Follow the documented name changes
The HiH account traces Freak to Great Western in 1889 and says Barnhart Brothers & Spindler later renamed it Bamboo before 1925. It describes the design disappearing from the catalog following the 1929 absorption of BB&S into American Type Founders. Those are historical account details, not a release chronology for every digital font called Freak. The account does not supply an original designer to credit.
Make a specimen card with separate fields
Use FREAK as the specimen heading and place Historical name: Bamboo in a clearly labeled caption. Give the foundry, historical source and digital edition separate fields in your working notes. This prevents the old name from being mistaken for a second font selected in the layout. If you reproduce a historical statement, preserve its date and attribution instead of presenting a newly designed card as an original nineteenth-century artifact.
Use the edition resource to inspect the actual forms
Follow HiH’s resource for the named digital design before composing the final specimen. Monoton and Cinzel here are independent comparisons, not historical evidence for Freak’s forms or replacements for its file. If the task is a portable nickname, the homepage’s Unicode lettering experiments offer character substitutions. They do not reproduce HiH’s font or identify a historical printing type from a copied word.
Your questions, answered.
Why does Bamboo appear in a Freak font guide?
HiH’s history identifies Bamboo as a later historical name for the design it traces to Great Western.
Is the original designer known from this account?
The cited account does not name the original designer. This guide does not invent an attribution.
Sources & background
Sources supporting this page’s explanations. Practical examples are our editorial suggestions.