Digitizing Faust

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.


As a historical reference these pen inspired drawings offer a snapshot of commercial and decorative lettering techniques before the rise of digital typography. They are still used today by lettering artists and calligraphers looking for period-authentic styles. The pen styles range from Art Nouveau (2 styles) to large poster display type to fancy pen lettering.


A note about the payzant pen. The Payzant pen is a specialized broad-edged lettering pen associated with expressive calligraphy, particularly for display and titling purposes. It's named after Canadian calligrapher, artist and educator Douglas Payzant, who popularized a unique, energetic, and highly legible script style using this tool in the mid-20th century. Payzant was known for his expressive, rhythmic lettering, developing a distinctive style that emphasized rapid execution, clarity and boldness, and a sense of liveliness. His style was especially influential in the 1960s–1980s during a resurgence in interest in expressive pen-lettering techniques. The pen techniques included flowing and natural stroke sequences, wide verticals versus narrow horizontals, legible but informal, and designed for large-scale lettering such as in sketchbooks, scrapbooks, and decorative journal pages. It was perfect for posters, title pages, and public signage due to its bold strokes and was commonly used in manual layouts, advertising mockups, and theatre/film title art.


CARE Typography has digitized some of these pen lettering samples from Faust, seeking to retain the descriptive flair and flavor of the lettering. They are available as a package or as select fonts. Contact CARE Typography at cshanktype@gmail.com for ordering and prices.



Successful Layout & Design

Puritan Typography

By Carl Shank • May 15, 2026
Puritan Typography Theology Informing Type “Creational realities have not spilled out randomly without purpose; rather, they reflect the wisdom, design, and intention of the good God who made them. It’s our job, then, to observe and learn. . . . And indeed, long before [Jonathan] Edwards began to keep his notebook of earthly pointers to heavenly truths, the seventeenth-century English Puritans were writing lengthy volumes organized around exactly this sort of principle.”[1] “The Puritans were a group of ministers and laypeople within the Church of England who sought to promote Reformed and experiential piety while striving to purify the national church from Roman Catholic influences in doctrine and worship, beginning during the Elizabethan era and continuing as a powerful force until the early eighteenth century. More broadly defined, the Puritan movement included those who were firmly within the Reformed and experiential tradition that flourished not only in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, but also well into the eighteenth century north of Hadrian’s Wall (among the Scottish Presbyterians), across the North Sea (among the Dutch Further Reformation divines), and across the Atlantic Ocean (among the New England Puritans and eighteenth-century evangelicals).” [2] Puritan typography flows from Puritan theology. The English Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries inherited a typographic world shaped by the late Renaissance, the Reformation, and early modern printing. Their type styles were not merely aesthetic choices. Rather, they reflected theology, scholarship, readability, economy, and cultural identity.

King James Bible Typography

By Carl Shank • April 7, 2026
The King James Bible (KJV), commissioned by King James 1 in 1604 and published in 1611, has been a profound Bible translation and masterpiece of beauty through the ages. It has been one of the most influential English translations of the Bible. Its history combines politics, religion, and literary achievement in early modern England. It has an elevated, poetic style that influenced many later writers. It has been prized for its literary beauty, historical continuity and memorability in public reading and worship (ChatGPT).
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