A Kittl Remake

Carl Shank • May 17, 2023

A Kittl Remake. One of the claims of the graphical design program, Kittl, is that it saves loads of time and performs admirably well and is easy to navigate. It especially does well with Victorian art, so it claims. I took an idea from The Type Project Book by Nigel French & Hugh D'Andrade in Victorian art and sought to duplicate what I could in Kittl. The results are below. Some explanatory notes are in order.


First, I could have used Adobe Illustrator (which crafted the original piece in The Type Project Book), but I wanted to see how well and how superbly the Kittl program handled the sample piece. I also wanted to see how long it would take me to actually craft the piece in Kittl. While I appreciated the Kittl ease of use, I had to import a lot of the typefaces and elements into the Kittl program to complete the project, and even then there was not a one-to-one match. What Kittl did was allowed me to warp the type easily and quickly, but the real challenges came with the fills and shading requirements. I still was not able to exactly duplicate the Illustrator crafted piece in The Type Project Book. And, it took me a lot of time and effort to actually complete the project in Kittl.


I had to import the typefaces, P22 Victorian Swash, Gothic and Belford. They were not available in Kittl. I also had to import the flowers used in the original project, since they were not exactly available in Kittl. More than that, I had to copy and re-fill the elements used for the flowers from the vintage ornaments package from the Heritage Type Co. What Kittle did do for me is eliminate any background to the imported elements and allow me to vectorize them and then re-color them to match the red colors of the project.


The ornamental swashes were taken directly from Kittl's library, which is fairly extensive, but not exactly like the original ornamentations. All in all I believe the final product looks Victorian and images the original project in The Type Project Book. However, the ability to do in Adobe Illustrator still outshines Kittl in preciseness and adaptability. This result mirrors what I found in an earlier blog ("Digitizing the Past") – closeness but not exact duplication.


See the results below.



Successful Layout & Design

Art Nouveau Typography

By Carl Shank • September 6, 2025
Art Nouveau fonts grew out of the late 19th-century Art Nouveau movement (c. 1890–1910), which sought to break away from academic, historicist styles and create a new art for the modern age. The style flourished across Europe and America in architecture, furniture, illustration, and typography. In lettering, Art Nouveau embraced organic forms, flowing curves, floral motifs, and asymmetry, reflecting the movement’s fascination with natural growth and hand-drawn ornament. Art Nouveau took its name from the Maison de l'Art Nouveau, a Parisian gallery that exhibited the works of artists and designers who were associated with the movement. The style was characterized by flowing, curvilinear forms inspired by natural shapes and motifs such as flowers, vines, and insects. It also incorporated elements from other artistic traditions, such as Japanese art and the Arts and Crafts movement. Art Nouveau was particularly popular in Europe, where it influenced a wide range of artistic disciplines, including architecture, interior design, furniture, jewelry, and graphic design. Some of the most notable Art Nouveau architects included Hector Guimard, Antoni Gaudí, and Victor Horta, while artists such as Alphonse Mucha, Aubrey Beardsley, and Gustav Klimt were celebrated for their decorative and ornamental works. Art Nouveau declined in popularity after World War I, as artists and designers began to embrace new, more modernist styles. However, its influence can still be seen in many aspects of contemporary design, and it remains an important and influential movement in the history of art and design. 

Ornamental Gothics

By Carl Shank • August 30, 2025
Gothics History. Gothic typefaces are a broad group of styles rooted in medieval calligraphy and evolved into distinct print types during and after the invention of movable type via Gutenberg in the 15th century. They are sometimes confusingly named. In Europe “Gothic” usually refers to blackletter (medieval scripts), while in the U.S. “Gothic” often refers to sans-serif typefaces since the 1830s. Gothic script is a broad term for the entire family of medieval European scripts that developed from Carolingian minuscule around the twelfth century. “Minuscules” are lower case letters as distinct from capital letters, or uncials. Type developed in the sixth through tenth centuries with modern lettering evolving from Carolingian scripts. The Emperor Charlemagne used these letters as an educational standard. These densely packed scripts featured tall, narrow letterforms, strong vertical emphasis, sharp, angular connections, a dramatic thick/thin contrast and minimal spacing between letters. Gothic-inspired fonts create immediate medieval impact and work beautifully for titles, logos, and short display text. They are used today in Fantasy Gaming, Historical Projects, Themed Entertainment (like the Renaissance Fair), Book Design, Certificates, Breweries and Distilleries. Jack Nolan, a professional graphics designer, has provided a fetching display of such faces in his "33 Medieval Fonts Perfect for ‘Ye Olde’ Designs in 2025."(1)
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