Martin Majoor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin Majoor (born October 14, 1960 in Baarn , Netherlands ) is a Dutch type designer and typographer .

biography

Martin Majoor deals available since the mid-1980s with type design . During his studies at the University of the Arts in Arnhem (1980–1985) he worked at URW in Hamburg, where he was introduced to the first digital writing system IKARUS. Serré (1984) was his first digitized font. In 1986 he began his professional career as a typographic designer in the research and development department at Océ in the Netherlands . Here he dealt with screen typography and the development of digital fonts for laser printers.

Majoor taught from 1990 to 1996 at the Universities of the Arts in Arnhem and Breda. He gave lectures in Antwerp, Paris, San Francisco, Barcelona, ​​Berlin, Warsaw and Stockholm. His work has been shown at exhibitions in New York, Frankfurt, Cologne and Paris. Some of his books have been recognized for their excellent typography. Since 1997 Majoor has worked as a book and type designer in Arnhem and Warsaw .

Font design

In 1988 he accepted the position of graphic designer at the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht. The concert hall's graphics office was one of the first in the Netherlands to use a computer to produce their printed matter. Since the 16 fonts that were available for desktop publishing back then did not contain old style figures , small caps or ligatures , Majoor decided to design a typeface himself. In fact, its Scala was one of the first Mac fonts to have all of these properties. In 1991, FF Scala was launched as the first text font in the newly founded FontFont library, published by FSI FontShop International . Two years later, Scala was supplemented by a sans serif version, Scala Sans .

In 1994 Martin Majoor got the offer to design the new telephone directory for the Dutch PTT (now KPN ) together with Jan Kees Schelvis . He not only designed the typography for the inside pages, but also developed a new sans serif font called Telefont . He used the version Telefont List for the lowercase names in the main part of the reference work, the version Telefon Text for the information section in the front area (again with small caps and old style figures).

FF Scala Jewel , a set of four decorative variants, was created in 1996. Majoor rates this curiosity as a reaction to the extensive telephone directory job and the factual work involved. Two years later, the Scala family was expanded with 13 new versions, including Light, Black and Condensed. The FF Seria family - a large font family with serif and sans serif versions - was designed in 1996–2000. Majoor received two international awards for this: the International Typographic Award 2001 in London, the other from the ATypI Type Design Competition Bukva: raz! in Moscow. The FF Nexus came onto the market in October 2004 at FontShop International as the first OpenType font. It is a family of fonts with serif, sans serif, and slab serif versions, all related to each other. There are also two swash versions and a typewriter version. In 2006 Majoor received the Creative Review Type Design Award in the "Text Families" category for Nexus in London .

Writings by Martin Majoor

  • FF Scala
  • Phone
  • FF Seria
  • FF Nexus
  • FF Sada (in collaboration with Pascal Zoghbi)

FF Scala

Font example from FF Scala
Font example from FF Scala Sans

Martin Majoor began designing Scala in 1987. At the time, he was working as a graphic designer for the Vredenburg Music Center in Utrecht , one of the first offices to work with desktop publishing systems. None of the 16 PostScript fonts available to him contained old style figures , small caps or ligatures , which he however needed for his work. He decided to create his own font for his employer that would meet his requirements.

He named the font after the famous Teatro alla Scala opera house in Milan . Three reasons were decisive for this: the concert hall of his employer, which was very active at the time for opera performances, the historical roots of the famous model, which, like those of his script, reach into the 18th century, and the wider meaning of the word Scala (spectrum). Majoor wanted to point out the scope of the font family, which includes both an antiqua and a sans serif version, each in font weights from Light to Black, and is suitable for both formal and decorative typographic design tasks.

FF Scala is a serif-based Renaissance Antiqua that was published in 1990 as the first text font of the newly founded FontFont label and has since been expanded, most recently as part of the OpenType conversion. Like many contemporary Dutch antiquas, it is not a revival of a single historical typeface, but rather shows influences from various models. Majoor was influenced by humanistic fonts such as Bembo and the fonts of the French typographer Pierre Simon Fournier of the mid-18th century. In contrast to these models, however, he tried to use a weaker contrast and stronger serifs, since in his opinion most PostScript fonts were too thin. The roots of italics FF Scala are even older origin, they are inspired by works of the Italian type designer Ludovico degli Arrighi Vicentino (1475-1527).

FF Scala Sans is a humanistic (dynamic) sans serif linear antiqua with Renaissance character, which was published in 1993 as a counterpart to the serif version. During the design, the end lines of the FF scale were cut off and their contrast adjusted. It is still based on the same basic shape, so that both families can be used well in combination. This made the font family very popular with graphic designers and typesetters and ensured widespread use, as there were few digitally available families that were so well developed and optimized for digital typesetting. The FF Scala Sans also has real small caps, various figure shapes and numerous ligatures.

In 1997, a special decorative form of capital letters was published, the FF Scala Jewels . It is influenced by Dutch decorative capital letters from the Baroque period.

FF Seria

Seria is the second major Majoors font family. He had designed his Scala as a "typographical workhorse" with a stocky basic shape for all the requirements of the set, but because of its stocky geometry, especially the short ascenders and descenders, it is less suitable for texts that demand creative grace, for example poetic, Certificates and high quality printed matter.

Majoor initially considered deriving a special version of the Scala for these requirements , but quickly realized that only a new draft could lead to a usable script. He made the first sketches for the Seria on July 25, 1996 on a train from Berlin to Warsaw on a serviette.

The extremely large ascender and descender lengths are typical of the Seria , which automatically results in a small middle length. It follows the tradition of two less common models, namely the Centaur by Bruce Rogers and the Trinité by Bram de Does. Probably the most unusual feature of the Seria is the upright italic.

As with Scala , Majoor derived a sans serif version from the Seria . Seria and Seria Sans contain small caps, three types of digits (old style figures, table figures or “lining figures” and old style figures with different character widths) and various f ligatures.

FF Nexus

The Nexus (2004) font family - the name is the Latin word for “context, connection, connection” - was based on the same principle as the Scala and Seria : “The serif and sans serif versions of a font should join hands , they should harmonize and cooperate with each other. ”In contrast to the two earlier font families, Nexus does not only have a serif and a sans serif version, but also two more: FF Nexus Mix and FF Nexus Typewriter . The Nexus family is therefore particularly suitable for displaying the same text in different languages.

Awards

  • 1994 - Graphic design encouragement award 1994. Amsterdam Art Fund for the Scala family.
  • 1995 - Best Books Award 1995 for Adieu æsthetica & mooie pagina's! about Jan van Krimpen.
  • 2001 - International Typographic Awards in London for the Seria family.
  • 2001 - Prize ATypI Type Design Competition Bukva: raz! in Moscow for the Seria family.
  • 2006 - Creative Review Type Design Award for the Nexus family in the Text Families category.

See also

literature

  • Lupton, Ellen. Graphic Design and Typography in the Netherlands: A View of Recent Work. Princeton Architectural Press: 1992. ISBN 1-878271-62-8 .
  • Friedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7 .
  • Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Hartley & Marks: 1992. ISBN 0-88179-033-8 .
  • Middendorp, Jan: Dutch Type , 010 Publishers: 2004, ISBN 978-90-6450-460-0
  • Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with Type: A critical guide for designers, writers, editors, & students. Princeton Architectural Press: 2004. ISBN 1-56898-448-0 .
  • Spiekermann, Erik; Middendorp, Jan: Made with FontFont , Book Industry Services (BIS): 2006, ISBN 978-9063691295
  • Thi Truong, Mai-Linh; Siebert, Jürgen; Spiekermann, Erik: FontBook - Digital Typeface Compendium , FSI FontShop International: 2006, ISBN 978-3-930023-04-2

credentials

  1. ↑ Types And Characters - MartinMajoor ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English; PDF file; 2.4 MB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fontshop.com
  2. ↑ Scala font ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.100besteschriften.de
  3. ↑ Typotheque: My Type Design Philosophy by Martin Majoor

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Majoor, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch type designer and typographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Baarn , Netherlands