Howarth & Smith – square logo mark, Carl Brett, 1972

By the early 1970s, Howarth & Smith (H&S) was looking to refresh its visual identity. The company had long positioned itself as a typographic craftsman’s shop — smaller than Cooper & Beatty, but with a similar devotion to high standards and technical excellence. The timing of the new identity coincided with major changes in the printing industry, including the growing influence of computer-based typesetting and offset printing.

Designer Carl Brett, who had joined H&S in 1958 as its first Type Director, was responsible for the redesign. His new mark — a tightly structured monogram of the letters H and S — was constructed on a 5 × 5 square grid and used rigid geometric shapes that could reproduce cleanly at both large and small sizes. These kinds of reductive marks were increasingly popular in the photo-offset era, when clarity and consistency across multiple sizes became a priority.

The typographic treatment was typical of the time. While Helvetica had been used in Canadian advertising and design since the early-1960s, by 1972 it had become the go-to typeface for identity systems, in part due to its perceived neutrality and modernity. Ironically, when paired with the austere geometry of Brett’s mark, Helvetica’s subtle humanist qualities became more apparent – a reminder that even ‘neutral’ typefaces carry character when seen in context.

The tagline ‘The Graphic Arts Craftsmen’ echoed an earlier slogan used by Cooper & Beatty (Type Craftsmen) and suggests a quiet competition between the two firms – each positioning itself as the upholder of typographic tradition in Canada. – Brian Donnelly

Carl Brett, FGDC (from the DesCan website)

Carl Brett was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1928 and educated there at the Crawford School of Art. Arriving in Canada in 1954, he began working as a typographer and designer at Vickers & Benson Advertising under art director Stanley Furnival. When Allan Fleming's influential typography at Cooper and Beatty began to garner attention, rival type house Howarth & Smith hired Brett in 1959 to strengthen the creativity of their typography service and make it worthy of the competition. Gordon Howarth gave Brett carte blanche, and for ten years they set new standards in visual thinking in type, particularly for advertising. He was a bane to the typesetters with his insistence on exactitude and always getting them to stretch themselves and set new standards.