TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Wed Nov 20 11:56:39 EST 2024

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ABOUT

Conrad X. Shinn

Aka Cobb Shinn (b. 1887, Fillmore, IN, d. 1951). His story is told by Jeff Levine, who designed a series of cartoon character dingbat fonts inspired by Cobb shinn: Conrad X. "Cobb" Shinn (Sept. 4, 1887- Jan. 28, 1951) was a Fillmore, Indiana-born post card illustrator who sold a series of successful novelty postcard lines which included (among others) Charlie Chaplin, automobiles and the Dutch culture in the beginning years of the 20th Century. After serving in World War I, Shinn found the market for novelty postcards dwindling, and he also lent his artistic skills to cartoon features and illustrating many children's books [including his own, under the nickname Uncle Cobb] which taught easy step-by-step drawing methods. Some time in the 1920s, he eventually migrated into the field of supplying electrotypes and stereotypes of stock cuts of photos and line art to the printing trade. In the days of letterpress printing, this was the forerunner of paper clip art and its successor, electronic clip art. Purchasing many of his designs from journeyman artists of the time, the diversity of Cobb Shinn's stock cuts library grew with the passing years, reflecting changing times, styles and topics. Some of the illustrators whose signed works were presented in Shinn's CUTalogs [as he called his stock cuts catalogs] include Mary Clemmitt, Louis H. Hippe, E.C. Klinge, Nelson White, Harvey Fuller, Bess Livings, Lois Head, Harvey Peake and Van Tuyl. Upon his passing in 1951, it's not known how long the Indianapolis-based company existed before finally closing its doors. One of the more popular series of cartoons were the line illustrations of men and women affectionately called little big head guys by many modern fans of these cuts because the heads of the characters were drawn somewhat larger than the rest of their bodies. Levine's font that shows these charming charcaters is Shinn Kickers JNL (2014).

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Type scene in Indiana ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿ Letterpress ⦿