The Rostrum fonts are a revival and expansion of a type called Oleander, designed in 1938 by Julius Kirn for the Genzsch & Heyse foundry in Hamburg.

Many of the original uppercase letters had some blackletter remnants tacked onto them, so in this digital version they were relegated to the Rostrum Two font, while more contemporary forms were designed for the Rostrum One font. Characters from both fonts are interchangeable via software programs' font menus and glyph palettes in the Postscript and True Type versions, while the OpenType version takes advantage of the Ligatures, Contextual Alternates and Stylistic Alternates features to perform character substitutions.

Rostrum finds the middle ground between italic and brush script, which makes it quite usable in all-caps settings. Its majuscules have a very distinct curl that makes the typeface effect-ready and very appealing in packaging design. Plenty of alternates and ligatures are sprinkled throughout the character set.