Shinntype

Shinntype Shinntype publishes the work of Nick Shinn. Modern and classic fonts. Identity fonts. Custom fonts.

Why do they always put the most interesting books on the bottom shelf?Well, at least they provided me with a nice rug to...
09/09/2026

Why do they always put the most interesting books on the bottom shelf?
Well, at least they provided me with a nice rug to protect my knees.

Much as I detest AI, and have pledged to never use it generatively, I confess to having used it considerably in my resea...
09/07/2026

Much as I detest AI, and have pledged to never use it generatively, I confess to having used it considerably in my research for this essay.

I found that it affected my writing style.

In particular I’ve decided to make every sentence a paragraph, to match the “powerpoint” formatting of AI, with its hierarchical repetition—and I’ve also decided to “write for myself,” which is to say indulge in the things that I like, such as obscure vocabulary and mixing elaborate sentence structure with vernacular figures of speech.

In other words, rocking my personal style, in opposition to the anodyne quality of generative AI.

“New blog essay:
PLAYLIST 1851
1. THE BLOOMER VALSE

Exploiting the gender wars of the day, sheet music marketing of the early Victorian era addressed issues not so very different from our own obsessions.

www.shinntype.com/playlist-1851-the-bloomer-valse

At one of our favourite local coffee shops 💞 .ca
08/29/2026

At one of our favourite local coffee shops 💞 .ca

PLAYLIST 18511. The Bloomer ValseSome fifty years ago my Aunt Jenny, an antiquary of the first order, presented me with ...
08/27/2026

PLAYLIST 1851

1. The Bloomer Valse

Some fifty years ago my Aunt Jenny, an antiquary of the first order, presented me with a magnificent old tome, (10”x 13¾”), its thick board covers marbled a deep green, bearing no identification save for the five letters MUSIC impressed upon its spine in gold leaf.

It was a personal curation made 175 years ago... - Read more from Nick's latest blog here:
www.shinntype.com/playlist-1851-the-bloomer-valse

Spotted two of my fonts a few doors apart on Manitoba Street in Bracebridge. I did have to look twice, but the open coun...
08/23/2026

Spotted two of my fonts a few doors apart on Manitoba Street in Bracebridge. I did have to look twice, but the open counter of the R in Bellefair, and the little spur on N in Aptly were definitive. Bellefair is a Google font, of course, so has no business being on a sign board!
BTW, I don’t recall spacing S_A quite like that—in fact, Bellefair has no kerning at all. (Feature, not bug.)

www.shinntype.com/aptly
www.shinntype.com/bellefair

My recent post of a caricature by Anthony Jenkins amassed many times the ‘likes’ of my usual posts—because of the subjec...
08/22/2026

My recent post of a caricature by Anthony Jenkins amassed many times the ‘likes’ of my usual posts—because of the subject. Most, I suspect, did not read my accompanying text (par for the course), the content of which was a comparison of a line-drawn portrait by an artist, vs. gen AI renderings of the same person (with which I assumed everyone is familiar).
What also surprised me was that (again I assume) people ‘liked’ the post because they thought the caricature is derogatory, when in fact it is just a caricature! It’s OK for art to have a little ‘edge’ without being satire.
For comparison, here is Jenkins’ drawing of the saintly (pace Lynyrd Skynyrd) Neil Young.

Well grown, Karey! ca 🌸
08/20/2026

Well grown, Karey!
ca 🌸

This is an older caricature of you-know-who, by Anthony Jenkins. You’ve no doubt seen the routine, over-worked AI versio...
08/19/2026

This is an older caricature of you-know-who, by Anthony Jenkins. You’ve no doubt seen the routine, over-worked AI versions of him that people are putting in political memes. I post this to demonstrate the magic by which the best artists can create a likeness that is far removed from photographic “reality,” with a unique style and facility that gen AI can never match through mere interpolation, pixel-shuffling and prompting by text. The hand-drawn line is a thing of beauty, of pure humanity.

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