Type & Paper — booklet, E. B. Eddy Paper Company, Carl Dair, 1946

Type & Paper is the first in a series of five popular booklets written and designed by Carl Dair for The E. B. Eddy Paper Company. He used five type families represent the five basic classifications of type; Caslon (Old Style), Bodoni (Modern), Futura (Sans Serif), Stymie (Square Serif), and Lydian (Calligraphic), Dair discusses the characteristics of each family; how they change appearance when used with various halftone screen effects or when reversed out of coloured backgrounds. He also demonstrates how they can change appearance when combined with different display faces.

In the mid 1940s this kind of practical detailed information about typefaces and how they functioned, especially in the context of everyday print production, was hard to find. Within a few years these monographs were being used as text books in some well-known schools, including the Institute of Design in Chicago and the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Both Type & Paper and Design for Printing proved so popular that second printings were soon required. This first booklet laid the groundwork for a series that would quietly shape how Canadian printers, designers, and students approached typography for years to come. – Rod McDonald

Artifact Text

The inside front cover features a quote on the origins of the ampersand from the American type designer Frederick W. Goudy:

What’s an ampersand?

“An ampersand! What in Sam Hill is an ampersand? This question is frequently asked. Indeed, the number of readers otherwise well informed who do not know the word itself, or its meaning, is surprisingly large.

“I could of course, say to the enquirer that the word ‘ampersand’ is a corruption of the mixed English and Latin phrase ‘and per se and’ … the name of the sign & which is a monogram of the two letters e, t, of the Latin word et, or in English, and, I usually say ‘it is a short form and,’ and let it go at that.” — Frederick W. Goudy.

Additionally, Dair explains the origin of the brush lettered ampersand that he drew for the cover:

The ampersand used on the cover is redrawn from one written in a pardon issued by King Henry VI in 1446, where the et form is still dominant.