Some time ago I bought my smallest book ever: Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet* 57 x 72 mm. I thought it was the sweetest little book I had ever seen. Not knowing about the fame of the designer Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), I put it in some dark drawer and looked at it from time to time. Kate’s books were all outstanding successes in English publishing history; she was an icon of the Victorian era. Some of those books are still being reprinted today. This little gem I had accidentally acquired has become very rare and I have not found any reprints yet. So I thought maybe I could adapt her drawings for use on today’s computers. I ventured to redraw her delicate illustrations, blowing them up 300 percent, being forced to simplify them without losing her touch. It took quite some time! While redrawing them, I discovered that she most certainly drew them in at least three different sessions as well. Then I scanned my drawings and put them in a font. To make the font more usable, I added the ten numerals in Kate’s style; the original does not have those. I hope she would have liked my adaptations. Yours in a very preserving mood, Gert Wiescher. * Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet, edited by George Rutledge & Sons, London and New York, ca. 1885.

According to Wiktionary, "the cat's pajamas" was a slang phrase coined by Thomas A. Dorgan, the well-known journalist, cartoonist and sportswriter of that era. The phrase became popular in the U.S. in the 1920s, as the word "cat" was used as a term to describe the unconventional flappers from the jazz era. This was combined with the word pyjamas (a relatively new women's fashion during that time) to form a phrase used to describe something that is the best at what it does, thus making it highly sought and desirable. Wikipedia adds that Dorgan was the first to use the terms "twenty-three, skidoo", and "yes, we have no bananas", "apple sauce" and "solid ivory", which also became part of the slang of the "Roaring Twenties". Katz Pajamas JNL is a condensed slab serif typeface based on the title lettering for the 1944 sheet music "Pretty Kitty Blue Eyes", hence the pun-laden font name paying homage to this bit of verbal Americana as well as making the pajamas a pair owned by Mr. Katz instead of the fashionable feline. Available in both regular and oblique versions.

M Kai is a design inspired by the popular Kaiti developed in contemporary China. MKai adopts many features of Kaishu, one of the many Chinese writing scripts and calligraphic style. Yet writing style and constructions have been well-unified to meet quality as typeface. Its strokes has relatively heavier stroke beginning and finishing, as well as thinner middle part. It is catered for fine print with little conglutination. Its medium weight makes it more visible at distance and pretty versatile in use. Zhonggong are tightly built with ample character spacing for good individual character recognition. It is best suited for formal body text, set upright (non-slanted), non-condensed.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, and it's easy to get into the swing of things with this bouncy little number, based on another offering by the irrepressible Ross George. Bright, bouncy and a little sassy, Nellie Kay will save the day, no matter what the occasion. Both versions include the complete Unicode Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

HK series fonts are in Unicode encoding and consists of BIG 5 character set and HKSCS characters. The character glyphs are based on the regular Traditional Chinese writing form and style. It is generally used in Taiwan ROC, Hong Kong and Macau.

Fat Kitty Kat is a hand made, rather bouncy and happy font. It was thought up, drawn and vectorized during an unusually long rainy period in a small Porto hotel room. Kitty Kat's glyphs are rather rough, but legible and fun to use. The font comes with extensive language support and a full range of alternates for the lower case letters.

Kate Slab Pro Expanded is a sophisticated and robust modern Slab Serif Typeface that works in a variety of design scenarios. It is designed to work in big attention grabbing headlines as well as in smaller text and even body text. The recognition value of Kate Slab Pro Expanded is its biggest asset in world of uniformity. Ranging from “100 Thin” all the way to “900 Black” makes Kate Slab Pro Expanded such an amazing and versatile font family that stands out. Kate Slab Pro Expanded doesn’t only work great in lifestyle and fashion related contexts but will also look amazing for restaurants, coffee shops or and other use cases that ask for character and identity. To fill all the gaps of a designer’s needs, Kate Slab Pro Expanded comes with an italic style with every weight. Those italics are equipped with unique and real italic characters and will make you love it. Being a Slab Serif Kate Slab Pro Expanded manages to remind you of a classic Font Family with a modern and timeless approach that will make you happy for decades. Monday Type can’t wait to see the beautiful designs you are going to create with our Kate Slab Pro Expanded.

M Kai 2 HK is a handwritten style Traditional Chinese typeface. Handwritten font designs are derived directly from hand-drawn lettering or handwriting using analogue tools. Handwritten style Traditional Chinese fonts can include typefaces that reference or reinterpret traditional calligraphy, using classical exemplars by calligraphic masters.

M Kai 2 PRC is a handwritten style Simplified Chinese typeface. Handwritten font designs are derived directly from hand-drawn lettering or handwriting using analogue tools. Handwritten style Simplified Chinese fonts can include typefaces that reference or reinterpret traditional calligraphy, using classical exemplars by calligraphic masters.

Kate Slab Pro Ultra Expanded is a sophisticated and robust modern Slab Serif Typeface that works in a variety of design scenarios. It is designed to work in big attention grabbing headlines as well as in smaller text and even body text. The recognition value of Kate Slab Pro Ultra Expanded is its biggest asset in world of uniformity. Ranging from “100 Thin” all the way to “900 Black” makes Kate Slab Pro Ultra Expanded such an amazing and versatile font family that stands out. Kate Slab Pro Ultra Expanded doesn’t only work great in lifestyle and fashion related contexts but will also look amazing for restaurants, coffee shops or and other use cases that ask for character and identity. To fill all the gaps of a designer’s needs, Kate Slab Pro Ultra Expanded comes with an italic style with every weight. Those italics are equipped with unique and real italic characters and will make you love it. Being a Slab Serif Kate Slab Pro Ultra Expanded manages to remind you of a classic Font Family with a modern and timeless approach that will make you happy for decades. Monday Type can’t wait to see the beautiful designs you are going to create with our Kate Slab Pro Ultra Expanded.

This in-yer-face kinda face is based on a broad brush font from "The New ABC of Showcard & Ticketwriting" by C. Milne, published in Australia in the late 1930s. Brought to my attention by Ms. Kat Black, and named in honor of Ms. Kat's grannie, to whom the book originally belonged. The Postscript and Truetype versions contain a complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252); in addition, the Opentype version supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages as well.

The name "Sticky Love" is taken from a song by Kate Bush. Perhaps not one of Kate Bush' most famous songs, but nevertheless, the song is about love (Which I think is what Kate Bush sings a lot about!) The Sticky Love font is also about love - that kind of love you just can't control. In this case, the love is about wacky letters! :) Sticky Love is handmade and just a tiny bit cleaned up. Not much though. The font has kept the handmade love!

Kate Greenaway was a very famous British (1846-1901) author and illustrator of childrens books. Her books were an outstanding success in English publishing during the Victorian period. Recently I found these sweet Mignonettes in an old foundry specimen book. Mignonettes is derived from the French word "mignon" which stands for lovely, charming, sweet, delightful, pleasant and that does exactly describe these little drawings. I already published a Kate Greenaway's Alphabet a couple of years ago. So here is my second installment. Yours, Kate Greenaway fan Gert Wiescher