As you would expect Shaun was born in 1961 in Te Kinga, New Zealand. He was drawn to art, design, calligraphy, printmaking, music and sports as a kid. He began following the path of graphic designing, calligraphy and printmaking in his primary, intermediate and his secondary education in Titahi Bay, Porirua, and Otahuhu. A.F.S. (the American Field Service student exchange programme), the underlying principles of cultural exchange and study abroad seized him as a teenager while he was at Mana College. His family moved to South Auckland where he eventually became an A.F.S. scholar from Otahuhu College who graduated with honours after a year as a Senior student at J.J. Pearce high school in Dallas, Texas in 1978.
JL Völundur are the leading chain of hardware stores in Iceland.
After returning home he spent a couple of years working in Penrose as a skilled factory labourer and, with the goal of producing an entry portfolio that was up to scratch he attended Graphic Design night classes and ‘day release’ classes at A.T.I. for a year. Having secured entry to the course he went on to study Graphic Design at Auckland Technical Institute for 3 years full time.
After graduating Shaun pursued the advertising business in Auckland working as a junior Art Director there, then on to Christchurch, Hong Kong and Reykjavik as a senior art director, typographer and old school studio ‘paste-up’ finished artist.
He had a fantastic career grounding with people with brains enough to create great ads that sell, who don’t diminish them with poor layout, typography or pictures, professionals from whom he learned design can look great but still not sell anything. From his advertising experience he learned what you say is as important as how you say it, and that the message must sell or all creativity is wasted.
A point of view
Among the many passions in his professional life, the predominant one is telling stories. As a consequence, Shaun became an enthusiastic narrative designer. He finds stories everywhere waiting to be told, and, fortunately, he has been able to do that through design. What story means here is communicating a sense of the subject, albeit a client’s business and philosophy or an event, graphically through print, the web, environmental signage or Surface Active, the New Zealand nature t-shirt company.
From a hobby that he took up during his high school years Shaun saw that in screenprinting, the medium of the workingmans’ artist, was a platform from which a designer can become successful without the need for a big budget, a corporate job, or the backing of business clientele as a freelancer.
In 1986, with his wife, design pARTner Chrissie Terpstra, the pair set about screenprinting t-shirts on the kitchen table in their flat, then selling them direct from a stall on summer weekends at the Christchurch Arts Centre Market. Screenprinting had been a passion since he had taken it up as a hobby as a teen, and the response to Chrissie and Shaun’s co-created New Zealand nature designs printed on 100% locally made t-shirts at the Market affirmed that screenprinting is the people’s art, and they saw that in an era of globalisation, mass production and consumption, that what’s handmade and made locally are symbols of rebellion.
At the Christchurch Arts Centre Market in the summertime Surface Active retailed their screen printed T-shirts. Some were hand painted and stencilled to order.
Bright, lively designs for bright, lively kids. Bjorn and Rowan are wearing ‘Ocean – New Zealand’ one colour print on dark shirt fabric, ‘puff’ printed emboss effect ink.
Upon their returning to Christchurch after their O.E. in the autumn of ‘88 was when Shaun and Chrissie launched their graphic design, craft screenprinting firm and clothing label called Surface Active: The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company. Summer weekends were retailing at the Market and winters were for collaborating on new T-shirt designs and touring countrywide to sell their Christchurch made wares at The Great New Zealand Craft Shows.
Shaun enjoyed collaboration with design pARTner Chrissie, drawing and illustrating wildlife art in various natural media; charcoal pencil, pen and ink, cut and paste collage, woodcuts… progressively, beginning in 1990, he developed a bespoke workflow mixing drawing board manual separation illustrative methods with digital design techniques.
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