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Contrast Conversations with Nick Shinn

Nick Shinn, R.G.D. was born in London, England in 1952, educated at Bedford, and acquired a Dip.AD in Fine Art (1974) from Leeds Polytechnic. He lived in Toronto, Canada from 1976 to 2009, then moved 60 km north to Orangeville. In the ’80s he worked as an advertising art director and creative director, before going digital in 1989 with the ShinnDesign studio, specializing in publication and marketing design. From 1980 he designed typefaces for several foundries, before founding Shinntype in 1998. He has written for Applied Arts, Druk, Eye, Graphic Exchange, Marketing, Typographic and Codex, spoken at the ATypI, TypeCon, Graphika and TYPO Berlin conferences, and taught at Humber College and York University in Toronto.

Today we present another episode of Contrast Conversations. Thanks to speaker Nick Shinn for taking the time to answer some questions for TYPO Talks!

TYPO Talks: What inspires you?
Nick Shinn: Envy

TT: The theme of this year’s TYPO is Contrast. Can you give us an example of projects in your portfolio that contrast with one another? Or a project that contrasts with itself?
NS: I designed the Panoptic alphabet to accomodate most genres of type, and published the typeface Panoptica demonstrating seven, including old style, sans, pixel and script..

TT: What other speakers at TYPO San Francisco are you most looking forward to?
NS: Can’t say, as the subjects of their talks have yet to be posted.

TT: What is your favorite thing to do in San Francisco?
NS: Walk around, looking at the architecture.

Nick Shinn

Nick Shinn, R.G.D. was born in London in 1952, educated at Bedford, and acquired a Dip.AD in Fine Art (1974) from Leeds Polytechnic. He lived in Toronto from 1976 to 2009, then moved 60 km north to Orangeville, Ontario. In the 80s he worked as an advertising art director and creative director before going digital in 1989 with the Shinn Design studio, specializing in publication and marketing design. From 1980 he designed typefaces for several foundries, before founding Shinntype in 1998. He has written for Applied Arts, Druk, Eye, Graphic Exchange, Marketing, Typographic, and Codex, spoken at the ATypI, TypeCon, Graphika, and TypoBerlin conferences, and taught at Humber College and York University in Toronto.

Speaker page

TT: What are currently your favorite interesting/beautiful publications, books, movies and/or links?
NS: A recently acquired 1551 title page with a lovely woodcut of a rampant lion emitting a swarm of bees from its mouth: Rampant Lion

TT: What does “contrast” mean to you?
NS: It’s OK, but Hue and Saturation are more fun.

Get your ticket to see Nick and all of our other excellent speakers here.