A special “thank you” to Christine Szustaczek, MCM, Director of Corporate Communications & External Relations at Sheridan College, for providing this special feature.
A crowd of about 300 gathered at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario Monday evening, September 21, to hear an international panel of experts discuss type design. Attendees were also among the first to screen a digitized and expanded film by Carl Dair, who designed Cartier – Canada’s first Latin typeface. The event was the fourth in Sheridan’s Creative Campus Series, a series of talks that invite interdisciplinary exchange, explore the creative process and expand relationships with the community.
The film, Carl Dair at Enschedé: The Last Days of Metal Type, featured a digitized version of the 1957 silent film shot by Dair while studying in Holland with one of the last great European letter punch cutters, Paul Rädisch. It begins with a prologue by noted Canadian type designer Rod McDonald, who in 1998 updated and expanded Dair’s Cartier typeface for digital technology. The film was narrated by Matthew Carter, one of the world’s leading typeface designers who also studied with Rädisch. Carter explained the historic art of punch cutting and casting in which the handwritten letters were engraved into steel to produce the typefaces used in printing presses. At the end of the film, Carter reflected on his own time at Enschedé and discussed the dying days of a highly complex and exacting manual technique. Co-produced by Sheridan College and Massey College at the University of Toronto, the film revealed the beauty and skill involved in this obsolete art form, while adding the world’s body of knowledge on making typefaces.
The panel discussion that followed the screening featured: Matthew Carter, whose designs include ITC Galliard and Helvetica Compressed, as well as custom fonts for clients such as Microsoft, Yale University and the Museum of Modern Art; Rod McDonald, an educator, designer, historian and writer who (as mentioned previously) digitally revised Dair’s Cartier Latin typeface and designed the Laurentian font for Maclean’s; Allan Haley, a consultant and former Director of Words and Letters at Monotype; and Charles Nix, Senior Type Designer at Monotype, Chairman Emeritus of the Type Directors Club and educator at the Parsons School of Design.
The panelists spoke of the ‘watershed’ moment that resulted with the introduction of the laser printer, which gave type designers the flexibility to make choices and refine their work in real time. McDonald added that when he first began designing digitally, the emphasis was on making typefaces that print well – which has since been reversed with the need to consider how a font will look on a computer screen. In exploring the tenets that underline their work, Nix noted that typography is a combination of “history, form and use.” On designing type, Haley suggested that “type is a very human thing – if it’s too perfect, too cold or too sterile, it’s off-putting.”
In reflecting on his 60 years of experience, Carter added: “I don’t’ think of myself as an artist; I think of myself as an ‘industrial designer’ working with the constraints of the letter forms that can’t be changed, while putting one’s distinct stamp on a rendition of the alphabet.” He later said that type designers still need to strive for perfection, which requires tremendous patience and perseverance. Each panelist, in his own way, concluded that what they find most rewarding is the process or the work - not the end product of the book or typeface they design.
Sheridan’s Typeforming event explores the fascinating history, form and use of type design
