Introduction

Exhibitions

Publications

Project types

Commissioners

Release dates

⇆

    Text Heavy: The Art of Type Design by Nick Shinn

    Exhibition poster

  • 2025
  • offset lithograph
  • 90.5 x 128 cm

In the brief for a poster to feature in an exhibition about the work of the type designer Nick Shinn, we were inspired by a paragraph required to be included in the work to acknowledge the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation’s precedence as the customary keepers of the unceded and unsurrendered territory on which the city of Ottawa is located. However, we also found the undoubtedly well-meaning text inadequate because it was written in both English and French, but not in the Nation’s native language.

For this poster, we found a native Algonquin translator and asked them to translate the entire text into the language. Then we presented it in typography that inverts the normal visual hierarchy: not only is the otherwise invisible Algonquin language the most prominent here, but the acknowledgment is featured as a main element while the show’s title is treated like a footnote.

With the additional language, the poster also became literally text-heavy, allowing us to showcase variations of Shinn’s Worldwide type family.