Certificates & Awards

Carl Shank • September 10, 2022

Designing Certificates and Awards

Everyone likes to be recognized for a job well done or for a special milestone accomplished. We can do this, in part, through certificates and award papers that are then framed and given to the recipient. However, there is not much thought through design given to the standard certificate. Preprinted certificate papers with fancy border designs help, but the typesetting and layout in the heart of the certificate often lacks power or pizzazz. In Example one below, I redid a certificate given to me by an employer, NCDAmerica, which is a church health consulting firm in Michigan. I have been licensed through them since 1998 and specialize in church consultations in the Northeast. You will note how I redid the layout and design below.


Certificates usually have eight or nine standard elements — (1) Name of presenter; (2) Title; (3) Name of recipient; (4) Reason for the presentation; (5) Term of membership or certification (if applicable); (6)Date presented; (7) Signatures of presenter or presenter's agent; (8) Presenter's logo or seal; and (9) Presenter's city and state. Chuck Green in John McWade's excellent Before & After magazine (Vol. 4, No. 4 / 1995) gives ample clues as to content and design of certificates and awards. I have designed some certificates for NCDAmerica, a church health consulting firm, originally in Germany and based in several countries. Note the examples below.

Successful Layout & Design

Font Restoration Mechanics

By Carl Shank • May 13, 2025
Font Restoration Mechanics. Let me begin by giving an example from the world of theology, my first love and profession. Many people, even many non-Christian people, know that we are saved “by faith.” But faith in what or who? Well, faith in God. But this is imprecise. It is faith in Jesus Christ the Bible tells us. But once again, this too can be mistaken as just an intellectual nod of the mind toward Jesus without a real life change or transformation. More detailed biblical discussion, with appropriate distinctions, must be made so that we don’t make “faith” a human, works-based activity we do to please God. Or some existential “experience” with no definable qualities. Digging even deeper, faith saves no one, though it is absolutely necessary for salvation. It is Jesus Christ who saves. Faith becomes an “instrument” of salvation. Theologians have been unpacking this salvation “by faith alone” for centuries. Books and “how-to” sermons have been written and preached and taught here. Do you see the tremendous amount of refinement that “faith” requires? Precise typography claims similar distinctions and refinements in letter development and typeface creation. CARE Typography has been able to restore older hand-drawn fonts from various sources to modern digital typefaces. One of those most prolific sources has been from Alphabets Old and New — For The Use of Craftsmen, With An Introductory Essay on ‘Art in the Alphabet’” by Lewis F. Day, London, 1910.There is a wealth of older fonts shown by Day, one of them being a Roman Forum font from an old Roman Forum engraving. It might be thought that to copy and paste the letters and import them into a font design program, like FontLab’s Fontographer, is simple and rather straight-forward. Not so. From a font designer’s work, the transfer from a screenshot of an old book to a clear and professional open type font (SEE my Blog on “Open Type Fonts” in “More About Fonts” March 9, 2021) takes care and lots of work. It is both tedious and time intensive. The details of such work are often overlooked. Here’s an inside look at such work.

Wide Is Beautiful

By Carl Shank • March 15, 2025
Wide Is Beautiful What makes a typeface beautiful? Aesthetically pleasing fonts or typefaces have differing qualities that make them suitable and beautiful in different contexts and uses. I have chosen six (6) wide or "extended" font faces to highlight the inherent beauty and usability of such type. The samples chosen range from well used Adobe fonts to a specialty antique wide font CARE Typography crafted from an old fashioned type book published by Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc of New York back in 1945.
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