ff Scala ff Scala Sans FF Scala Jewels ff Seria ff Seria Sans ff Nexus Serif ff Nexus Sans ff Nexus Mix FF Nexus Typewriter FontFont presents to you two brochures concerning excellent type designers and their approach to designing fonts: the scribbling, the computer work, their sources of inspiration … The aim of the brochures is to provide an insight into the work of the nice people behind the letters. Have a glance at the work of the two type super heroes Xavier Dupré and Martin Majoor. types & characters Martin Majoor www.fontfont.com www.fontshop.com Æ 10 Questions to Martin Majoor What are your inspirations and Do you think there is a connection You design books. ff Scala what do you like about being a type between Dutch type designers? Do you like reading? designer? There is no jealousy between us, I don’t have enough time for reading, ff Scala Sans Old books, especially old books set rather respect, unlike in other unfortunately. But when I have time in hot metal type, are inspiring professions maybe. But after all, I love reading. Although I recently FF Scala Jewels 1988 – 1997 for me, although new books are the Netherlands are so small that noticed that I’ve become such a nerd inspiring, too, of course. What I like you see each other quite often. that I don’t see any texts but just type. in my profession is that I often see my typefaces out there used by other What problems did you have Are you living with your family in designers. when you designed your >rst digital Poland and the Netherlands? typeface? Yes, my wife is from Poland. Our ff Seria Which computer applications are Everything was new at the time. children are 9 and 10 years old you using? We had bad screens and slow and we have decided to live and work For making fonts I still use Fonto- computers with a low resolution. in two countries. So, we are in ff Seria Sans 1996 – 2000 grapher 4.7 but also FontLab 4.6 Film exposing was dif>cult. Warsaw for 5 weeks and then in and sometimes Adobe Illustrator, Actually, everything was a problem! Arnhem for the next >ve weeks. The and my design tools are XPress, children go to two schools because InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Did you always want to become we want them to be not only bilingual a type designer? but also bicultural. It requires a What are you taking into account I did want to be an architect. As a child bit more organizing, but it’s worth it. when you work on a new typeface? I built my >rst typefaces on my own, ff Nexus Serif When I designed my >rst typeface but at the art academy I discovered that FF Scala I intentionally made it you can learn type design. Typography ff Nexus Sans bolder than all the other PostScript and type quickly became my favourite typefaces that were available at the speciality. ff Nexus Mix time. All these fonts were too thin because they were directly transferred Is there anybody serving as a role FF Nexus Typewriter 2004 from the old hot metal type drawings. model for you? Yes, if you mean typedesigners: You say, „to be a good type Eric Gill, Pierre Simon Fournier, designer you must >rst be a good W. A. Dwiggins, Jan van Krimpen. book designer.“ Why? You need to know how to make a typeface but you also need to know how to use a typeface. Just to design type is not suf>cient, typefaces are Type Characters – Martin Majoor made to be used. Published by FontShop® International 2007 www.fontfont.com www.fontshop.com Designed by Nina Völlink The following text-examples [email protected] are excerpts from “My Type Design Philosophy” written by Martin University of applied sciences Wiesbaden Majoor. First published in tipoGra>ca, No 53, Buenos Aires, Typeface: ff Scala Argentina, 2002. We reserve the right of errors and changes. foto: Nienke Terpsma Regular Regular Condensed ff Scala Italic ABCDEGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 1234567890 ()!?%& Bold Bold Condensed It is my conviction that you cannot As a book designer I made several com- Using sans serifs like News Gothic, Bold Italic be a good type designer if you are not plex books where more than one typeface Gill Sans or Futura as text type is Caps a book typographer. I am not talking had to be used in order to clarify things very acceptable, but with which Caps Italic here about display types but about in the text. It was mostly quite useful seriffed faces should they be mixed? Caps Bold text types. A type designer must know to take a sans and a serif typeface, but Numerous combinations have Caps Bold Italic how type works in a piece of text, the problem was always which ones to been used without any idea of style Hands Regular he must know what happens with the choose. Mixing Times New Roman and or knowledge of history. From an LF Regular type on different sorts of paper, he Helvetica in the same piece of text has aesthetic point of view some com- LF Italic must know how a typeface behaves often been done simply because these binations produce a severe headache LF Bold with different printing techniques. fonts were available everywhere. It is (Garamond with Univers, Bodoni Warszawa W LF Caps not even the worst possible combination with Gill Sans). + Expert one can think of. Regular 10 pt/13 pt Italic 10 pt/13 pt Bold 10 pt/13 pt It is my conviction that you cannot be a good type As a book designer I made several complex books where Using sans serifs like News Gothic, Gill Sans or Hamburgon designer if you are not a book typographer. I am not more than one typeface had to be used in order to clarify Futura as text type is very acceptable, but with which talking here about display types but about text types. things in the text. It was mostly quite useful to take a sans seriffed faces should they be mixed? Numerous Hamburgon A type designer must know how type works in a and a serif typeface, but the problem was always which combinations have been used without any idea of piece of text, he must know what happens with the ones to choose. Mixing Times New Roman and Helvetica style or knowledge of history. From an aesthetic type on different sorts of paper, he must know how a in the same piece of text has often been done simply point of view some combinations produce a severe Hamburgon typeface behaves with different printing techniques. because these fonts were available everywhere. It is not headache (Garamond with Univers, Bodoni with Gill even the worst possible combination one can think of. Sans). Hamburgon Regular 7 pt/10 pt Italic 7 pt/10 pt Bold 7 pt/10 pt Hamburgon Hamburgon Hamburgon eR Martin Majoor started designing Scala in 1987. At that time he was working Martin Majoor even added an icon-font – the Scala Hands-Regular. Arn A for the Vredenburg Music Centre in Utrecht which was one of the >rst of>ces working with a dtp-system and non of the 16 PostScript fonts, he AFi p w )!Z7 q could choose of, had any lowercase numbers, small caps and ligatures. Scala was released in 1990 by FontShop Internationalm as its >rst serious text So he decided to design a typeface especially for Vredenburg to be named face. It was only when Scala Sans was issued three years later that the family after the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Since their release Scala and Scala Sans became extremely popular. That may be because of its numerous features of have been used all around the world and won several awards. both forms and perhaps even of the display type joining the family in 1996 … Light Light Italic Regular Regular Condensed Italic Bold Bold Condensed Bold Italic Black Black Italic caps caps italic caps bold caps bold italic LF Italic LF Bold LF Bold Italic D lf caps lf caps italic k + Expert ff Scala Sans ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 ()!?%& It is only in advertising, where a Before the mixing of serif and sans published around 1816 by the William headache can be useful, that these in text can be explained, it should >rst Caslon iv English typefoundry. This Hamburgon combinations are possible. It became be made clear where sans serif type- display face only containedn capitals clear to me that the best solution for faces originate from, as it is only for and it is not clear where the rather Hamburgon text was to use a combination of a about the last one hundred years that clumsy forms came from. As a design serif and a sans that derive directly they have been used substantially. this sans serif typeface has little value. Hamburgon from each other. The only remaining O;cially, the very >rst sans serif Much more interesting is Akzidenz question was which combination of typeface to be used for printing was Grotesk, published in 1898 by the Hamburgon serif and sans could meet this crite- German Berthold type foundry in Berlin. rium? Hamburgon Light 10 pt/13 pt Regular 10 pt/13 pt Italic 10 pt/13 pt Hamburgon It is only in advertising, where a headache can be Before the mixing of serif and sans in text can published around 1816 by the William Caslon iv English useful, that these combinations are possible.