About Martin Majoor
Martin Majoor has been active as a book typographer and type designer since the mid 1980s. He designed books, covers, stamps and posters, but he is best known for his type designs, such as Scala, Nexus and Questa. Majoor teaches typography and conducts type design workshops at art schools world wide. He lectured at conferences on type and design and he wrote articles for magazines like Eye and Page, as well as contributing to several books on typography.
Building up the exhibition ‘Martin Majoor–Five Types’, Madrid, 2019.
Biography
Early work
Martin Majoor (1960) has been designing type since the mid-1980s. While still studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem (1980-1986) he was given the oppurtunity to do an internship at URW in Hamburg, where he digitized his first type design with Ikarus, one of the earliest digital type design system. The result was Serré, a rather condensed serif typeface, which he presented during his graduation show. Serré remained unpublished.
In 1986 he started as a typographic designer in the Research & Development Department at Océ-Netherlands, where he researched and edited bitmap fonts. In 1987 he followed a short course at Bitstream in Boston, for the production of digital typefaces for laser printers.
After two years at Océ, Majoor was drafted for military service, but as a conscious objector he was given the chance to work in the social or cultural sectors. To fulfil this obligation Majoor worked for 18 months as an assistant graphic designer at the Vredenburg Music Centre in Utrecht where the design department was headed by Jan Willem den Hartog, a former academy colleague. At the same time, he established himself as an independent designer, designing book covers, stamps, posters and several award-winning books. But it was another project that would largely define his further career…
Type design
In 1988 it was Jan Willem den Hartog who suggested that Majoor design a proprietary typeface for the Vredenburg Music Centre. That typeface would become Scala, a robust typeface that later would be augmented with Scala Sans. In 1991 Fontshop International released Scala as its first serious text typeface. For its design Majoor was awarded the “Encouragement Prize Graphic Design of the Amsterdam Arts Foundation 1994”. In 2011 Scala was acquired by Museum of Art (MoA) in Seoul for its permanent design collection, and in 2013 The Design Museum in London choose Scala as one of the ‘Fifty Typefaces that Changed the World’.
In 1994 Majoor collaborated with Jan Kees Schelvis to design the new Dutch telephone directory. Majoor not only designed the interior typography, he also (and perhaps more importantly) developed an economical sans serif typeface for it, eventually saving 20% on paper/print/distribution costs. Two versions of Telefont were created, Telefont List for the small-set name lists of the interior, and Telefont Text for the front information section, complete with small capitals and old style numbers.
Scala Jewels, a set of four decorative letters, were designed in 1996. It might have been designed in response to the huge telephone book commission and the very formal work involved. In 1998, the Scala family was even further expanded to include 13 new versions, such as light, black and narrow versions.
In 2000, Seria and Seria Sans appeared on the market, a large family of a serif and a sans serif, with a ‘literary’ feel. Most eye-catching is the almost upright italic. In 2001, Seria was awarded twice, with a “Certificate of Excellence” at the ISTD International TypoGraphic Awards in London and with a “Certificate of Excellence in Type Design” from the ATypI Type Design Competition Bukva:raz! in Moscow.
In 2004, the Nexus family was introduced as FontShops first text letter in the Open Type format. Nexus consists of three related fonts, a serif (Nexus Serif), a sans serif (Nexus Sans) and a slab serif (Nexus Mix). In 2006 the Nexus family won a first prize at the “Creative Review Type Design Awards” in London.
Majoor teamed up with Jos Buivenga to collaborate on one of the most exciting undertakings of 2014, the Questa Project, a Didot-like typeface including serif, sans, slab and display versions, all in five weights and both in roman and in italic. Questa was selected amongst the 50 most noteworthy font releases of 2014, chosen by a panel of experts and published in the 365Typo annual book, in collaboration with Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI).
Comma Base was released in 2021, a uniwidth typeface with half the features of a sans (no serifs) and half the features of a serif (contrast). It can be seen as a missing link between serif and sans, a base from which a sans and a serif can be derived, hence the suffix ‘Base’ in its name.
In 2023 Elsevier Sans was introduced by Elsevier, a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Elsevier Sans is a uniwidth, five weight typeface family. It is partially based on Nexus Sans, which has been Elsevier’s corporate typeface for many years.
Book design and more
Besides working as a type designer Majoor has always worked as a book typographer and graphic designer. He said: ‘It is my conviction that you cannot be a good type designer if you are not a book typographer’. He designed several books for Dutch publishers such as Bunge, Nijgh & Van Ditmar, L.J. Veen, Vrij Geestesleven and Museum of the Book.
Between 1988 and 1997 Majoor designed several books for the publishing house of Bunge, a scientific publisher. Two of his designs were chosen among the Best Dutch Book Designs: ‘Therapie in de interne geneeskunde’ (1992) and ‘Klinische anatomie en embryologie’ (1997).
Another book that was chosen among the Best Dutch Book Designs is ‘Adieu æsthetica & mooie pagina’s!’ (Adieu Aesthetics & Beautiful Pages!). It was published in 1995 as the catalogue for the exhibition ‘The Aesthetic World of Jan van Krimpen, Book Designer and Typographer’ in the Museum of the Book in The Hague and in the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) in New York (1995). For this book Majoor was the first to use the digital version of Jan van Krimpen’s typeface Romanée (originally cut in 1928 for the Joh. Enschedé typefoundry), which in 1991 had been digitized by Peter Mattias Noordzij and Fred Smeijers for incorporation into the Enschedé Font Foundry.
From 1999 until 2010 Majoor designed the visual identity for the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the largest international Polish festival of contemporary music. The programme books were set in Majoor’s own typefaces Seria and Seria Sans.
In 2017 Majoor designed a post stamp for the Dutch postal service. For obvious reasons the text on the stamp had to be small. To achieve maximum legibility within the limited space Majoor designed a sans with an extremely high ‘seriflike’ contrast, with scaled down capitals and with relatively short ascenders. Two years later, looking again at the letters, Majoor saw its potential to develop it into an actual typeface. This would become Comma Base, which he released in 2021.
Selected writings
1984 ‘Zes velletjes in een kaftje’ (‘Six sheets in a cover’), on the work of Harry N. Sierman, book typographer. Kunst Aktualiteiten Arnhem.
1984 ‘Letterboekje, een overzicht van 21 PostScript fonts’ ('Little font book, a survey of 21 PostScript fonts'). Compiled together with Martijn Smeets. Published by HKA Arnhem.
1990-1992 Around 10 articles on different typographic subjects, for ‘Compres’ magazine.
1993 ‘Scala Sans, a new typeface’. FontShop International, Berlin.
1996 ‘Het decoratieve alfabet van A tot Z’ (‘The decorative alphabet from A to Z’). With a forword by Koosje Sierman. Amsterdam, privately printed by Adriaan de Jonge.
2000 ‘Scala’. FontFont Focus No.1, a type specimen published by FSI FontShop International.
2001 ‘Had de Franse koning schoenmaat 49?’ (‘Did the French king have shoe size 49?’). An extensive text on micro typographical rules for typesetting, for the book ‘Letters, een bloemlezing over typografie’ (‘Letters, an anthology on typography’).
2002 ‘Seria’. FontFont Focus, a type specimen published by FSI FontShop International.
2002 ‘My Type design Philosophy’. Published in “tipoGráfica” #53 Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2003 ‘Digitale letters bestaan niet’ (‘Digital characters do not exist’) for the book ‘Nieuwe letters’ (‘New type’), published by De Kazerne.
2006 ‘The Nexus principle’. Published in the book ‘Made with FontFont’, edited by Jan Middendorp and Erik Spiekermann.
2007 ‘Inclined to be dull’. Published by EyeMagazine, London.
2010 ‘José Mendoza y Almeida’. Together with Sebastien Morlighem, Majoor wrote several texts for a book on the work of the French type designer José Mendoza y Almeida, published by Ypsilon.éditeur.
2011 ‘The story of “lapikon” or how to start designing a typeface’. Poblished in the book ‘Lapikon – Ala ma font(a)’, published by Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Katowice.
2015 ‘Jan van Krimpen and Roman capitals’, a contribution for ‘The Eternal Letter – Two Millennia of the Classical Roman Capital’ edited by Paul Shaw.
2016 ‘Beyond my control’, about the use of Scala in a critical edition of Hitler‘s Mein Kampf for the book ‘Typo365, Vol.2’.
2021 ‘Comma Base – A missing link between serif & sans’. Published as pdf, Arnhem/Berlin.
2022 ‘Telefont and the last Dutch telephone book’. In Footnotes issue D, published by La Police, Geneva.
Teaching and speaking
In the years 1990-1995 Majoor taught typography at the Schools of Fine Arts in Arnhem and in Breda. Between 1995 and now he gave workshops in Amsterdam (Gerrit Rietveld Academie), Stuttgart (Merz Akademie), Warsaw (Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology), Vienna (die graphische), Seoul (Seoul National University and University of Seoul), Toruń (Center for Contemporary Art), Springfield (Missouri State University), Zürch (Zurich University of the Arts), Amiens (Esad), Katowice (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych), Madrid (Escuela Superior de Diseño), Arnhem (Artez) and Berlin (Weißensee Kunsthochschule).
Between 1987 and now he lectured at ATypI/Typelab conferences in Budapest, Antwerp, Paris, San Francisco, Barcelona, The Hague, Prague, Dublin and Antwerp, at TypoBerlin (2002, 2005 and 2010), and during other type events in Tilburg, Paris, Lure-en-Provence, Leipzig, Warsaw, Katowice, Stockholm, Hamburg, Caen, Barcelona, Vienna, Dortmund, Arnhem, Dublin, Seoul, Toruń, Madrid, Nijmegen, Springfield, Zürich, Amiens, Raabs, Krakow, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Apeldoorn, Bielefeld, Dresden, Tallinn, Porto, Istanbul, Zagreb, Zaragoza, Rotterdam, Plovdiv, Bozhentsi, Sri Lanka, Zwolle, Bukarest, Sofia, Münster and Gouda. For a detailed list of lectures see here.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions:
2002 ‘Vormen’ during ‘Made in Arnhem’, Museum of Modern Arts in Arnhem.
2011 ‘LetterMix’, during PLASTER – International Festival of Typography and Poster Design, at the Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA)Toruń, Poland.
2013 ‘A Taste of Type – The typographic world of Martin Majoor’, at the Brick City Gallery (part of Missouri State University), Springfield (MO)
2019 ‘Martin Majoor – Five Types’, during ‘Madrid Gráfica 19’
Group exhibitions:
Majoor’s type designs were shown on several occasions in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag, New York, Frankfurt, Köln, Gent, Tilburg, Oradea, Paris, Mulhouse, Valence, Baltimore, Barcelona, Jakarta, Arnhem, London, Heerlen, Capetown, Berlin, New Delhi, Manchester and Helsinki.
Nowadays Majoor works as a type designer and graphic designer in both The Netherlands (Arnhem) and in Germany (Berlin).
Martin Majoor in his studio in Arnhem in 1991.
Teaching type design at Missouri State University, Springfield, 2013.
Interviewing Adrian Frutiger, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1990
Aquisition of Scala by Museum of Art (MoA), Seoul, 2010.
