Harris Carleton Dair (February 14, 1912 – September 28, 1967), known as Carl Dair, was a Canadian graphic designer, teacher, type designer, and author.[1] [2] Primarily a self-taught designer, Dair was internationally known and developed visual design principles for typography which are still in use today.[3] [4]
Dair was born in Crowland Township in Welland, Ontario, in 1912, to William Albert Dair and Bertha Minnie Dair (née White).[5] [6] Dair's first job as an 18-year-old was creating advertising and layouts for the Stratford Beacon-Herald.[3]
Dair formed a partnership with Henry Eveleigh and set-up the Dair-Eveleigh Studio from 1947-51 in Montréal, Quebec. He worked principally as a freelance designer on a variety of jobs from department store art director to the typographic director for the National Film Board of Canada (1945).[3] Dair lectured on typography at the Ontario College of Art between 1959 and 1962, as well as teaching at the Jamaica School of Arts and Crafts for two years.[7]
Dair published a book, Design with Type, in 1952; it was revised and republished in 1967. In it he described principals of design using primarily typefaces; in particular, he outlined visual principles of harmony and contrast codifying seven kinds of typographic contrast: size, weight, structure, form, texture, colour, and direction. "Contrast is the opposite of concord; it is based on a unity of differences."[8] Design with Type became the first Canadian book to receive the Book of the Year Award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).[9] It was republished by the University of Toronto Press (First Edition) in 2000.
In 1956 and 1957, after receiving the RSC fellowship, Dair studied type design and manufacture in the Netherlands.[3] He studied metal type and hand-punching at Enschedé Foundry in Haarlem, Netherlands, where he created a silent film called Gravers and Files documenting the craft of punchcutter P. H. Radisch.[10]
Dair's experiences at Enschedé prepared Dair for the creation of a typeface called Cartier,[10] [11] which was commissioned and released for Canada's 1967 centenary celebrations, to be an identifiable Canadian typeface.[12] The original design was based on hand-lettering and had some weaknesses as a typeface, which were corrected by Rod McDonald for Monotype Imaging and released in 2000.[13] [14] Cartier is now widely used in Canada.[15]
In 1959, Dair was awarded the silver medal at the Internationale Buchkunst-Austellung in Leipzig, East Germany. In 1962, The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts awarded him its Arts Medal. In 1967, he became a fellow in the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC).
Dair died on a flight from New York City to Toronto on September 28, 1967.[3] The Faculty of Fine Arts at York University honors Dair's contribution to design in Canada with the Carl Dair Memorial Scholarship.[16] A collection of Dair's work can be seen on the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art website.
Typefaces Designed by Carl Dair: