Martin Majoor

Designing a Sans in One Day

June 11, Sunday 10.00 - 16.00 – SALT Galata

Designing a sanserif in one day seems impossible. Where do you start? What should the shapes look like?

This workshop in type design uses a lot of paper, pencils, ink and erasers, but… no computers! The first shapes will be ‘written’ with the ‘double pencil method’, two pencils that are tied together to form a sort of calligraphic writing tool. Although it is quite a simple tool it can be difficult to handle. Here is where the expertise of Martin Majoor comes in.

The transformation of the handwritten ‘calligraphic’ shapes into a ‘designed’ sans serif is done by filling the contours with black and by adding details. Numerous times the drawings will be put upon the wall, just to be able to take distance and to judge shapes. It will be one of the more important, maybe even philosophical aspects of this workshop: take a distance from time to time!

About Majoor

Martin Majoor is a Dutch type designer and book typographer. Around 1988 he designed the award-winning typeface Scala, Fontshop’s first serious text typeface. Nowadays it is seen as a ‘classic’ among the first digital typefaces.

In the following years Majoor designed typefaces such as Telefont, Seria and Nexus. Questa, designed in collaboration with Jos Buivenga, ranked second in a list of the 50 most noteworthy font releases of 2014.

Majoor taught typography at several Schools of Fine Art and gave numerous lectures and workshops throughout the world. He wrote articles for magazines like Items, 2+3D and Eye, and he contributed to several books on typography. Majoor works in both The Netherlands and in Poland.