Typefaces exist in two constituencies: as cultural artefacts which engage a broad range of critical issues, irrespective of textual content, and also as design tools used to create documents in which the literal content of text is of primary significance to the reader. It is to address the tension between these differing demands—intellectual and functional—that the act of drawing emerges as resolution. Through Shinn’s drawing the concept is worked out generatively for the entirety of each font, the execution carrying a physical signature: the quality of the designer’s hand-eye coordination, sense of style, and, fundamentally, the manner in which meaning and function are combined in the shape of a curve.