Carl Dair

Carl Dair is one of Canada's preeminent designers and he left a lasting legacy as a teacher, type designer, design practitioner, and author. Even though he was primarily a self-taught designer, Dair would emerge to win international recognition and codify visual design principles still relevant today.[1]

Biography

Dair was born in Welland, Ontario, in February 1912. Dair's first job as an 18-year-old was creating advertising and layouts for the Stratford Beacon-Herald.[1] He would move on to form a partnership with Henry Eveleigh and set-up the Dair-Eveleigh Studio from 1947-51 in Montréal, Quebec. He worked principally as a freelance designer on a variety of jobs from department store art director to the typographic director for the National Film board of Canada (1945).[1] Dair lectured on typography at the Ontario College of Art between 1959 and 1962, as well as teaching at the Jamaica School of Arts and Crafts for two years.[2]

With the publication of Design with Type in 1952, revised and republished in 1967, he demonstrated a deep understanding of how to design using primarily type and formal design principles. He outlined visual principles of harmony and contrast codifying seven kinds of typographic contrast: size, weight, structure, form, texture, colour, and direction. "Contrast is the opposite of concord; it is based on a unity of differences."[3] Design with Type became the first Canadian book to receive the Book of the Year Award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).[4] It was republished by the University of Toronto Press (First Edition) in 2000.

The period from 1956-57 was extremely productive for Dair when he received the RSC fellowship to study type design and manufacture in the Netherlands.[1] During this period he had the opportunity to study metal type and hand-punching at Enschedé Foundry in Haarlem, Netherlands, where he created a silent film called Gravers and Files documenting "one of the last great punchcutters, P. H. Radisch, demonstrating his craft—it is perhaps the only such film in existence".[5] His experiences at Enschedé were also a formative influence in the typeface, for instance, Dair later created a typeface called Cartier.[5]

Cartier was commissioned and released for Canada's 1967 centenary celebrations. The original design was based on hand-lettering and had some failings as a typeface until it was sensitively adjusted by Rod McDonald for Monotype Imaging and released in 2000.[6] Cartier can be identified as an attempt to create a regional typeface for Canada. "It is now widely used and appears to have achieved the status of an identifiable national type."[7]

Through his practice, teaching, and writing, Dair built an international reputation and received a number of awards.[1] In 1959, he was awarded the silver medal at the Internationale Buchkunst-Austellung in Leipzig, East Germany. In 1962, The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts awarded him its Arts Medal. In 1967, he became a fellow in the Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC).

Carl Dair died on the flight from New York City to Toronto on September 28, 1967.[1] The Faculty of Fine Arts at York University honors Dair's contribution to design in Canada with the Carl Dair Memorial Scholarship. A large collection of Dair's work can be seen on Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art website.

Typefaces

Typefaces Designed by Carl Dair:

Quotes

Letters are like molecules when they combine with one another. (Dair, 1967)

Typographical rhythm is no less a rhythm because it exists only in space and is perceived instantaneously. (Dair, 1967)

Publications

Dair, C. Design with type. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, (1952; 2nd ed 1967)

A Typographic Quest, 6 pamphlets published by Westvaco Papers in the 1960s

Dair, C. (Director). (1957). Gravers and Files [Film].

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC). (2007, November 17). Gdc fellows: 1960 recipients. Retrieved from http://www.gdc.net/about/fellows/articles67.php
  2. ↑ Carl Dair Fonds. Massey College, Toronto (MS Word doc). Retrieved from "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-04-05. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
  3. ↑ Dair, C. Design with type. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967
  4. ↑ University of Toronto Press (Retrieved August 3, 2011) "Timeline." http://www.utpress.utoronto.ca/noflash.html
  5. 1 2 The Devil's Artisan. (2008). A rogue's gallery of the canadian book and printing arts: carl dair. Retrieved from http://devilsartisan.porcupinesquill.ca/rogues_gallery_dair.html
  6. ↑ Fonts.com (2011). Cartier. Retrieved from http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/hiddengems/cartier.htm
  7. ↑ Lewis, L. (2011). The canadian encyclopedia/the encyclopedia of music in canada: dair, carl. Retrieved from "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-12-29. Retrieved 2011-08-03.
  8. ↑ Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983, ISBN 0-7137-1347-X, p. 37
  9. ↑ "Carl Dair Pro". MyFont. 1999-02-22. Retrieved 2011-10-20.

Examples of work

Cartier typeface suppliers

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