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

Scripts & Cursives

By Carl Shank • July 30, 2026
Scripts & Cursives. In typography and calligraphy, the terms script and cursive are related but not synonymous. They are often used interchangeably in popular usage, but type historians and calligraphers generally distinguish them by purpose, construction, and historical origin . While all cursive-inspired fonts are script typefaces, not all script faces are cursives. Thus, a calligraphic font with disconnected capitals and lowercase letters is a script font, but not truly cursive. Background . Two previous posts are a good place to start this discussion — See "Calligraphy & Typography" a t https://www.caretypography.com/calligraphy-typography . Also, see "Pen-Lettering History" at https://www.caretypography.com/pen-lettering-history . In typographic terminology, script refers to a class of typefaces designed to emulate handwriting or calligraphy, regardless of whether letters are connected. Cursive, by contrast, refers to a style of handwriting characterized by connected, flowing letterforms developed for efficient writing. Consequently, cursive writing is one important source of script typefaces, but script typography also includes many designs that are not truly cursive. Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style (Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2012) classifies script as a category of typefaces derived from handwriting and distinguishes formal and informal script traditions. He notes that "there are thousands of typefaces that stand outside the conservative and tradition-bound world of text type, and that look as if they might have been handwritten rather than drawn, carved or inscribed. Some are formal, some informal, some connected and some made of separate letters. Typographers often lump them together unscientifically as script types." (p. 193, 1992 Edition). Bringhurst says that "in general, scripts are also more closely tied to particular moods, places and times than text types are, and types that pass quickly in and out of fashion are extraneous to the subject of this book." (p. 193) He notes that scripts are important only as "setting off" a single word or line of normal text copy. He then discusses the typefaces Beowolf, Carolina, Legende, Ondine, Present and Salto. 

Linotype's Party Emblems in 1920

By Carl Shank • July 29, 2026
Linotype's Party Emblems in 1920 . Type follows and often mimics cultural fashions and ideas. Consequently, Victorian type flowed with the ornamentation of that period. Punk and Grunge type traced with a rebellious period in American culture. The political landscape of the 1920s was shaped by the aftermath of World War I, economic prosperity, social change, and debates over the role of government. While the specific parties differed by country, the decade is most often discussed in terms of the United States, where the Republican Party dominated national politics. Being a major typesetter for the period, Linotype issued characters that reflected the political parties and feelings of the times. Such type emblems showed up in their 1920 publication of One Line Specimens .
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