Martin Majoor’s most famous typeface was named after the La Scala opera house in Milan, inaugurated in 1778 by Maria Theresa. The type designer later gave three reasons for his choice of name: FF Scala was originally designed for a concert hall (the Vredenburg in Utrecht), its roots go back to the time of Maria Theresa, and Scala means “spectrum”, which seemed appropriate for a family that includes both serif and sans-serif fonts, and ranges from Light to Black and formal to decorative.
FF Scala and FF Scala Sans are two families built on the same form principle. The sans-serif font was created a year after the release of the Roman version, by removing the serifs and adjusting the contrast. The “skeletons” of both fonts are identical.


The Scala skeleton: the Sans and Serif families are based on the same basic form

When the typeface was released, the publisher and typographer Robin Kinross of Hyphen Press enthused: “Scala incorporates all the best features of a good Dutch typeface: it is neo-classical, but without following any one historical precedent, it evokes Dwiggins and Gill, with a style of its own in the tradition of van Krimpen, its italics follow a lively, emphatic rhythm, and of course the figures are text figures.”


The New York designer Ellen Lupton designed this type sample for the book “Made with FontFont”, published in December 2006