A Typographic Quest, Number One – Westvaco, Carl Dair, 1964

Between 1956 and 1962, the American designer Bradbury Thompson had been responsible for the hugely popular Westvaco Inspirations for Printers. In 1964 Carl Dair begin a new series for Westvaco called A Typographic Quest. In many ways Dair was the obvious choice to follow Thompson. He had an international reputation, and in addition to being an accomplished designer and writer, he also knew the paper business.

Working for a much larger company brought with it a correspondingly larger budget that allowed Dair to reprise his role as a typographic design educator. Within three short years he wrote and designed six informative booklets on typography which, like the five booklets he had earlier produced for The E. B. Eddy Paper Company, would also be used as textbooks.

The title of the first Issue, A Typographic Quest, also served as the title for the series; it could be argued that it is also an apt description of Dair’s life. A brief quotation from his introduction to this first issue sets the stage for the entire series: “A piece of fine printing is a combination of many things and many skills — good typesetting, good presswork, good paper and good design, all carefully interwoven to achieve the one objective of appealing to the reader. This fellow has no eye for the details of technological perfection. All he can see is what strikes his eye in the initial visual impact — the design of the piece. Without good design, the most meticulous typesetting and presswork and the most luxurious paper are all wasted. That is our justification for taking our friends, printers, designers and buyers of printing, on this typographic quest.” Apart from a few references to technology, and the prevailing assumption that the reader will be male, Dair’s words are still relevant today.