For Martin Majoor, design is a problem solving exercise. In the late 1980’s along with fellow font designers Eirk and Joan Spiekermann and Neville Brody, Majoor was faced with the age-old problem of pairing serifed and sans-serifed fonts for publication. After much research, Majoor found himself conflicted as most of the traditional combinations were too dissimilar and therefore, inconsistent in their message, regardless of content. “In my opinion, mixing serif with sans only makes sense when the seriffed typeface and the sans are designed from the same basis, or even from the same skeleton” he would reveal in an article for typotheque.com. And in 1987 while designing for Vredenburg Music Center in his native Netherlands, Majoor began designing the font family that would earn him international acclaim as a font designer.
Scala was born out of necessity as Majoor, working on an early Mac was severely limited by dozen Postscript-fonts available. Postscript is a programming language developed in the early 1980’s as a universal base for a wide array of digital devices like displays and printers. The earliest use of this language can be seen in the original Mac and the Apple Laserwriter. The limitation of early font choices led to the development of FontShop International which pioneered the licensing and selling of digital fonts.
Thus, while at Vredenburg, Majoor found that “the concert programmes, booklets and posters containted very different information, such as composers, titles, conductors, orchestras, solosists, time, date and place. To design this information in a good way I needed these lowercase numbers, small caps and ligatures.” And from this need, Scala blossomed especially for the theatre and named after the Teatro all Scala in Milan.
While considering the new design and how it would contrast with earlier Postrscript-fonts, Majoor settled upon a humanist design influenced by fonts like Bembo and the later Monotype faces of the 1920’s. Postscript-fonts, he found were too thin, often losing their serifs and thin strokes on early computer screens and primitive laser printers and so the goal was set for Scala to maintain a more solid feel with stronger serifs.
The result has been a unanimous success and Scala soon became one of the largest and most widely used fonts in the Netherlands earning a mention in the Dutch Best Books catalog for most-used contemporary typeface. Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad utilized Scala for a major redesign and the high-profile publisher Taschen adopts the face as its primary font. Soon Scala becomes synonomous for twentieth-century Dutch design with its “clarity, simplicity and innovative yet historically conscious approach.”
The success of Scala however was widely outdone as Majoor began working on Scala Sans, later published in 1993. The evolution of Scala into a sans-serif font pushed the family’s popularity even further and soon, Scala and Scala Sans would be licensed by FontShop International. “When I was designing Scala and Scala Sans I had great freedom in executing my ideas on serif and sans. My motto became: ‘two typefaces, one form principle’.” In the 1930’s designer Jan Van Krimpen had considered this approach, fashioning his Romulus sansserif by coupling “classic roman and low-contrast humanist sansserif” but in many ways Van Krimpen’s work had been considered only experimental. Well versed in Van Krimpen’s theory behind Romulous, Majoor insists that the addition of Scala Sans was purely based on function rather than historical context citing his previous work with PageMaker’s Postscript capabilities. Majoor admits however that the inclusion of an italic face to the Scala family has historical context as better known sanserifs like Univers, Frutiger and Syntax “all had sloped romans for italics while Scala’s italics were derived from 16th century Italian writing masters like Arrighi.
Following the popularity of the Scala family, Majoor began working on Telefont List and Telefont Text for the Dutch national telephone book. It would be a much more restrictive project than Scala as Telefont required extensive consideration to its readability. The phone listing would require extremely small size and be printed on cheap paper. The goal was to save space as well as cost. Majoor set out ultimately to better Adrian Frutiger’s Universe, previously used in the phone listing. Adding to the complication of the job, Majoor considered and reconsidered the typographic layout of the phone book so changes to the type face itself had to be considered alongside changes to the four-column layout of the book. Majoor credits his experience as a book designer when citing the problem solving process of designing the phone book, which has used Majoor’s design since 1994.
Finally, in 1996 Majoor would begin work on his third “serious” typeface, creating the initial sketches for Seria on dining-car napkins while on a train from Berlin to Warsaw. While considering the universal appeal of Scala, Majoor found himself increasingly unhappy with Scala’s use as a literary font. As a book designer, Majoor measured the face’s success by its usage and he began to find Scala’s short ascenders and descenders unacceptable for literature or poetry. He considered a revision of Scala that would appear longer and thus more elegant but further consideration led to a laundry list of details that needed revision. The deal practically sealed itself as Majoor was approached by the art critic Hector Obalk in the fall of 1996. Obalk had begun working on book using original correspondence from Marcel Duchamp who’s complex handwriting needed to be paired with the perfect text for the book. From this need, Seria emerged a jumble of “subtle details and unconventional curves” and while Majoor admits the average reader would not notice the intricate quirks of Seria, there is a certain “feel” to the text even at small sizes.
Soon, Seria needed a sans serif partner and again Majoor began working in much the way he had with Scala, by refining the existing humanist feel of its serifed counterpart. Seria Sans grew from the original serifed sketches and Majoor began “using black marker and some white paint” to alter the characters into a sans. Consistency is uniquely and organically maintained as the sans version is a directly reworked version of its older brother. The result is a sans serif with unusually long ascenders and descenders and perfectly aligning with Majoor’s criticism of Scala.
In retrospect, Majoor views the sans serif as a contemporary serif citing a wide division between the historic and tradition rich serifed fonts and the “empty-headed idea of how sans should look.” By considering the effective marriage of a serif to its sans, a more complete face is created, rich in tradition and sophistication that still has the opportunity to appear contemporary and ultimately lends itself to wider appeal.
In 2004 Majoor would be involved with another important first in the storied history of Font Shop Internation. The foundry released Majoor’s newest family in Nexus, one of the first OpenType fonts released by the company, that includes a “connected” serif and sans serif version as well as typewriter versions and elegant swash capitals. Majoor furthers his study and theory of font design by teaching and lecturing for conferences in Antwerp, Paris, San Francisco, Barcelona and Prague. Majoor received several awards for both of his Scala and Seria families. He continues to work as a book typographer and type designer sharing time between a home in his native Netherlands and Poland.
B: In addition to the Scala, Seria and Telefont families, Majoor has designed Nexus Mix, Nexus Sans, Nexus Sans Bold, Nexus Serif, Nexus Typewriter as well as a series of display faces called Scala Jewel.
Since Scala has emerged as a defining and integral piece of Dutch design history I have focused the above information on its origin and history. Scala is a humanist font with short ascenders and descenders, as well as strong serifs and a relatively tall x-height. While Scala’s early incarnations had little or no variation in stroke width the wide array of fonts in its family show more variation.
C: Culturally, Majoor is directly linked with the development of early computers and their subsequent fonts. The emergence of the personal computer and PostScript type is inextricably tied to designers like the Spiekerman’s, Neville Brody, Zuzana Licko and a host of others. Without their important contributions and dedication to the origins of type personal computing may well have suffered or at the very least lain victim to the world of ugly design.
Works Cited:
http://www.identifont.com/show?16F
Majoor, Martin. My Type Design Philosophy. tipoGrafica, #53 Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2002.
Crewdson, Andy; Serial Motives: How Martin Majoor developed his literary typeface. Druk #13-14, 2002.
Middendorp, Jan. Dutch Type. 248-252. 010 Publishers, 2004.
Bartl, Peter. Some Thoughts on the Vernacular Illustrations. Design Issues: Vol9, No 2 (Autumn, 1993), 32-33. MIT Press.
http://www.public.asu.edu/~detrie/pages/fundamentals_fonts/pages/digital_fonts.html
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/the-digital-past-when-typefaces-were-experimental
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