Today we’d like to introduce you to Russell Shaw.
Hi Russell, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil and hacking away on a keyboard for almost as long. I owe a lot to a few passionate public school teachers who intersected my life at the right moments and taught me everything from chiaroscuro shading and film photography to typography and Photoshop. It wasn’t a straight shot, but I did eventually find my way into majoring in graphic design. After graduation, I took an atypical route and started freelancing full-time. I found the cheapest apartment that I could and moved in with a box of design books, a sleeping bag, and a computer. I am grateful for that time — I was making a go of it with little to lose. I think some people rush into things, thinking that they need to be on track to be an established designer as fast as possible. I am glad to have had a time to make stuff, break stuff, and see what stuck. Over the next several years, my practice got more concrete — I worked with some great agencies and companies, solidified my creative process, developed my own style, and connected with a ton of great creatives. I competed in a live, on-stage, head-to-head design event at a national conference, and met a bunch of industry idols. I worked with two brilliant, lovely, creative friends for whom I illustrated and designed a kids’ book that went on to become a New York Times Best-Seller. I started teaching design courses and workshops. It was a fun period of experimentation and growth. A recruiter from Slack reached out to see if I would join their founding brand design team, and I decided to take the leap into in-house creative work. I learned a ton while I was there and got to work on some really crazy stuff like an international ad campaign, the rebrand alongside Pentagram’s team, and art direction for an internal magazine, commissioning a roster of amazing illustrators from around the world (I even framed one rejection email from a very well-known illustrator who replied, “No” — but hey, at least they replied). But after a few years, I don’t know; I felt pretty burnt out with what I was doing. I really missed working with a diversity of industries, brands, styles, and project types. I needed something to fuel that curiosity in me again. I learned so much about the other side of the equation by working in-house, but going back to working for myself was an instant breath of fresh air. I left six years ago now. Since then, I’ve been working directly with agencies and in-house creative teams on major rebrands, as well as continuing to work with smaller brands who are either launching something totally new or rebranding in order to get to that next level. And my illustration work has gone from something that was a bit of a side-gig to a major part of what I do — illustrating projects for Disney, drawing and designing an entire book for The HISTORY Channel, and creating editorial illustrations for The Village Voice, New York Magazine, and more. Every day is a little different. And I love that.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Is it possible for there to be a smooth road? There have been loads of obstacles — high-highs; low-lows; business challenges; personal challenges; moments where I thought all the creative juice must have run out; moments where it surges back and I do some nice work, thinking I’ve hit a new plateau, and then the next project doesn’t pan out the same way and quickly brings me back down to earth. But the path is all wabi-sabi: it’s about finding beauty in the imperfection and accepting it all no matter what. We like to imagine a future state where we stand on a pinnacle, looking back over what we’ve done, and feel complete — like we’ve “made it” and have “arrived.” But that state never really comes. It’s an illusion wherein we actually just wish our precious, present time away. So instead of looking at the bump in the road as the thing to get past, I am trying to look at it as the thing in-and-of-itself: the road is “making it;” this is “making it;” we are all “making it” right here, right now, as we go. Looking back, I think the decisions to, first, leave freelancing and go in-house; and then, second, leave in-house and go back into independent creative work, were really pivotal struggles. At the time, they felt monumental. I was ready to go in-house because I was feeling as though I had gone as far as I could on my own. I felt that I really needed to learn more about the business side of design, work collaboratively on bigger scale projects, and go deeper working with one brand. But that decision eventually became an obstacle in its own right. I looked around and felt like I wasn’t doing the type of work that I really wanted to do anymore, and I was hungry for something different. I wondered if I had made a mistake. When I went back to working as an independent creative director, though, there were also moments early on where I thought, “Oh no. Should I have stayed? Should I have tried to work my way up into management or something?” Now, with some added years of hindsight, I don’t see either inflection point as being right or wrong; instead, I was making the choices I could with the information I had based on the opportunities in front of me at the time. That’s all there is to it. I’ve made each struggle work and incorporated whatever comes into my story. I do think that working in-house catapulted my career forward because I learned so much and made so many valuable connections — I still benefit from that network. But I also think that going back to working for myself was a huge next step because I spend my my time and energy on the things that I love every day now — but at an even higher quality bar and with even greater reach. All of the hard things that come up aren’t things to simply “get through.” They are life too. Hug your struggles tightly. They will define your story in the long run.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I always used to cringe at the idea of creative work adopting the term “storytelling.” It felt like marketing jargon. I became more okay with it when an admired artist gave a talk at a conference I attended and shared a quote by Muriel Rukeyser: “The universe is made not of atoms but of stories.” That really pulled it all together for me. Everything around us is not just what it is on its surface. It’s how we interpret, translate, and make meaning out of it all. It’s all context; it’s all relationship of one thing to another. Visual storytelling then is creating images that are cues to connect the dots for people. Images that make people feel something or understand something. For businesses, crafting a brand identity means playing on these cultural cues to speak to an audience in a more powerful way. I help make that. Then, businesses and organizations can come across more effectively and speak on the right level to the right people — and, on behalf of the audience, making things that help real people find the right, true fit for whatever it is that they are searching for. That could look like everything from the creative strategy behind who a business is and what they do to the way that it shows up in the world through their logo, message, colors, imagery, all of the experiences their audience might interact with — and how it makes them feel. Or in terms of illustration work, it’s helping make a message more meaningful, memorable, or understandable by pairing the right artwork with it. Good illustration work can enhance and illuminate — whether that’s for a children’s story, an editorial piece, or for a company trying to explain a complex new way of doing something.
So as a creative director who designs brands as well as creates illustrations, it’s all in effort to help people and businesses tell better stories. In a world that is becoming increasingly transient and noisy, the work that I’m most proud of is the work that lasts and that infuses clarity and delight into someone’s day.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Network in person. I know that that’s really hard right now. It’s hard for me too. It’s always easier to stay in the studio than go to an event. But social media is a trainwreck for real connection and we are being algorithmically served sameness rather than diverse, complex perspectives and viewpoints. Social media connections are very shallow, and people are often more rude online when they believe they are acting anonymously. I’m not trying to sound like too much of a luddite here; but as I’ve become more digitally minimalist and started using less social media, the Internet has become a helpful tool for me again and less of an addiction to something that never really satisfied what I wanted in the first place. If you find creative spirits in the real world, wherever you are, you’ll be surprised at how kind and wonderful people can really be — and how much everyone wants to help one another succeed. In-person stuff is messy, awkward, and inconvenient. But there’s a beautiful lesson in all of that inconvenience as well: a reminder of our humanity. Online, everything is slick and polished; comparing yourself to the curated versions of people all over the world in your field can leave you feeling envious or less-than. But if you were to actually have lunch with them in the real world? You would notice that even a seasoned pro sometimes still gets mustard on their shirt.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://russellshawdesign.com/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russrs/
Image Credits
Portrait by Elle Wood Photography
