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 . 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 .
Dair is the very epitome of what I mean when I say “ typographer ”: someone who designs with type , not just a fancy typesetter , but someone who uses type , in all its variations , as the principle element of design . Since type carries meaning , the practice of typography requires a designer who cares about the words themselves . 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 .
Carl 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expanded in 1967 ) is deservedly still in print , even though the technology that he used and described has long been outdated . The practicalities of setting type in metal are no longer the practicalities we have to deal with ; but the visual relationships between letters , which Dair showed and explained so graphically in