Rosalie is a study in polarities; it is both sharp and round, calligraphic and constructed, historic and futuristic, narrow and wide. With its unusual proportions and exuberant swashes, high contrast, and innovative shapes, Rosalie contains a unique mix of simultaneously complimentary and contradictory forms. The typeface’s development tracks the creative evolution of Thuong’s type design practice through many years of development. After 6 years in the making, Rosalie is now available as a duo of complementary Roman and Italic styles, both including OmniLatin language support.

The idea for Rosalie first sprouted in October of 2017, on a rainy day visit of the medieval town of Guérande (Loire Atlantique, France). In the Collégiale Saint-Aubin, a 12th century church, My-Lan was amazed by the painted letterings covering the walls. The style was unlike anything she had seen before: fussy yet elegant, medieval yet timeless. She was fascinated by the originality of the shapes, the twirls, the curves, the drops, and the ornamental elements.

There was something complex about the contrast: sometimes looking quite vertical but actually being very oldstyle (translation) to a point where it can even get reversed, like in the /o. All of these features together create some visual cacophony that still manages to end up in an elegant result. The /c and its ending as a serif pointing inward became the starting point of the design and is still carrying the original inspiration.

Although she loved the original letterings from Guérande, My-Lan’s intial goal was to adapt the design to something more practical and less extravagant while still staying true to the spirit of the original–to turn this calligraphic medieval lettering into a contemporary typeface. Her development process always involves a lot of sketching, pencil on paper, and so she drew many versions until she settled on an acceptable starting point that she then digitized.

The design caught Lucas & Chantra's eyes, seeing its potential yet recognizing that there was still a long way to go for this quirky sketch. My-Lan wrestled rigorously with the contradictory aspects of the design, and over the years, it changed a lot. Rosalie was both unconventional yet elegant, spiky and round, smooth and sharp. Through this process, the contrast became very delicate, and it’s logic began to stabilize. The bowl forms resolved, and the stems straightened.

Some letters found their shape immediately, while others searched for a long time– the /v/w/y simply refused to be pinned down till the bitter end! The angle of the oblique end serif gave the tempo. An important aspect of the design was the novel subtraction of interior strokes in letters like the /a and /k. These forms where taken in and taken out countless times, but were ultimately chosen to be the default forms.

The drawing of the uppercase introduced this new idea of emphasizing the width proportions of each letter. The vertical letters became very narrow, while the round ones became plump and circular. They all got tracked tighter for an assertive display look. These Art Deco proportions are usually applied to geometric Sans Serif, so the application in a display serif was somewhat novel. This logic was then applied to the lowercase, which is an uncommon feature.

In the last round of edits, drastic changes were made. The oblique ending serif was straightened to a more acceptable angle. Some letters got their final design. The /G and the /Q were transformed. And the emblematic /a and /e letters were replaced (or given alternate shapes), for the greater good of the overall texture. Serifs grew long again, and not just on terminals, to the point where they can merge and melt into each other on occasion.

The idea for a distinct Italic counterpart started early on, yet, as the Roman, it took many iterations before it turned into this classical calligraphic interpretation. Rosalie doesn’t do things halfway, and through much trial and error, the letters eventually embraced their true potential in this style too.

“The italic, which is often my favorite style to draw as it is more expressive and cursive, was going to be quite extreme.” says Thuong. “It is narrow and calligraphic, with a lot of movement and personality.” Rosalie’s italic carries the same weight and contrast as the Roman but with completely different proportions, achieving the classic roman/italic textural contrast.

Inspired by italic typefaces of the Renaissance, Thuong imagined a whole set of swashes, some more typographic, some more calligraphic, and others hybrid. All the uppercase have one or two ornated counterpart(s), so do some lowercase.

One of the main achievements of the typeface was to build it to the specifications of our new omnilatin character set, a goal and research project dear to Thuong. Many additional letters, diacritics and symbols, as well as the combining marks features were added to support as many languages using the Latin alphabet as possible. These characters were given a lot of care and have a very expressive design. They were even thought to have a set of swashes, like the main characters of the alphabet. This, combined with a comprehensive backend resulted in a very extensive character set of more than 1300 / 1600 characters.

Rosalie was dusted off, worked on, and put back in the drawer many times over in the last 5 years. Each time, it was reworked extensively and took new steps (forward or backward). It raised many challenges, questions and difficulties that could become deterring at times, resulting in long pauses in its progression. “It wasn’t an easy and smooth process, but looking back, I have no regrets and believe it was the kind of project that needed a lot of time to evolve to where it is now.” recollects Thuong. “This long time allowed me to take the necessary steps back to have a new look on it and improve the design by making the difficult decisions in the choice of the shapes I should keep, let go of, or transform. ”

Rosalie has been a consistent thread thoughout My-Lan Thuong’s type design career and tracks the evolution of her practice. It started in her artistic adolescence, what she calls her her “I love weird shapes phase”, which eventually led her to refine her design along with discovering a more mature intention: to make the typeface more approachable and useful for designers. “It completely emancipated from its origins to become something that is more in sync with what I like and believe in now. It was not easy, but it was meaningful to me to finally finish it and share it with the world. It’s time for me to move on and for Rosalie find it’s own life outside of me. I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

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