Written by John D. Berry
In a seminal booklet that he both designed and wrote,
Carl Dair showed how in typography, as in music, harmony
and contrast are the keys to composition.
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outdated.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 his book, haven't changed at all. "Design With Type" is still one
of the best handbooks available for learning how to do exactly
what the title says: design with type.
At around the same time he was revising his book, Carl Dair was
producing a series of six pamphlets for West Virginia Pulp and
Paper (Westvaco), which he called "A Typographic Quest." Each
booklet was, naturally, printed on Westvaco paper stock; 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. 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). The first
"A Typographic Quest" was published in 1964; the sixth (and,
as far as I know, final) came out in 1968, the year Carl Dair died.
Since he was both writer and designer for the series, each of
the booklets emerged as a wholly crafted object, dedicated to
explaining one or another aspect of using type.
Graphic form and musical form have a common denominator:
rhythm and emphasis, harmony and contrast. "Harmony and
Contrast," says Dair, "are fundamental to both, and the discovery
of these basic principles and their application to the design of
printed matter is the object of this volume of 'A Typographic Quest.'"
Dair first explains the "elements of harmony" (a consistent relationship
between the black strokes of the letters on a page and the space
around them; and any rules, frames, or decorations being similar in
style to the type), then goes on to show seven different kinds of contrast.
He emphasizes that in any kind of differentiation, it's important to make
the contrast obvious -- not just a slight change, an almost imperceptible
variation, but a really big, obvious difference between the contrasting elements.
The first and most basic contrast is size. "A simple but dramatic
contrast of size," says Dair, "provides a point to which the reader's
attention is drawn. Set in the same style of type, it maintains the
exact relationship of the letter to the background. It is only a
physical enlargement of the basic pattern created by the form
and the weight of the type being used for the text." The most
common use of size is in making the title or heading noticeably
bigger than the text -- but that's only a starting-point.
The second most obvious contrast is of weight: bold type stands
out in the middle of lighter type of the same style. As Dair points
out, "Not only types of varying weight, but other typographic
material such as rules, spots, squares, etc., can be called into
service to provide a heavy area for a powerful point of visual
attraction or emphasis."
The next two kinds of contrast are the contrast of form and the
contrast of structure. It's not entirely obvious where to draw a
line between these two, since they both have to do with the
shapes of the letters.
By "form," Dair means the distinction between a capital letter and
its lowercase equivalent, or a roman letter and its italic variant.
He includes condensed and expanded versions under "form,"
and he even allows as how "there are some script types
which harmonize with standard types, such as the Bank Script
and Bodoni on the opposite page, and can be used for dramatic
change of form." (He warns, parenthetically, against using scripts
and italics together, since they are both versions of handwritten
letters; they're more likely to conflict than to contrast).
By "structure," Dair means the different letterforms of different
kinds of typefaces -- a monoline sans serif vs. a high-contrast
modern, for instance, or an italic vs. a blackletter. "The use of
contrast of structure may be compared to an orator who
changes his voice not to increase or decrease the volume,
but to change the very quality of his voice to suit his words."
Put all these things together, and apply them to a block of text
on a page, and you come to the contrast of texture: the way the
lines of type look as a mass, which depends partly on the
letterforms themselves and partly on how they're arranged.
"Like threads in cloth," says Dair, "types form the fabric of our
daily communication."
Dair's sixth contrast is color -- and he warns that a second color
is usually less emphatic than plain black on white (or white on
black), so it's important to give careful thought to which element
needs to be emphasized, and to pay attention to the tonal values
of the colors used.
The last of Dair's seven kinds of contrast is the contrast of direction:
the opposition between vertical and horizontal, and the angles in
between. Turning one word on its side can have a dramatic effect on
a layout. But Dair points out that text blocks also have their vertical
or horizontal aspects, and mixing wide blocks of long lines with tall
columns of short lines can also produce a contrast.
The last of Dair's seven kinds of contrast is the contrast of direction:
the opposition between vertical and horizontal, and the angles in
between. Turning one word on its side can have a dramatic effect
on a layout. But Dair points out that text blocks also have their
vertical or horizontal aspects, and mixing wide blocks of long lines
with tall columns of short lines can also produce a contrast.
Finally, Dair takes time to say a little about rhythm ("in typography,
it consists of intervals of space") and about the power of "interrupted
rhythm" ("the impact derives not from the fact that the unexpected
happens, but rather that the expected does not happen").
Most of the time, we use more than one kind of contrast together,
in order to make the differences between visual elements even
more obvious. We can use all of Dair's seven kinds of contrast at
once, if we're skillful; he refers to this as typographic "chords." (One
of the chapter titles in "Design With Type" is "Multiplying the Contrasts").
But breaking them down like this into simple oppositions makes it
easier to use them consciously; it keeps us from getting our layouts
all muddied up through trying to change too many things at once
without thinking about what we're doing. I've found Carl Dair's analysis
of typographic contrast -- and especially the visual flair with which
he presents it -- an invaluable tool in the practice of graphic design.