reading the text they are not going to ‘get’ the message. It is a basic cause of ‘a failure to communicate’.

Also included in this issue is a prototype of the Alphacast, a system that Dair developed to aid designers in calculating how much space typewritten copy will occupy when set in a specific style and size of a typeface. Before computer typesetting, and the use of layout software, designers had to know exactly how many pages a typewritten manuscript would occupy when set in a specific typeface. The text, often called ‘copy’, had to go through a number of crucial steps before it could be sent out for typesetting. Designers had to know certain fundamental things; the size, leading and line length of a typeface before they could order the typesetting. Dair had planned on marketing the Alphacast but died before it was ready.

Artifact Text

A brief excerpt from Chapter 5, The sizes of type:
“The selection of the proper size of type is of critical importance for easy reading, and this will vary with the audience in respect to age, education, and condition of eyesight. There are no fixed rules, but certainly a book for a child just learning to read should not be set smaller than an 18-point type, nor should an educated adult of average vision be expected to cope with any great length of text set in less than 8-point.”

It should be noted that when Dair wrote this, designers were just beginning to grasp the importance of considering the needs of the reader when designing typographic material.