![]() Typography is the purposeful use of type to make written material understandable and visually appealing. We typically examine the power of the written word, but we rarely consider the designer's role in mimicking the spirit of the word in a sentence. Type may be seen everywhere, from instruction books to storefronts. ![]() We're constantly processing printed words, whether on our phones, in books, or on websites. Let's look at how to utilize typography efficiently in graphic design to reach your goals. Typography helps with readability, hierarchy, and brand identification. Since he was both writer and designer for the series, each of the booklets emerged as a wholly crafted object, dedicated to explaining one aspect or another of using type.The significance of typography in graphic design cannot be emphasized. The first Typographic Quest was published in 1964 the sixth (and, as far as I know, final) came out in 1968, the year Carl Dair died. But these were quite modest productions: little saddlestitched booklets of about 30 pages, measuring 5-1/4 inches by 9, usually printed in two colors (the first one uses three colors throughout the later ones are two-color, although the second color may change from sheet to sheet, with all three colors used together on the covers). Like the lavish paper-company samples produced today, this series was meant to raise the profile of the manufacturer and encourage designers to think of Westvaco when specifying paper for their printing jobs. Each booklet was, naturally, printed on Westvaco paper stock. ![]() Design With Type is still one of the best handbooks available for learning how to do exactly what the title says: design with type.Īt around the same time he was revising his book, Carl Dair was producing a series of six pamphlets for West Virginia Pulp & Paper (Westvaco), which he called A Typographic Quest. However, the visual relationships between letters, which Dair showed and explained so graphically in his book, haven’t changed at all. The practicalities of setting type in metal are no longer the practicalities we have to deal with. ![]() It requires someone who cares enough, and is skillful enough, to make the type express that meaning, rather than serve as simply eye-catching decoration.Ĭarl Dair’s book Design With Type (originally published in 1952 revised and expanded in 1967) is deservedly still in print, even though the technology that he used and described has long been outdated. Since type carries meaning, the practice of typography requires a designer who cares about the words themselves. Not just a fancy typesetter, but someone who uses type, in all its variations, as the principle element of design. In coordinated projects that he both wrote and designed, he managed to describe-and show-the ways in which manipulating and using type make typography happen.ĭair is the very epitome of what I mean when I say “typographer”: someone who designs with type. The late Canadian typographer Carl Dair was one of the great typographic designers of the 1950s and 1960s, and he may have been the best of them all at explaining the nature of typography. You can find more from John at his website. If you’d like to read more from this series, click here.Įventually, John gathered a selection of these articles into two books, dot-font: Talking About Design and dot-font: Talking About Fonts, which are available free to download here. Barry (the former editor and publisher of the typographic journal U&lc) for CreativePro. Dot-font was a collection of short articles written by editor and typographer John D.
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