Design with Type, first edition — book, Pellegrini & Cudahy, Carl Dair, 1952

The first edition of Design with Type draws extensively from material Carl Dair developed for the first three E. B. Eddy booklets and from his classes at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and L’École des Beaux-Arts. The project was brought to life thanks to his wife, Edith Dair, who arranged for its publication through Pellegrini & Cudahy in New York.

Dair sought to present typography not as ornament, but as a design material – a modern medium for communication. His text was practical, focused, and grounded in Bauhaus principles, though always with an eye toward North American commercial practice. The book includes over 90 working type layouts, many requiring no additional artwork – choosing instead to emphasize type as both form and message.

Although long out of print, the first edition remains a valued reference. It was overshadowed, in part, by the second edition published by the University of Toronto Press in 1967– a more refined and widely distributed version. But the 1952 edition stands on its own as an early attempt to frame typographic design within the broader conversation about modern visual communication. – Rod McDonald

Artifact Text

Text, (inside front cover)

Design with Type is the first book in English to deal with type as a design material. It is also the first book to discuss typographic design in a contemporary sense, applying the Bauhaus principles to the problem of commercial printing in a completely practical, workable way. The book includes over 90 working layouts, employing only type elements and requiring no art work, adaptable to a wide range of printing jobs. Printers and all those who use type in design will find in this book a wealth of new possibilities with type, and, through it, a more effective use of type material.

PELLEGRINI & CUDAHY
41 East 50th Street, New York 22, New York

Text, (back cover)

Carl Dair is the art director of Design Workshop, Ltd., of Toronto, Canada. As a working type compositor, layout man, and designer for over twenty years, his own experience has led him to recognize the need for a practical analysis of the principles underlying good typographic design. He has been the Typographical Director of the National Film Board (Canada) and a lecturer on typography at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and L’École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. His work and writings have been reproduced widely in Canada and the United States, in various European graphic arts periodicals, and in India, Japan and Australia.