Roster

The visual tension of square corners within rounded shapes: Matthew Carter’s Roster takes this characteristic, sometimes seen in subtler form in a text face, and makes it the underlying structure of a dramatic slab-serif display family. Roster’s outer shapes are large, curved rectangles; its inner shapes have the chisel-cut clarity of counters carved out of the surrounding letter forms. The effect is both eye-catching and solid. Roster comprises 60 styles— 6 weights (Extra Light, Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold, and Black) in 5 widths (Expanded, Normal, Narrow, Condensed, and Compressed), all with Italics. Roster is a typeface intended for display: the very smallest size for it that Carter recommends is 30pt (“although the very heavy and compressed styles may need to be bigger”). It flexes its muscles best at truly large size.