Design with Type, First Edition – Carl Dair, 1952

Dair used Monotype’s 20th Century paired with Garamond Italic for the cover. His subtle handling of the word ‘type’ allows us to see it both as a word and as the individual letters it is composed in. This cover leaves the reader with the clear impression that someone had carefully thought about the design – which is the first step in understanding design.

A typical spread showing what are really typographic ‘sketches’. His simple illustrations, used throughout the book, covered most of the major design idiom’s of the time. The typefaces Dair worked with were very popular then and still are.

Dair’s dictum on typography, ‘It happens in space‘, first appeared in this book and it remains an important principle in understanding both typography and type design. The way he uses the space of the page with the two contrasting typefaces is still effective.

The photo shows Dair writing on a blackboard, presumably at one of the schools in Montreal. Design Workshop was the company that Dair established when he moved from Montreal to Toronto in 1951. His two major clients were Cooper & Beatty and E. B. Eddy Paper.

Notes

The first edition of Design with Type is comprised largely from material Carl Dair had prepared for the first three E. B. Eddy booklets, and from his classes at both the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. His wife, Edith, arranged to have the book published by Pellegrini & Cudahy.

The first edition became a valued possession of many designers throughout the world, but even it would be overshadowed by the far more popular, and widely available, second edition published in 1967 by the University of Toronto Press.

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