My type design philosophy
by Martin Majoor (2005)
In 1986 I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Arnhem, with a serif
type design called Serré. When I was given the opportunity to digitize it at URW in Hamburg in 1984, this became my first experience with computers. Serré was never released; but in hindsight, I
realise it has provided the preliminary groundwork for my later
typefaces. Subsequently I designed four major type families – Scala,
Telefont, Seria and Nexus – adding new features with each new project.
Yet, in all those years my ideas and principles about type design did
not fundamentally change. Time for a personal retrospective.
Left: gouache drawings for Serré (1983). Right: me digitizing Serré at URW in Hamburg (1984)
The headache of mixing type
It
is my conviction that you cannot be a good type designer if you are not
a book typographer. I am not talking 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 type on different sorts of paper; he must
know how a typeface behaves with different printing techniques.
As
a book designer I have worked on several complex books in which more
than one typeface were needed in order to clarify things in the text.
It is often quite useful to mix a sans with a serif typeface, but the
problem is always which ones to choose. It is common to mix Times New
Roman and Helvetica simply because both these fonts are available in
the computer. It is not even the worst possible combination one can
think of. Using sans serifs such as News Gothic, Gill Sans or Futura as
text type is definitely acceptable, but with which serif faces can they
be combined? Unfortunately, numerous combinations end up being used
with no sense of style or knowledge of history. From an aesthetic point
of view, combinations such as Garamond/Univers or Bodoni/Gill Sans
produce a severe headache, and it is only in advertising (where a
headache can be useful) that these combinations are possible. It became
clear to me that the best solution for complex text was to use a
combination of a serif and a sans that share a common ground. But which
combination of serif and sans could meet this criterion?
The origin of the sans
Before the mixing of serif and sans in text can be explained, the origins of sans serif typefaces should be clarified, as it is only for about the last hundred years that they have been in use. Officially, the very first sans serif typeface used in print was published around 1816 by the English typefoundry of William Caslon IV. This Two Lines English Egyptian was a display face which only contained capitals.It is not clear where the rather clumsy forms originated. As a design, this sans serif typeface has little value.
Sans serif display face published around 1816 by the typefoundry of William Caslon IV
Akzidenz
Grotesk, published in 1898 by the German Berthold typefoundry in
Berlin, is much more interesting. This sans serif immediately became a
great success and was soon imitated by several typefoundries. Like all
sans serifs of the time, Akzidenz Grotesk was meant to be used as a
display face (the German word Akzidenzschrift means display face or
jobbing type), however as it also included a lowercase it was suitable
for text. But what was the basis for Akzidenz Grotesk? The first
printing types date from the 15th century, and consisted of serif
typefaces that imitated handwriting. When the sans serif typefaces
appeared in the 19th century they could only be based on the serif
typefaces that were in use at that time. Most of the Akzidenz Grotesk
weights were probably cut by experienced but anonymous punchcutters at
Berthold and other foundries rather than by individual type
designers.
Akzidenz Grotesk, published in 1898 by the Berthold type foundry
This
means the punchcutters had to have a general idea of serifless forms,
and they could probably only derive these ideas from the then popular
classic typefaces such as Walbaum or Didot. This can be seen clearly
upon superimposing Walbaum and Akzidenz Grotesk characters. The
ground form, or skeleton, of both typefaces is identical.
Akzidenz Grotesk and Walbaum superimposed upon each other
Yet these classisistic typefaces were far from good examples on which to base a sans serif. In Walbaum the thin tail ends in characters like the ‘c’ and in numbers such as ‘2’ and ‘5’ are elegant, but when these thin parts are simply made thicker, it would end up in a sans with almost ‘closed’ forms. Because Akzidenz Grotesk could have been derived from Walbaum, mixing the two in text would give an acceptable combination.
The thin tail endings in Walbaum
In
1916, exactly one hunderd years after the first sans serif was
published, the English master calligrapher Edward Johnston designed a
typeface for the London Underground.
The capitals of this Johnston Sans were clearly based on Caslon Old Face, but the lowercase
was a result of the calligraphic skills of Edward Johnston. It was the
first time a sans serif was not based on an existing serif typeface,
but on handwriting with a broad-nibbed pen.
Johnston Sans, The London Underground alphabet by Edward Johnston, 1916
Eric
Gill, an extraordinary type designer by all standards, started his
career cutting letters in stone. When he began designing printing
types, he knew by heart what a serif typeface should look like. He
designed Gill Sans in 1928, and although this is a sans serif, he used
his experience as a letter-cutter of serif letterforms. While he may
not have realised it, he based his Gill Sans on the serif typefaces in
his head. Mixing Gill Sans with his seriffed Joanna (1930) results in a
typographically harmonious page. Joanna is a sort of Gill Sans Avec!
Had Eric Gill planned Joanna and Gill Sans as one family he would have
been the first in history to design a family of serif and sans.
Gill Sans (1928) and Joanna (1930)
In
1927 Paul Renner’s Futura was released. This sans serif typeface was not
based on the watered down classic letterforms on which Akzidenz Grotesk
was based; instead he started his drawings from scratch. It would seem
that Futura was influenced by the ideas of the Bauhaus movement and
constructivism as its letterforms look very much constructed, even
though they aren’t at all. Instead, Renner based his Futura on classic
principles, like roman inscriptional capitals. This was one of the
reasons for its success; it is a very well balanced text typeface, yet
it has the aura of the then popular Bauhaus movement.
Futura (1928), type specimen
Around
1957 Helvetica and numerous lookalikes were published
as a sort of reaction to pre-war geometric faces like Futura. These
typefaces were all based on the old Akzidenz Grotesk, and in no time
they became extremely popular. Basing a sans serif on another is
rather cheap, so it is not unusual that these typefaces had hardly any
new features compared to Akzidenz Grotesk. Pretending to be better than
Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica was actually bereft of the
character and charming clumsiness of Akzidenz Grotesk. Rock bottom was
reached in 1982 when Arial was published, an almost one-to-one copy of
Helvetica, it was the ultimate plagiarism of plagiarism.
A comparison between Akzidenz Grotesk (1898), Univers (1954), Helvetica (1957) and Arial (1982)
Arial (1982), an almost one-to-one copy of Helvetica (1957)
Of
all the Akzidenz Grotesk imitations, Univers (designed by Adrian
Frutiger in 1954) had one strong feature that was new in type design: it was
made up of an almost scientific system of 21 weights and widths that
could be mixed perfectly. It was an sublime answer to the jungle of different
sans serif faces that lacked a clear system of weights and widths.
Univers was completely redrawn in 1997, to more than 60 versions. Unfortunately this has not been an improvement; there are now too many superfluous versions, the justification is too tight and the italic that was already quite slanted (12°) has been slanted to a staggering 15.5°. Redesigning an old successful typeface is something a type designer should maybe never consider.
The original Univers specimen from 1954, showing its 21 version system
The italic form of the sans serif
Most sans serif typefaces have an italic that is not more than a slanted version of the roman. Take for example Univers italic: the only thing in which the italic can distinguish itself from its upright version is the degree of the slope. A too small slope wouldn’t make the difference, therefore Univers Italic has a fairly large slope of 12°. In a real italic the construction of the italic is the decisive factor. This means that the slope of a real italic can easily be between 1° and 9°, because the shapes of the italic are basically different than that of the roman.
Again, the italic in Akzidenz Grotesk is nothing more than a sloped version of the roman. But an essential question arises: why was the italic not based on a real italic? A real italic has a different form principle than the roman, and it seems not so difficult to make an Akzidenz Grotesk italic that is based on, let’s say, Walbaum italic. This is demonstrated in the below illustration.
Akzidenz Grotesk Italic as it could have looked (interpretation by Martin Majoor)
It is possible that with the huge competition
among different typefoundries, the 19th century punchcutters were under
great pressure to produce quickly and therefore had to imitate others.
A real italic version was probably too much work or too difficult to
make, while a slanted roman was relatively easy to copy from the roman.
The idea of a slanted roman became widely accepted
for sans italics, even until today. With a few exceptions all sans
serif italics are slanted romans. Even the great type designer Adrian
Frutiger made slanted romans with his sans serif designs. It was only
recently, when his Frutiger typeface (1977) was redrawn in 2000, now
with a semi-real italic instead of a slanted roman, that he
acknowledged that a real italic makes a better contrast with the roman.
The original Frutiger (1977) with a slanted roman and Frutiger Next (2000) with a semi-real italic
Typefaces like Futura have slanted romans too, but in this case
it is much more understandable as there was no real old serif model on
which to base the italic. Futura looks like a constructed typeface that
borrows its forms from geometric squares and circles, giving it a truly
original type sensibility. The italic of Futura was released three years later than the roman. Renner used the term schräg (oblique) rather than kursiv (italic) to emphasize the constructed character of Futara italic.
An interesting italic is that of Gill Sans (1928). It is probably the first among the sans serifs that has true italic characteristics. Even though the italic has some slanted roman shapes (e, f, g, m), Gill’s first sketches for Gill Sans italic show some very calligraphic features. It is therefore a semi-real italic.
Sketches for Gill Sans italic (1928-1929)
Another italic that should be mentioned is Frederic Goudy’s Sans Serif Light Italic
(1931). It was designed to accompany his Sans Serif Light (1930), even
though in Goudy’s own view a sans serif typeface didn’t need an italic.
Sans Serif Light Italic is a wonderful calligraphic sans, and almost a
real italic, including swash capitals for A, M and N.
Frederic Goudy’s Sans Serif Light Italic (1931)
In
my opinion, mixing serif with sans only makes sense when the serif and
the sans typefaces are both derived from the same foundation, or even
from the same skeleton. It sounds simple: take a serif design, cut off
the serifs, lower the contrast, and there you have a sans serif. But of
course there is more to it than that.
The first conscious
attempt to design a sans based on a serif typeface was undertaken by
the Dutch type designer Jan van Krimpen. In the early 1930s he designed
Romulus and Romulus Sans to be part of a big family. Superimposing the
serif upon the sans shows how literally Van Krimpen based them on each
other. Romulus Sans was cut in four weights but unfortunately it
remained at an experimental stage and it was never released.
Superimposition of the serif version and the sans version of Romulus
I started designing Scala in 1987. At that time I was one of two graphic designers at the Vredenburg Music Centre in Utrecht, a large concert hall that programmed more concerts than any other hall in the Netherlands. We worked on one of the first models of Apple Macintosh, using PageMaker 1.0, with only 16 typefaces to choose from. I was typographically educated with lowercase numbers (also known as old style figures), small caps and ligatures, none of which were available in these 16 PostScript-fonts. The concert programmes, booklets and posters contained very diverse information, such as composers, titles, conductors, orchestras, soloists, time, date and venue. In order design this information effectively, we needed lowercase numbers, small caps and ligatures. And so it happened that Jan Willem den Hartog, the head of the graphic design studio, asked me to design a typeface especially for Vredenburg. The result was Scala, named after the Teatro alla Scala, the concert hall in Milan.
On
17 November 1989 Scala was officially launched at Music Centre
Vredenburg in Utrecht. Jan Willem den Hartog, the then head of the
design department, secretly designed a poster/type specimen, which he
presented to me at a special launch party. This all came totally as a
surprise, and the poster would become the first type specimen of Scala.
The first official use of Scala was in January 1990 for the ‘Vredenburg
Utrecht Maandagenda’ (monthly magazine). One year
later Scala was released by FontShop International as FF Scala.
The first use of Scala. Program info (detail) for Vredenburg, designed by Jan Willem den Hartog, 1989
The form principle of Scala
was definitely influenced by humanist typefaces such as Bembo, and by
typefaces from the mid-18th century French typographer Piere Simon
Fournier. But I wanted Scala to have low contrast and strong serifs, as
I had experienced that most PostScript-fonts were too thin. The italic
was more or less based on the work of the 16th century Italian writing
masters like Arrighi, although to a large extent the details were
closely related to the roman.
During the design process of the Scala
family one thing was obvious to me: I wanted the lowercase numbers to
be included in the normal fonts, and not in a separate Old Style
Figures (osf) font. This was against the rather illogical tradition of
putting the table figures in the normal font.
An overview of Scala and Scala italic
The method of changing Scala with serifs into Scala Sans
Scala Sans was
literally derived from Scala. Using a black marker and some correction
fluid, I changed the serif characters into sans. The result was that
Scala Sans became ‘humanistic’ in appearance. Until then this had
rarely been seen in sans serifs, the only notable exceptions being
London Underground, Gill Sans, Romulus Sans and Syntax (1968, Hans
Eduard Meyer). The Syntax roman is truly one of the most beautiful sans
serifs ever, but unfortunately the accompanying italic was a slanted
roman. It was probably too early for Meyer to free himself from the
generally accepted ideas of how the sans of an italic should look like. 
Syntax roman and its italic
After I had designed the lowercase numbers for the sans serif, I
discovered that until that time old style figures had not been seen in
sans serif typefaces, even Eric Gill never made them for his Gill Sans
(although in the 1990s they were added by Monotype). Strangely enough,
Renner was the only one who designed them for his Futura, although they
are seldom used.
Old style figures in Futura and Gill Sans
The Scala Sans italic follows the forms of its
serif counterpart quite literally. There are italic small caps,
ligatures and old style figures, making Scala the first family with all
these features in both a serif design and a sans design, and in both
roman and italic.
An overview of Scala Sans and Scala Sans italic
When I was designing Scala and Scala Sans my
motto became: ‘two typefaces, one form principle’. This can be
demonstrated by isolating the common skeleton of the roman and the
italic in both Scala and in Scala Sans.
Skeletons of the roman and italic versions of the Scala (blue) and Scala Sans (orange) typefaces
I exercised great freedom in executing my ideas regarding serif
and sans thanks to the possibilities of new digital design
technologies. And since I did not work for a typefoundry, there was no
time pressure and the music centre trusted me completely. Under these
circumstances I was able to think very freely about the concept of
serif and sans. Many of the generally accepted ideas did not seem
logical to me; as an independent designer I was luckily not obliged to
follow them.
Scala was released in 1990 by FontShop
International as its first serious text face, but it was only when
Scala Sans was issued three years later that the family became
extremely popular. The combination of a serif and a sans typeface turned out to be a very useful combination for graphic
designers around the world. In 1997 I augmented Scala with other weights such as
light, black and condensed. I also designed a set of four display
versions called Scala Jewels.
> Find out more about Scala > Buy FF Scala here
In 1993-1994 I designed Telefont List and Telefont Text for the Dutch national telephone book. The typeface I had in mind was a sans serif, yet I did not resort to using a serif typeface as the basis for the sans. I was able to use the experience I had gained in designing the Scala family, however, compared to my work on Scala Sans, I had to think in a much more restricted way. Telefont List (which I designed first) was to be used in a small size on cheap paper, it had to take up as little space as possible, and it had to be much more readable than the worn-out Univers that PPT (Post, Telefonie, Telegrafie) had been previously using. Simultaneously I was thinking about the typographic redesign of the phone book itself. This proved to be a great advantage as I could now fine-tune the typeface as a result of the changes I made in the four-column grid and, what is more, I could adjust the page layout after I had made changes in the typeface. It is a rare situation, but an ideal situation for a type designer. In any case my experience as a book designer came in handy.
Telefont
List is a real workhorse,
to be used in the automatically generated phone book listings, while
Telefont Text was designed for the custom-made introductory pages using
many more typographic refinements such as small caps and old style
figures. I was wont to put it as follows: ‘The most-used typeface has
the least possibilities; the least-used typeface has the most
possibilities’.
Telefont List and Telefont Text have been used
exclusively for the Dutch phone book since 1994, but it is not
inconceivable that they will be released in the near future. However I
am not planning a Telefont Serif, as I do not believe in deriving a
serif design from a sans.
> Find out more about Telefont
I made the first sketches for Seria on the train from Berlin to Warsaw in the summer of 1996, using some table napkins from the dining car. Designing Seria was born out of dissatisfaction with the use of Scala in a literary context. As a book designer I could not use Scala for poetry and other works of literature, as I found the ascenders and descenders too short for this purpose. I thought of making a version of Scala with longer ascenders and descenders, but then realised I wanted to change more than just a few details. I decided that Scala is Scala and if I wanted to make changes I would have to make a new typeface with long ascenders and descenders (I had no intention in making the most economical or space-saving typeface).
The table napkin sketches of the Seria family
I soon found myself
working on a completely new typeface. The individual characters of the
Seria family have a lot of subtle details and unconventional curves
that can best be seen in a large size. In small sizes, while one cannot
see these details, one can maybe ‘feel’ them. The rather edgy curves
make Seria ‘wittingly irregular’, a principle that was used by W. A.
Dwiggins, the American type designer, and also by my Dutch colleague
Bram de Does. It comes from the belief that a certain degree of
irregularity leads to better legibility. The upward italic has become a
major feature of Seria.
An overview of Seria and Seria italic
The need to augment Seria with a sans
serif version was obvious to me from the start. Again using a black
marker and some correction fluid, I changed the seriffed characters
into sans. Making it stand out as a sans serif, Seria Sans kept the
long ascenders and descenders as its seriffed partner. The strength of
Seria Sans also lies in the consistent derivation from Seria, obviously
noticeable in its italic and bold italic forms.
An overview of Seria Sans and Seria Sans italic
In 1999, a year
before finishing Seria, I was asked by Tadeusz Wielecki, composer and
director of the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland, to do the graphic
design for this music festival. Not only did I design the poster, the
leaflet and the CDs, but I also redesigned the
inside typography of the programme books.
I became the type designer and book typographer at the same time, and
it was the perfect chance for me to use and to test the newly designed
Seria and Seria Sans. The result was so clear that we have
not changed the typography of the books since.
> Find out more about Seria > Buy FF Seria here
At
the time Scala and Seria were designed, my motto had been ‘two
typefaces, one form principle’: the serif version and the sans version
coming from the same source, or better the sans being derived from the
serif. One doesn’t need a lot of imagination to think about a third
version, a slab serif derived from the sans by simply adding thick
serifs to the sans characters. My initial type design philosophy of
‘two typefaces, one form principle’ is simply changed into ‘three
typefaces, one form principle’.
I call this the ‘nexus principle’, nexus being the Latin word for connection. From 2002 to 2004 I designed Nexus, a family of three ‘connected’ typefaces including a serif, a sans- serif and a slab serif version. I still believe that the serif should come first, than the sans serif, and finally the slab. The addition of the word ‘Mix’ in the name ‘Nexus Mix’ is a result of my idea that a slab serif is really a mixture between a sans and a serif.
Skeletons of the roman and italic versions of the Nexus Serif, Nexus Sans and Nexus Mix typefaces
Nexus
started as an alternative Seria with shorter ascenders and descenders,
but the design quickly became it’s own typeface with additional changes
in the proportions and details, including a redrawn italic. The result
was a workhorse typeface similar to Scala, with added features like
small caps in all weights, four different sorts of numbers, ligatures
etc.
Nexus Serif, Nexus Sans and Nexus Mix
In
addition to Nexus italic I designed Nexus Swash italic, which includes
two sets of swash capitals and
two sets of swash lowercase endings (long and short). Another version
is a corporate mono-spaced font
in four weights, Nexus Typewriter. The lowercase ‘m’ has a special
shortened middle stem in order to make a more regular appearance.
Nexus Swash italic (left) and Nexus Typewriter (right)
When the Nexus family (Nexus Serif, Nexus Sans, Nexus
Mix, and Nexus Typewriter) was released in 2004, it was one of
FontShop’s first OpenType font families.
> Find out more about Nexus > Buy FF Nexus here
The contemporary sans serif
Most of the older sans serifs were based on an empty-headed idea of how a sans should look. These designs are more or less imitations of each other, without their designers knowing why their forms are as they are (Helvetica and Arial are the most obvious examples).
It was not until the 1980s that serif/sans families started to appear. The serif members of these families are mostly based on traditional shapes, but the sans serifs are contemporary sans serifs, based directly on its serif members. In most cases the italic weights of these contemporary sanses are real or semi-real italics, not sloped romans. To mention a few: ITC Benguiat (Ed Benguiat, 1977), Lucida (Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow, 1984-1985), Stone (Sumner Stone, 1987), Rotis (Otl Aicher, 1989), Scala (Martin Majoor, 1990-1993), Quadraat (Fred Smeijers, 1992-1996), Charlotte (Michael Gills, 1992), Legacy (Ronald Arnholm, 1993), Eureka (Peter Bilak, 1998-2000).
Nine contemporary typefaces, all with a serif member and with a sans serif member
When I started with type design in 1983 I produced only a single serif typeface. It has taken me twenty years to get where I am now, with my latest typeface Nexus consisting of three complete versions.
In a way,
the last 15 years have been revolutionary for sans serif typefaces. As
more type designers become aware of the origins of sans
serifs, sans serif designs become full partners of alongside serif
designs. Maybe the next 15 years will bring a revolution for slab
serifs, and in the future it might even be possible that the ‘nexus
principle’ expands into a fourth or fifth dimension. Time will tell.
Martin Majoor
© Martin Majoor, 2010.
This article was first published in “tipoGráfica” # 53 Buenos Aires, Argentina, (2002) under the title ‘My Type design Philosophy’. An updated version of that text was published under the title ‘The Nexus principle’, in the book ‘Made with FontFont’, edited by Jan Middendorp and Erik Spiekermann (2006)
In 2009 this article was again updated and extended, to be used on this website.
