R

When in Doubt,
Use Roslindale

Roslindale is a balancing act of style, service, and sentiment. It’s a serif that is chunky in text and slick in display, pitting sharp, stubby serifs against round, bulbous terminals. It tries to be an old-style serif with hints of diagonal stress, but in the end it can’t shake its Victorian roots.

The family follows in the footsteps of De Vinne, an 1890s typeface from Central Type Foundry that was named after the renowned 19th-century printer. Building upon the smoother, sleeker takes on the style that became popular in the 1970s, Roslindale completes De Vinne’s transformation from a lumpy Victorian curiosity into a versatile contemporary type system. It still might be a bit cheesy at times, but it’s more like a creamy brie than a stinky bleu.

  • HARDPRESSEDUnapproachableAMBASSADORSSymptomatically

    Display Condensed Ultra

  • APPROPRIATIONAdministrativelyUNDERGROWTHCommunication

    Display Condensed Black

  • INTRANSIGENCEComprehensionUNATTENUATEDAnthropometric

    Display Condensed Bold

  • SECRETARYSHIPOpportunisticallySHUTTLECOCKSCompassionately

    Display Condensed Semibold

  • REASSESSMENTCharacterisationsUNSCRUPULOUSAccommodations

    Display Condensed Medium

  • SELFPORTRAITSUnprepossessingCONCRETENESSTransformational

    Display Condensed Regular

  • MATRIMONIALLYMispronunciationTRANSLATIONALOvercommitment

    Display Condensed Light

  • CREDITWORTHYTroublesomenessCONFORMATIONInterchangeability

    Display Condensed Extralight

History.

Theodore Low De Vinne
Theodore Low De Vinne.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Theodore Low De Vinne was a man in need. Not of work, for he was one of the most prolific printers in America, producing books for institutions, publishers, and bibliophiles, out of an impressively large building in Manhattan. Nor of reputation, as his vast knowledge and excellent work made him an esteemed authority. What De Vinne needed was something to counter a worrying trend. Excessive amounts of ornamental type were dominating the scene: letterforms curled, twisted, and turned in one too many directions. It was all a bit much.

In 1888, he reacted to the ostentatious display type around him with an unconventional idea. Corresponding with Central Type Foundry in St. Louis, De Vinne proposed a return to the Elzevir tradition of types. He admired those letterforms realized almost two centuries earlier in Europe, and it would be a complete rejection of what was then fashionable. Put simply, he wanted a new, plain typeface, and for two years he communicated with Central’s James A. St. John, who listened and proposed his own ideas about what would succeed.

In 1890, De Vinne’s wish finally came true and Central Type Foundry published a new serif typeface, and named it in his honor. While De Vinne credits Nicholas Werner with the drawing and cutting of this typeface, Werner himself cedes creation to Gustav Schroeder, the patent holder of the design. De-Vinne-the-man would commission more typefaces over the years, and veer away from the Elzevir style, but De-Vinne-the-typeface was a clear success. It appeared on posters, magazines, and advertisements at home and abroad. De Vinne wrote that “no other recent advertising typeface had a greater sale.”

 

As the foundry amalgamated into the new American Type Founders Company, the De Vinne family grew—Condensed, Extra-Condensed, Italic, Extended, Outline, and Shaded. The typeface was a favorite of printers for decades, until new trends took hold.

Fonts are subject to fashion, they ebb and flow just like tastes in music and clothing. And while some things fade away forever, others are always waiting to return. In the late 1960’s, the charming faces from the early 1900s began to make a comeback. After years of modernist neutrality favored by the International Style, designers were on the hunt for dynamic, uneven typefaces that made them feel something.

Pudgy Cooper, laid-back Windsor, and lumpy De Vinne were again in vogue. New phototype designs like Hawthorn, ITC Bernase, and Denver cleaned up lumpiness and funkiness. Once a rejection of flourish, De Vinne was, ironically, now working its way into the decorative.

I first became interested in the De Vinne style in 2015, when Indra Kupferschmid invited me to tag along on a visit to the workshop of Patrick Goossens, a collector in Antwerp with an amazing array of presses and type. Among the slabs and grots in his wood type collection, I found this bizarre ugly duckling of a typeface.

Even though I only emerged from that visit with a single blurry photo, I was charmed. Each letter on its own is awkward and clunky, but together they form something that is both completely ordinary and utterly captivating. This offbeat design made me wonder: can a typeface be simple and ornate at the same time?

Roslindale reimagines De Vinne as a versatile type family for contemporary use, smoothing out De Vinne’s lumps while heightening its unique mishmash of sharp and round forms. We find ourselves in a typographic moment defined by ornamental excess in display type on one hand, and sterile geometric sans serifs on the other. Following in De Vinne’s footsteps, Roslindale manages to be both plain and funky at once, here to remind us that there is always a middle way.

Theodore Low De Vinne
My blurry photo from Goossens’s workshop.
  • ACQUAINTINGCommendableLETTERHEADReconciliation

    Display Narrow Ultra

  • REFERENDUMOceanographicCAMPAIGNINGRetrospectively

    Display Narrow Black

  • SYMMETRICALEntrepreneurialRESTRUCTUREQuintessentially

    Display Narrow Bold

  • CHESSBOARDSElectromagneticTRANSPORTERReinterpretation

    Display Narrow Semibold

  • EQUIVALENCESOvercompensateSHORTCOMINGEncouragements

    Display Narrow Medium

  • SEARCHLIGHTSCharacterizationsPHOTOGRAPHYHumanitarianism

    Display Narrow Regular

  • WOODPECKERSAccomplishmentsTRADEMARKEDConceptualization

    Display Narrow Light

  • PROOFREADINGGeomorphologicalHYDROGRAPHICMagnetodynamics

    Display Narrow Extralight

Family.

Roslindale

Roslindale started as a single Condensed Bold weight sent out to my Font of the Month Club in 2017. Since then, it has grown organically over the years, with Text, Italic, Ultra, Deck, and Display styles joining the ranks of the family. These unite in a conical designspace, where the range is most expansive at large sizes, and the options taper down to a core set of styles for running text.

Optical Sizes

In a vibes-centric typeface like Roslindale, a range of optical sizes makes it possible to strike the right chord in sizes both big and small. In text, Roslindale sets dense paragraphs with low-contrast forms and loose, rhythmic spacing. In headlines, it projects a stylish confidence that is reminiscent of 1970s advertising, with compact spacing, high contrast, and sharpened serifs.

Italics

Italics

Variable Fonts give us the opportunity to rethink the role that Italics play in a type family, and ask questions like, “What should the space between Roman and Italic look like?”

As Roslindale’s slant angle steepens, its lowercase switches to more cursive forms. This happens progressively—first the outstrokes on letters like i, then a descending f and rounded e, and finally a single-story a.

With OpenType Features, you can tweak Roslindale’s “italicness” further, in case a sloped roman or an upright italic is what you need.

  • Refrigerator

    slnt 0

  • Refrigerator

    slnt -2

  • Refrigerator

    slnt -5

  • Refrigerator

    slnt -8

Widths

Roslindale’s width axis was born of necessity, a way of uniting the original Display Condensed weights with the wider, textier weights that followed. It was important to me that the family not lose hold of its unique characteristics as it moved into a big interpolating designspace. It wasn’t until years into the design progress that I even attempted to produce something comparable to De Vinne’s original proportions.

PRESTIGE
Longitudes

Normal

PRESTIGE
Longitudes

Narrow

PRESTIGE
Longitudes

Condensed

Weights

Roslindale’s bold is funky; it’s probably why you’re here. Its Extra Light is downright ethereal; perhaps it’s why you stay.

The family’s ability to shift in tone, from elegant to quirky, from spindly to self-confident, is one of its biggest assets, provides surprising flexibility in editorial and branding use.

R R R R R R R R R
  • SECONDARIESSemiconductorsCALORIMETRYUnaccompanied

    Display Ultra

  • DELINQUENTSArgumentativelyINSENSITIVITYPalaeontological

    Display Black

  • SECONDMENTImpoverishmentPROTECTIONSNanotechnology

    Display Bold

  • GRANULATIONChoreographersBLASPHEMIESMisrepresenting

    Display Semibold

  • MEMORABILIADecentralisationFUNCTIONARYUnpremeditated

    Display Medium

  • SYMPHONISTSPhenomenologyTOURNAMENTUnsubstantiated

    Display Regular

  • RETRANSMITSCircumlocutionsDENOTATIONSRepresentations

    Display Light

  • MOBILISATIONExcommunicateRAMIFICATIONStereoscopically

    Display Extralight

Utility.

Roslindale is a typeface with personality to spare. But its secret power is that, structurally-speaking, it’s not so different from serif mainstays like Times, which makes it surprisingly versatile. The family has been used in identities, magazines, book covers, products, websites...you name it! The gallery that follows features some examples of Roslindale in action from my favorite website, Fonts in Use.

ROSLINDALE was designed by David Jonathan Ross, with additional drawing by Jovana Jocić and Jaimey Shapey.

This webpage was designed and developed by Typetura.

They have also generously included three complimentary templates with any purchase of the full Roslindale Series, to help you hit the ground running with flexible type on the web.

Florence Fu and André Mora contributed writing and research to the writing on this page.

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Roslindale Elsewhere

Additional information

  • PDF Specimen
  • Desktop Format: OpenType CFF Format (Postscript OTF)
  • Web Formats: Web OpenType Font Format (WOFF & WOFF2)
  • App Format: OpenType TrueType (TTF)
  • Language Support: Latin, Western & Eastern European • Latin, Vietnamese
  • Cases: Uppercase • Lowercase
  • Figures: Lining
  • Stylistic Alternates: R with serifed leg • Upright M • High-waisted M • Italic tailed forms • Cursive forms • Single-story a • Single-story g • Roman serifed forms • Roman block forms • Two-story a • Two-story g
  • Variable Axes: Weight • Italic • Optical sizes
  • Don’t see what you need? Get in touch!