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These fonts that have "graphics," for lack of a better term, inside the forms. There's probably thousands of "distressed" fonts by now, which I would think would fit in this catagory. And they get fanicer than that too, like this one that has electricity inside it:

http://www.dafont.com/electrical.font

or this one which has picures of skyscapers at night:

http://www.dafont.com/urban-jungle.font

what to call these things?

Figurative?
I think they could be seen as an evolution of the figurative initials of yore.

Not figurative.
The Electrical font clearly belongs to the sans category, at first hand.
At second hand: the additional feature in this case I would adress as *a graphic modification*. As is e.g. shadowing or outline display.
In the established categorization schemes there is, unfortunately, no means to accomodate such aspects of fonts.

Pictorial?

Andreas has a point - you don't want to lose the
reference to the "outsides". Thinking about how
some old designs* had inline illustrations, what
about: "graphic-inline" or "inline-graphic"?

* Like my favorite, from Sem
Hartz. What was it called?

hhp

Appropriate Panose categories include:

Family Kind: Latin Decorative
Treatment: Patterned Fill, Complex Fill, Shaped Fill

For fonts whose glyph's outside shapes are graphic, there's also the Topology category.

- Herb

> * Like my favorite, from Sem Hartz. What was it called?

Molé Foliate?

Yes, that's it. I do have the charming little Hartz booklet with
it on the cover. I just don't know exactly where it is right now...

hhp

Panose doesn’t appear to differentiate between figurative and non figurative fill.

Although many patterns are representational, no pattern can be truly figurative, because nature does not repeat itself with such regularity.

Now, with OpenType, the trick is to make the fill in repeated glyphs non-identical. Dunwich and CanadaType have produced such fonts, in the distressed mode, IIRC.

Pictoral Inline

I would have thought these are "graphic" or "illistrative". Correct me if I'm wrong!