Roslindale Deck Narrow

Roslindale gets its unique attitude from the reverberation of sharp serifs against bulbous, round shapes. In her interpretation of DJR’s design for the Cyrillic script, Serbia-based type designer Jovana Jocić has taken Roslindale’s interplay of sharps and rounds to the next level.

Roslindale builds on the model of De Vinne, a quirky oldstyle from 1892 named after the famed 19th-century printer. But while De Vinne was at times a bit blotchy and uneven, Roslindale’s tight spacing and slick curves lean more towards the 1970s interpretations of the style.

Jocić stays true to this visual style and adapts it expertly to the Cyrillic script. From the spikes on the bottom of Д to the the curled ball terminals of й, she uses every opportunity to coax the tension out of these disparate shapes. This tension is present in upright and Italic styles, with Bulgarian and Serbian alternates.

Roslindale Deck Narrowis narrower and tighter than Roslindale Text, with a higher contrast between thicks and thins. Even though Deck optical sizes may have started with a relatively specialised use in newspapers and magazines, there are numerous use cases for medium-size-optimised fonts in contemporary typography, from the large text sizes used in many single-column blogs to blurbs, embedded tweets, and advertising copy.