Martin Majoor feature
The introduction to a series of interviews and articles by and about Martin Majoor, the designer of Scala, Seria, Telefont and others.
This is the first of a series of feature articles on contemporary graphic and type designers, focusing on those who articulate their ideas in words as well as in their designs. The intention is to present the work and opinions of leading personalities not only through the eyes of an observer, but also in combination with their own views.
Martin Majoor has been a type designer since the mid-1980s. Around 1990 he designed the award-winning typeface family Scala. The Scala family has become extremely popular and is used worldwide. Since then, Majoor has designed two more typefaces: Telefont, exclusive to KPN Telecom, and Seria, distributed by FontShop.
Andy Crewdson examines the motivations behind Majoors latest typeface in his article Serias motives: How Martin Majoor developed his literary typeface. In addition to this, Majoor published his views in the Argentinian magazine tipoGráfica. Backed by examples of history, Majoor sums up his aproaches to type design, and presents comprehensive relationships between Sans and Seriffed typefaces in his article titled My Type Design Philosophy. To make it more accessible to the English audience we are republishing it in this series.
Lastly, inspired by Majoors study, Peter Bilak interviewed Martin Majoor, and asked him questions based on the article. The interview completes the feature and presents the body of Majoors work in a larger context.
Other Articles By Peter Biľak
- Why Not Associates?2
- The Book of Probes
- Restart: New Systems in Graphic Design
- Maeda@media
- Contemporary Dutch graphic design: an insider/outsiders view
- Dutch type design
- Martin Majoor, type designer
- Irma Boom, book designer
- Designing Type Systems
- Karel Martens, graphic designer
- Letterror, designers and programmers
- Max Kisman, graphic designer
- In search of a comprehensive type design theory
- Experimental typography. Whatever that means.
- History of a new font (notes on designing Fedra Serif)
- Sandberg, Designer and Director of Stedelijk
- En busca de una teoría completa del diseño tipográfico
- Historia de una fuente nueva
- Acerca de Fedra
- Falta de diseño, exceso de diseño y volver a diseñar
- Tipografía de los noventa. La demistificación y re-mistificación
- Designing Type — book review
- Graphic Design in the White Cube
- Kyoorius DesignYatra 2006, review of a design conference
- Ways of Seeing, book review
- À la recherche d’une théorie générale du dessin de caractères
- 화이트큐브의 그래픽디자인 / Graphic Design in the White Cube
- What is Typography?
- Family planning, or how type families work
- A View of Latin Typography in Relationship to the World
- Jan van Toorn, Critical Practice
- In the Name Of the Father (or the troubles with L-caron)
- The history of History
- Methods of Distribution: Digital Fonts and the Global Market
- Méthodes de distribution : les caractères numériques sur le marché mondial
- Font hinting
- Beauty and Ugliness in Type design
- Conceptual Type?
- We don’t need new fonts…
- Julien — the making of
- Type design competitions
- Una mirada a la relación de la tipografía de origen latino con el mundo
- Métodos de distribución: Tipos digitales en el mercado global
- Irma Boom interview
- Lava — Voice of a Magazine
- Caratteri concettuali?
- About Uni Grotesk, a Central European geometric Sans
- Related Type Families
- Verwandte Schriftfamilien
- Designing Hebrew Type
- Notes on Designing and Producing the Typeface Wind
- A Brief History of Sans Serif typefaces
- Brief History of Webfonts
- The Importance of Play
- About Nothing, really
- Size-Specific Spacing of Fonts
- Reclusive Designers — Redefining Success in the Internet Era
- Theory of Type Design, a book review
- Designers Reclusos – Redefinindo o Sucesso na Era da Internet
- Planejamento familiar, ou como as famílias tipográficas funcionam