This website presents the independent and collaborative, commissioned and self initiated projects of Shawn Petersen.
I am a designer & design educator living in Portland, OR currently working as a Design Director at Downstream and Instructor at Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Over the past 10 years, I have assembled a diverse portfolio of creative work for large companies, small groups and cultural institutions. Past clients include Rolling Stone, Pottery Barn Kids, Faith Hill, Steinlager, Madonna, Oakland Public Library and Santa Cruz Bicycles. My work has been featured/published in Shift Japan and the AIGA Design Education Conference. My most recent work is focused on branded environments and human interaction.
Skills
Art Direction, Interactive and Rich Media Experience Design, Environmental Design, Package Design, Typography & Type Design, Book Design, CSS / HTML, Collage, Photography, Printmaking, Ideas, Conceptual Thinking and Dreaming.
Past & Present Clients
Aetna / IBM / California College of the Arts / Carbon NYC / Demuth Kemos / Faith Hill / The Killers / Linkin Park / NOAA / Pacific Northwest College of Art / Mills College / Nike / Oakland Public Library / Papo d'Anjo / Pottery Barn / Pottery Barn Kids / Prudential / Pyramis / Rolling Stone / Santa Cruz Bicycles / Steinlager / Southern Exposure Gallery / Wattis / Arnold J. Kemp / VSA Partners
PDX - Cut & Paste
On Sunday Jan. 26th I was invited to help judge the trial rounds for this years Cut & Paste design competitions in Portland.
It was a fun and exciting day of 2-D, 3-D and motion designers showing off their truly amazing talents.
The event was hosted by Twenty Four Seven, a multi-disciplinary design firm specializing in strategy, retail
design and graphic design.
Golan Levin - The Interactive Image
I just finsihed taking an amazing interactive image workshop with Golan Levin in Tennessee.
It was a "studio art course in computer science," in which the goals were art and design,
but the medium was software done using the application Processing.
I wrapped up a few large scale touch screen interactive installations this month.
I'm very interested in touch screen technologies and there's a great article in this month's Scientific American about
multitouch, Perceptive Pixel, and how it all works. Read more.
Spring 09 Course Offerings
Febuary 2, 2009
Context + Meaning: Creating Compelling Messages Here is what you can expect in our newest course offering.
In this class we are going
to be exploring unexpected ways of thinking and creating
visual messages.
Visual Communication: Introduction to Graphic
Design Our current course offering introduces the principles and practice
of graphic design. With a focus on a holistic approach to the design process,
projects and exercises fuse foundational design techniques with critical thinking,
typography fundamentals and an introduction to concept development and
sustainability practices.
PNCA CE Catalog
April 19, 2008
The latest Pacific Northwest College of Art catalog has a feature about Jennifer and Shawn of Study Partner, who also
teach design in the PNCA CE department.
Indesign Expert
March 4, 2008
Jennifer Thomas and I recently co-taught an expert level Adobe Indesign course at PNCA with a focus on publication design.
Our course description:
This course covers layout and project optimization in InDesign, with focus on publication design and multi-page documents.
The course fuses design techniques with professional practice and technical skills. Students will critique the design of
existing publications and develop their own page layouts. We will cover image formats, two and four-color printing,
typographic refinement, use of stylesheets, kerning and tracking. InDesign's text, image and layout management tools
will be covered in depth. All projects will be produced in InDesign.
Checkout my partnership with
Jennifer Thomas:
study partner.





































