Schlossatelier Monaise

What could be better than developing a corporate design project without a client and with complete freedom to do what you want? Design student Luca Marie Julien had this opportunity during her Bachelor semester at Trier University of Applied Sciences. The city is a cultural metropolis, but what it lacks is an artist residency. So, she invented one.

She chose Monaise Palace, a small chateau on the Moselle, as the hub of her fictional project. The basic idea: the imaginary “Schlossatelier Monaise” awards scholarships to young artists from the fields of music, dance and visual arts. “To match the architecture, I developed an exclusive typeface with three styles for the three disciplines. An inscription on the façade of the castle provided the inspiration for the Monaise font family which consists of three variants: Harmonia, Forma and Dynamica,” says Luca Marie Julien.

While the classical Harmonia represents the music department, the lively styles of Dynamica represent dance and the straightforward Forma represents the fine arts. The student used these typefaces to develop 11 different use cases for the three departments as part of her bachelor thesis.

“I chose McQueen Grotesk from Fontwerk as the body text font because it looks friendly and inviting, is easy to read and offers an extensive character set.” The latter was particularly important to Luca Marie, as Trier has been a partner city of the multilingual city network QuattroPole since 2000, together with Luxembourg, Metz and Saarbrücken.

She also wanted to ensure that the text typeface radiated modernity and was a contrast to the neoclassical Monaise Pro. “McQueen Grotesk is rather restrained, which was important to me as my display font is very showy,” explains Luca Marie Julien.