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Modern Traditionalists Are Sometimes Old-Fashioned Too » Schedae, 2007, Prépublication N° 54, (Fascicule N° 3, P 15 Schedae 2ToRWDNKECVKQPP ^ (CUEKEWNGP /QFGTP6TCFKVKQPCNKUVU CTGUQOGVKOGUQNFHCUJKQPGFVQQ /CTVKP/CLQQT Martin Majoor (Pays-bas) est créateur de caractères depuis 1985. Il a dessiné le FF Scala et Scala Sans, l’un des caractères les plus utilisés dans l’édition ces quinze dernières années, ainsi que les familles FF Seria et FF Nexus, et le Telefont, spécialement créé pour l’annuaire téléphonique néerlandais. Il vit et travaille entre Arnhem et Varsovie. Martin Majoor retracera son parcours de créateur typographique et dévoilera ses sources d’inspi- ration, tout en soulignant le paradoxe d’allier valeurs traditionnelles et nouvelles technologies. In 1989 I bought a crucial thing that would change my future forever: an Apple Macintosh computer with font design software. I felt very modern, and I was eager to find out everything there was to be found in the field of digital typography. Another world didn’t exist anymore. Two years later I was in Amsterdam on a small book market. I couldn’t resist and I bought a series of six books from the year 1743, set in a typeface from Pierre Simon Fournier, my type hero. Immedia- tely I felt at home again in this world of handmade paper, handcut types and handbound books. It illustrates the two worlds I am living in, on the one hand I need the very sophisticated world of the computer to create my typefaces, on the other hand I love to touch and to smell old books, to feel the impression of 300 year old metal type on light greenish handmade paper. When I am in London I always visit the Apple store in Regent Street, but never after first have visited Maggs, the antiquarian bookstore where I bought so many fine old books. Sometimes I am old-fashioned and this feels good, but only from time to time and never in a fanatic way. I have always felt my typefaces are a continuation of the tradition of readable textfaces. The possibilities the computer has offered make them modern typefaces, without loosing the traditional values that I learned to appreciate in the work of Pierre Simon Fournier and other great type designers. Martin Majoor « Modern Traditionalists are sometimes old-fashioned too » Schedae, 2007, prépublication n° 54, (fascicule n° 3, p. 15-20). 16 Martin Majoor : FF Scala, FF Scala sans ; exemples Schedae, 2007, prépublication n° 54, (fascicule n° 3, p. 15-20). http://www.unicaen.fr/services/puc/preprints/preprint0542007.pdf 17 Martin Majoor : Telefont List, Telefont Text ; exemples Schedae, 2007, prépublication n° 54, (fascicule n° 3, p. 15-20). http://www.unicaen.fr/services/puc/preprints/preprint0542007.pdf 18 Martin Majoor : FF Seria, FF Seria sans ; exemples Schedae, 2007, prépublication n° 54, (fascicule n° 3, p. 15-20). http://www.unicaen.fr/services/puc/preprints/preprint0542007.pdf 19 Martin Majoor : Nexus ; exemples Schedae, 2007, prépublication n° 54, (fascicule n° 3, p. 15-20). http://www.unicaen.fr/services/puc/preprints/preprint0542007.pdf 20 It is my conviction that you cannot be a good type designer if you are not a book typogra- pher. I am not talking here about display types but about text types. A type designer must know how type works in a piece of text, he must know what happens with the type on diffe- rent sorts of paper, he must know how a typeface behaves with different printing techniques. As a book designer I made several complex books where more than one typeface had to be used in order to clarify things in the text. It was mostly quite useful to take a sans and a serif typeface, but the problem was always which ones to choose. Mixing Times New Roman and Helvetica in the same piece of text has often been done simply because these fonts were available everywhere. It is not even the worst possible combination one can think of. Using sans serifs like News Gothic, Gill Sans or Futura as text type is very acceptable, but with which seriffed faces should they be mixed? Numerous combinations have been used without any idea of style or knowledge of history. From an aesthetic point of view some combinations produce a severe headache (Garamond with Univers, Bodoni with Gill Sans). It is only in advertising, where a headache can be useful, that these combinations are pos- sible. It became clear to me that the best solution for text was to use a combination of a serif and a sans that derive directly from each other. The only remaining question was which combination of Serif and Sans could meet this criterium? Extrait de «My Type Design Philosophy», texte de Martin Majoor sur sa pratique http://www.typotheque.com/articles/my_type_design_philosophy Schedae, 2007, prépublication n° 54, (fascicule n° 3, p. 15-20). http://www.unicaen.fr/services/puc/preprints/preprint0542007.pdf.
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