New Font Offerings

Carl Shank • May 11, 2023

Introducing the Christograph Font & FancifulAlphabets Font. CARE Typography is pleased to announce two new font offerings, especially for use in churches and ministries—the Christograph Font and the FancifulAlphabets Font. These are pictograph fonts, designed from pictograms courtesy of The Image Book: 2,500 Visual and Verbal Images to Clip and Use During the Church Year (C.I. Publishing, 1993). The pictograms used have been cleanly drawn and sized to fit a normal sized font display. There are 83 pictograms in the Christograph font that occupy font glyphs. They cover the church year adequately and can be used in a variety of newsletter and display materials. These fonts are true Open Type Postscript fonts, the kind preferred by Adobe systems.


The FancifulAlphabets Font is a decorative capital letter font, from A to Z, suitable for fancy text introductions or stand alone old time graphics. One of the nice things about having such fancy lettering in a font family is that they can be sized to fit most any text or advertising use, especially in the larger sizes.


The fonts are free to all churches and ministries. To secure your copy of the fonts, send an email to CARE Typography at cshanktype@gmail.com. The fonts are copyrighted by CARE Typography and can be used only by permission from the creator.


We believe these fonts can be helpful to many!

Successful Layout & Design

By Carl Shank July 17, 2025
Pen-drawn lettering lies at the heart of Western typographic tradition. From Roman capitals to digital script fonts, its influence persists in the balance, rhythm, and grace of letterforms—whether carved in stone, printed in books, or drawn by hand on a modern tablet. The history of pen-drawn lettering in typography is deeply intertwined with the broader evolution of writing, calligraphy, and type design. It represents a key bridge between handwritten traditions and mechanical or digital type. Key characteristics of Pen-Drawn Lettering include stroke contrast, from broad-nib or pointed-pen techniques, fluid cures and terminals, which are naturally shaped by hand movement, and the human touch of imperfections, variation and expression. Although allied with Calligraphy, pen-lettering has distinct differences. Calligraphy illustrates the art of writing with specific strokes, while pen-lettering focuses on the art of drawing letters. Calligraphy shows writing in one continuous flow while in pen-lettering letters are stylized individually. Calligraphy relies on pressure for thick/thin strokes while pen-lettering is drawn and shaded manually. It is harder to fix mistakes in calligraphy. Thus, the word "typography" in calligraphy is written in one flowing motion, using a brush pen, adjusting pressure to get thick and thin lines. In pen-lettering the word "typography" is done by drawing each letter as a mini-illustration, perhaps outlining it and adding embellishments. However, both calligraphy and pen-lettering share similar histories and are at least partners in typography. The plates below give an overall history of pen-lettering. Enjoy!
By Carl Shank July 11, 2025
Charles Ayers Faust (b. 1860) was an American calligrapher and typographic designer known primarily for his 1912 compendium Faust’s 75 New Alphabets , a richly illustrated manual of lettering techniques. Published in Chicago by the C. W. Braithewait Company, this 72‑page volume is now in the public domain. CARE Typography, in its mission to digitally restore older typography, has restored some of Faust's designs for the modern type world. 75 unique alphabets for artistic lettering, including brush, air-brush, air-pencil, relief, stencil, marking, shading, and both ornate (Payzant, Soennecken) and practical “common pen” styles. They are Highly visual, serving as both an instructional guide and inspirational specimen book for sign-writers, designers, artists, and printers of the early 20th century.  Samples are below, available from CARE Typography .
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