I released Kirsty on December 24, 2000. The design was influenced by old railroad lettering and hand-painted brick signs, with a nod to the popularity of Émigré’s Brothers around the same time. The original release was a small caps family in Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold-Italic, all free for commercial use. A few days before finishing the font, singer Kirsty MacColl died, and I decided to name the typeface in tribute to her.
In 2020 I rebuilt Kirsty as a more complete family. I replaced the small caps with a proper lowercase while retaining the original small caps as an OpenType feature. The update also introduced new weights—Hairline, Thin, Extra-Light, Light, and Black—each with a matching italic, which were released as paid fonts. I refined spacing, improved character shapes, and rebuilt the kerning with classes. The rebuild also added Greek and Cyrillic support, new accents and punctuation, updated currency symbols, and modernized fractions.
On November 1, 2024, version 5.1 refined naming conventions in the font menus and corrected Polish ogonek characters. The family now spans nine weights, all with italics. Kirsty has circulated widely and was most prominently used in the Red Dead Redemption video game series.