Discussion Point 2 - Shinn Vs Bell

Pre-Digital

Nick Shinn is a typeface designer, and attended school at Leeds Polytechnic where he earned a Dip. AD in Fine Art.

In 1976 he moved to Canada, where he worked as an art director and creative director at a number of Toronto advertising agencies from the 1970s into the 1980s. In 1989 he started ShinnDesign, his own digital studio, specializing in publication design. Nick has designed everything from books and magazines, to more recently web sites.

Since 1980 he has designed over 20 typeface families, including Walburn and Brown for the Canadian daily “The Globe and Mail”. In 1999 he launched ShinnType, which now publishes and markets his fonts worldwide. Nick is a prolific writer and often contributes to “Graphic Exchange” magazine, as well as many other publications.

Of his typeface designs, Shinn says, “Beautiful letters aren’t enough to make a successful typeface; I also want to create faces that are design solutions.”

Contemporary

Jill Bell is an American lettering artist, calligrapher and type designer.

A graduate of  UCLA and Otis/Parsons, Bell is a graphic artist who creates custom lettering, logotypes, titles, fonts and handwriting for advertising, entertainment, packaging, and publishing. Before establishing herself as a freelance artist, she worked as a sign painter in a shop.

Bell has created fonts for most of the major type foundries including ITC (International Typeface Corporation), Adobe Systems and Monotype Corporation. Her fonts include: Gigi, Smack, Carumba, Hollyweird, Bruno and Swank. She has also designed and produced proprietary fonts for companies including Loehmann's, Enesco, GSW Worldwide, the Navicor Group and Nestle. 

She has spoken at numerous schools, universities, professional organizations and conferences, and was the guest speaker at TypoTechnica 2002 in Heidelberg, Germany. She was a Maestro (judging calligraphy, speaking and teaching) at the Delphic Games in Jeju, South Korea in September, 2009.

Comparison

In comparison, Shinn created typefaces originally for newspapers and thus his typefaces like Walburn and Brown are very clean and simplistic for easy reading on a hard copy medium. Bell’s creations on the other hand, such as Gigi, are much more experimental, with huge serifs and particular stylistic qualities. This most probably reflects the competition between websites today, where Bell has created very original typefaces to attract attention in a digital world of uncountable typefaces.