Four Old Playful Fancy Fonts

Carl Shank • January 20, 2025

Four Old Playful Fancy Fonts. CARE Typography is pleased in its historical search for antique inspired fonts to introduce digitized versions of Harper and Mikado, a Gutenberg  typeface and Lacrosse. Unlike their modern counterparts, these fonts are display only fanciful fonts of a bygone era in typography. However, they exude a rich history of font development that should not be forgotten in our search for the new, the sleek, the up-to-date in type. They have been developed from the rich typographic heritage of Phillips Old Fashioned Type Book published in 1945 by Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc, in New York. This volume has caught my historic typographic eye for its plethora of ancient font styles and formulations.


The Harper446 font is especially playful, with its curly capitals, its specialized "Q" capital and, of course, its flavorful and playful small case lettering, with the raised c, e and o letters and the odd looking "g." This is obviously not a text font, but can uses in artful decorative work.


The Mikado231 font does not at all look like the variations of the typeface called "Mikado" in typography history. As that history notes, "Mikado was apparently inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera of the same name. The show opened in London in March of 1885 and in New York later that same year. According to Nicolete Gray in her classic book on ornamented typefaces, the English foundry of Sir Charles Reed and Son introduced a metal type called “Japanese” also in 1885. She characterized this typeface and other oriental based typefaces as superficial in their foreign influence. Nonetheless it appears that it was later copied by several of the American Wood-type companies. The 1906 Hamilton wood-type specimen catalog shows four versions of this design; one by Hamilton and three by acquired companies. The versions by Wells, and Morgans & Wilcox are called Mikado. The Hamilton and Page versions use model numbers 204 and 156 respectively. It is difficult to determine the specific dates when this particular wood-type was introduced, but the earliest wood-type catalog I could find showing Mikado is the 1888 Page catalog. Our sample “WINTER” is a 15 line unstamped type most similar to the Hamilton version. Incidentally, another English foundry, Miller and Richard introduced a metal typeface in 1887, also named Mikado. That typeface is totally different than the one presented here." (https://www.printmuseum.org/wood-type-mikado).


This Mikado adaptation has straight angular  E, F, G, K, T and even raised W, X, Y in the capitals. Note the falling stems of C, L, and  lower c, e, h, m and n. Again, this playful font can be used sparingly in advertisement copy and flavorful playbills.


The Gutenberg700 font is again from the Phillips book samples. Note the dotted C, U, V, small g and zero. The ampersand is also interesting. Curly serifs are used in A, J, L, S. The numerals are classic old school numerals. This Gutenberg rendering is unlike any classic Gutenberg typeface that has been presented.


The LacrossePhillips font has a cute left hanging serif on the capitals. It is a bold faced font, both in the upper and lower case. It is a full font offering upper and lower case lettering, numerals and other marks.


These fonts are available from CARE Typography at care typography.com at NO COST. They are free to purchase and use.

Successful Layout & Design

Vanity Type

By Carl Shank • June 6, 2026
Reading through an old volume of Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc, Type Faces:With Which We 'Prove It With Proofs' in Typography for Advertisements (New York, 1924), I came across some type that falls outside of the standard typography models, called "vanity type." The term “vanity typography” is not a formal category in typographic history like Old Style, Transitional, Modern, or Sans Serif. Designers typically use the phrase informally to describe typography that draws attention primarily to itself rather than serving the text or reader. Vanity typography occurs when type is used as a display of the designer's skill, fashion, or personal taste rather than to improve communication. Readability is sometimes sacrificed for self-expression and artistic flair. Such type styles use excessive ornamentation, decorative letterforms, overuse of effects like shadows, outlines, gradients and distortions, unusual spacing, and generally typography used to impress rather than inform. Notice in the sample by Phillips, the different "A's," "F's,", "G's," "H's," "L's," "M's," "S's," T's" and "W's." This is not calligraphy lettering, but rather type that could have been used for verses or opening letters to paragraphs or stories.

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.
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