GIVING VOICE TO THE INNER NOISE

In Floriane Rousselot’s world, curiosity, honesty, and experimentation lead the way. From creating vibrant visuals to founding an independent Type foundry, she understands how design becomes a language of emotion and storytelling. But she also knows there are two sides to the coin: creativity is a dance between inspiration and navigating the inner noise.
Floriane offers an intimate insight into walking the tightrope between creative freedom and client expectations, giving us a peek behind the curtain of mastering the art of making mistakes and reminding us that real life sparks the wildest visions.

Floriane Rousselot will speak at Forward Festival Vienna.

Can you tell us a bit about your artistic background, what design style from your youth inspired you the most when starting your career, and what, in your opinion, has the greatest impact on your motivation?

I’ve always been deeply inspired by anything related to art, architecture, music—and that’s still true today. As a child, I loved spending time in museums, learning from painters and soaking in their worlds. Around the same time, I was also heavily influenced by the visual culture surrounding music: album covers, music videos, video games… Graphic elements from things like DBZ, Tekken, or GTA really shaped my imagination. All these bright, dreamlike universes felt like precious gems to me—I loved getting lost in them. I think beauty in little things and sharing my vision are good motivation.

You founded Typelab, an independent digital type foundry. What, for you, is the magic behind Typography?

I always felt that typography is a way to share emotions with letters. The same way you can provide an emotion or reaction with color, shape, art, to me typography does the same. It’s probably why I like experimental fonts and I admire people creating funky fonts. It allows me to travel through cultures, environments, feelings and disciplines only with a few letters. Typography contains stories, it’s not just the words telling something, but also the shapes of the letters, content and container, and I like this idea.

We experience an increasingly digital and interconnected world where preserving as well as making content available is a big topic. With Typelab foundry, would you consider yourself a digital archivist or a digital librarian for Fonts?

In a way, yes. The idea behind Typelab was to create a digital space for independent designers—a platform where they could express themselves freely and showcase unexpected, experimental fonts. Even though some of the typefaces once available on Typelab are no longer for sale, I still believe the archive holds value. It captures a design moment, a creative impulse, a shared vision among designers at a specific time.
To me, that's what makes it meaningful—not just as a marketplace, but as a snapshot of a certain era in type design. It’s also a space where inspiration lives, where personal projects emerge, and where creatives can take risks without the pressure of perfection.

The personal and inner struggles of creatives are often not talked about enough. Your interviews and talks with creatives on Noise shine a light on the issues and open up to this topic. How do you personally deal with the inner noise, as you so well put it?

The more I grow in this industry, the more I realize how deeply creativity and mental health are connected. There’s this constant pressure to produce, to perform, to stay inspired — and that can be exhausting. We’re not made to generate brilliant ideas non-stop, all year long. Yet somehow, there’s still this expectation that creativity should be consistent and measurable, like in more logic-based jobs.
But creativity is cyclical. It needs space, rest, and stimulation from real life — not just back-to-back deadlines and screen time. It is impossible to be fully creative every day for an entire year for your whole life. We need to nourish ourselves with real experiences, with real life. We cannot expect each other to bring brilliant ideas by staring at screens 8 hours a day. And of course we need to be productive but I believe that a balance is necessary.

I think a big part of the inner noise many creatives experience comes from that disconnect: between what we feel inside, and what we’re expected to deliver.
Personally, what helps is talking about it — with friends, with other designers, sometimes with a therapist. Naming the discomfort often takes away its power. I’ve also learned to stop trying to outrun the inner noise. It usually has something to tell me: that I need a break, that I’m burnt out, or simply that I need to reconnect with why I create in the first place.

That inner noise often shows up when I isolate myself, when work becomes the only thing filling my days. Doubts, comparison, loss of confidence — they all tend to creep in then. What helps me deal with it is grounding myself back in reality. Spending time in nature, which is one of my biggest sources of inspiration. Doing things just for the sake of doing them — with zero expectation of productivity. Painting, cooking, watching nature just be — not trying to achieve, not trying to be more — and being inspiring for exactly that reason. And also reminding myself: design isn’t saving the world.

We need real-life experiences to fuel our ideas. We need balance — time away from screens, moments of slowness, connection, hobbies, collaboration, play. I’m still figuring it all out, and maybe I always will. But I know one thing for sure: we need to talk about this more. Only then can we start to imagine solutions that work not just for individuals, but across the creative industry. Getting inspired, seeing exhibitions, exploring art, feeding our minds — these shouldn’t be seen as extras. They’re part of the job. They’re investments we should be making in ourselves, and that studios and agencies should be making in their designers.

Your designs are bright and colorful but still simplistic. How do you balance between commercial demands and living out your wildest design fantasies?

Let’s be honest — I don’t showcase all the commercial work I do. Some projects are more about delivering on a brief than expressing a vision — and I am fine with it. I feel grateful to have the opportunity to work on projects where I’m trusted to bring my vision to life, but like in any creative field, it’s all about balance. Sometimes, you pitch bold, exciting ideas, but the client has a very specific direction in mind. You can advise and guide, but ultimately, they have the final say. And when the final design doesn’t fully reflect my vision, I’ve learned to be at peace with it. (otherwise there’s more inner noise haha).
To stay creatively fulfilled, I try to balance larger commercial projects with smaller, funkier ones that allow more freedom. I use a sort of internal pyramid to help me decide whether to take on a project — I don’t know if it has a name, but it helps me find clarity.

The three points of that pyramid are:
Financial value — is the budget fair? Does it reflect the value of my work?

Human connection — who am I going to collaborate with? Do I respect their work, share their values, and feel excited to work together?

Creative potential — is the project fun or challenging? Will I learn something new or feel proud of the outcome?

If a project ticks all three boxes, it's a dream. If it ticks two, it’s usually a good balance. If only one applies, I tend to say no. That framework helps me navigate between creative dreams and commercial realities, without feeling like I’m losing myself in the process. But to be honest, for every project I am trying to let my heart speak for me, if I am gonna have fun with this project, no matter if it’s a commercial demand or not, then it’s a good project.

When working with diverse clients, how do you deal with different expectations and communicate your style choices and ideas to them?

I consider every client as a collaborator, and every project as an opportunity to communicate, to dialogue, and to discover the client’s vision. Design is telling a story. There’s a strong psychological and sociological aspect for me—I try to understand the person I’m working with, the project they want to build, and why. Then I adapt. Communicating my ideas and choices is about supporting the client, truly understanding them, offering guidance—and yes, lots of mood boards, from the global vision down to every detail. We don’t skimp on presentations and mood boards.
I also don’t stick to just one vision or style—I like to propose several directions and find that shared space where the client and I meet, a bridge between their world and mine. It’s like a relationship: they’ve chosen you to help bring a creative vision to life, because they trust your style and your perspective.
And like any relationship, it requires communication, honesty, and the courage to stand for your ideas. Being the advocate for the project sometimes means disagreeing with the client, and learning to say no when it serves the work. After all, they come to us for our expertise—and sometimes the best designs come from respectful friction and strong convictions.

Design is for everyone and consumed by everyone. Do you take different generations and their unique perspectives into consideration when designing?

I think it depends on the project and client, I don’t always choose who’s gonna consume the design. It depends on the client’s audience. It depends on the medium: print, event, digital.. But I am doing my best to understand who’s consuming, how and why!

All creatives find themselves using different Platforms to communicate or showcase their work, might it be Tik Tok or Instagram. In your experience, how important is self-promotion for a designer and how do you navigate the challenge of self-promotion while balancing it with the creative process or letting your work speak for itself?

It can be messy… I find self-promotion through instagram can be very anxiogenic. Once again the app is driven by an algorithm, and graphic design, art direction, fonts are very niche and are definitely not something that is highlighted by the algorithm. So it can be really like fighting against the wave… Trying to show your work as much as possible to the design industry knowing that you don’t know if the app is gonna show it to the people you’re targeting, you don’t have control over it even though you try.
But to me it’s the way to find new clients and new collaborators, to keep showing my work, my vision. I always felt like if I don’t show my work no one’s coming to get me. Opportunities are not gonna fall from the sky, i need to help myself creating them. French culture instilling the idea of fake humility so we’re shy to show our work, to be proud of it, to show we’re talented, we want others to see it by themselves kinda. Spending time in the US and with Americans taught me to stand for my ideas and to be proud of my work, to highlight it, to be proud of my talent and to not be shy about it, and I think it’s important.
And to be honest I don’t have a specific schedule for when I am gonna post/ self-promote my work, I can be really swallowed by new projects and work, I am trying to balance when I have a bit of time…

Being a creative comes with a lot of decisions but also freedom to make them. How has your relationship with failure and making mistakes evolved, especially when you were just starting out?

Failure and making mistakes have always been tricky for me — probably because of how I was raised. I’ve always felt this deep need to be perfect, to prove that I deserve my place. Even in art school, mistakes felt like personal defeats. But looking back, especially at my early years as a designer, I made tons of mistakes — and that’s exactly how I learned.
Over time, I’ve realized that working on the psychological side of things — my self-esteem, my sense of self-worth — has helped me relax around the idea of failure. I’m slowly learning to accept mistakes, even have fun with them. It’s an ongoing personal process, but the more confident I become in my style and skills, the more space I give myself to explore, mess up, and grow.
It might sound a bit unexpected, but my advice would be: work on self-love. Accept your humanity. Mistakes aren’t just inevitable — they’re what make your path unique. Being kind to yourself, and using your mistakes as creative material, can be a powerful tool.

Learning design in school and university compared to working independently and developing your own style outside of those institutions is usually a big step. What was the biggest "wake-up" moment, or what do you wish you had learned to be better prepared for?

One of the biggest wake-up moments for me was realizing how important the business side of design is—especially self-promotion and the ability to communicate and sell your ideas. It's not just about creating beautiful visuals or smart concepts; it's also about how you present them, how you tell stories around them, and how you build connections that help bring them to life.
This hit me during my internship in New York while I was still in art school. Until then, I was hesitant to share my work, afraid to make mistakes, and unsure how to put myself out there. But being in a new city, working with people from different backgrounds and perspectives, forced me out of my comfort zone. It made me realize the value of trying, of taking risks, of reaching out to other creatives. It also taught me that there’s never just one “right” design solution—there’s space to explore, to play, and to grow through experimentation.
Another thing I realized is chasing creativity through screens won’t be the solution. As I said, experiencing life, new places, new cultures, being curious about artists, music, design, nourishing our inner creative space is essential.

Interview by Tina Enöckl