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Biography
Martin Majoor has been designing type since the mid-1980s. During his study at the School of Fine Arts in Arnhem (1980-1986), he shortly worked in a student placement at URW in Hamburg. It was there, in 1984, he was able to work with Ikarus, the first digital typedesign system. Serré – his first digital font – was the result, but it was never released. In 1986 he started as a typographic designer in the Research & Development Department at Océ-Netherlands, where he carried out research into screenfonts. In 1987 he followed a short internal course at Bitstream in Boston, for the production of digital typefaces for laser printers.
After having worked at Vredenburg Music Centre in Utrecht (for which he designed Scala), in 1990 Majoor started as independent type designer and book typographer in Arnhem. He designed several type families and numerous books and book covers. His typefaces include FF Scala, Telefont (commissioned by the Dutch national telephone company), FF Seria and FF Nexus. Several of his book designs where awarded a Best Books prize.
He wrote articles for magazines like Compres, Items, Page, Eye magazine, 2+3D and tpG tipoGráfica. He also contributed texts to several books on typography.
From 1990 until 1995 Majoor taught typography at the
Schools of Fine Arts in Arnhem and in Breda. He gave workshops in
Amsterdam (Gerrit Rietveld Academie), Stuttgart (Merz Akademie),
Warsaw (Klub Twórców Reklamy), Vienna (die graphische), Seoul
(Seoul National University and University of Seoul), Toruń (Center
for Contemporary Art), Katowice (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych) and
Madrid (Escuela Superior de Diseño).
He lectured at ATypI/Typelab conferences in Budapest, Antwerp, Paris, San Francisco, Barcelona, the Hague, Prague and Dublin, at TypoBerlin (2002, 2005 and 2010), and during other type events in Lure-en-Provence (Rencontres internationales de Lure 1996), Leipzig (TypoTage 2004), Warsaw, Katowice, Stockholm, Hamburg, Caen, Vienna, Dortmund, Arnhem, Toruń and Seoul. His type designs were exhibited in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, New York (Cooper Union), Paris, London, Manchester, Berlin, Helsinki, Barcelona and Toruń.
Since 1997 Majoor works as a graphic designer and type designer in both The Netherlands (Arnhem) and in Poland (Warsaw).
Martin Majoor in his studio in Arnhem in 1991, the time he was working on FF Scala Sans
