Mind-reading extraordinaire.

Half the job is people assuming I can read minds. I can't. I ask better questions than most, and they get us to what you need and what your audience actually wants before I ever pick up a pencil.

Chris Shaw: brand designer, illustrator, retired chicken tamer. I take brands off the screen and into the built world, and I make places feel real before they exist. Home office in Arvada, Colorado.

Look around Hire me
The Cunningham Falconer business card: a hand-drawn tattoo-flash design of a woman's face framed by flowers and banners reading Cunningham Falconer, Graphic Design, Illustration and Mind-Reading Extraordinaire.

Make it real.

A logo on a laptop is a guess. I carry it into the stuff you can touch: the monument at the entrance, the sign that gets you where you're going, the label on the shelf. And when the place is still a dirt lot, I make it feel like somewhere you already want to be.

Hire me

My Work

Branding

Identity carried into signage, wayfinding, monuments and packaging. Some of these places were a dirt lot when we started.

Prints and flash

The stuff I draw when nobody's paying.

Client work

Posters, merch and odds and ends for bands, venues and the people who run them.

Album art

Covers, singles and the packaging they ship in.

Whole festival systems. Posters, socials, banners and lineup formats that survive fifty band changes.

Labels and packaging for AmuseMints and Sopris.

Stickers and merch concepts.

A few things made with my hands instead of a stylus.

Who did these

I'm Chris Shaw. I named the studio after my grandfather, Cunningham Falconer Shaw, because it sounded better than Chris Shaw Illustration.

Designer for twenty-plus years. Grew up on a small ranch, drew my first logo at fifteen and never stopped. I led design for print shops, apparel brands and packaging, then for cities, developers and hospitality groups, and picked up creative direction and strategy along the way. Still a designer first.

Two things I do best. I take a brand off the screen and into the built world: signage, monuments, wayfinding, packaging and print. And I make a place feel real before it exists. The posters, records and flash keep my hand sharp.

  • Studio since2011
  • AlsoCreative direction and brand strategy

Hire me

Developers, cities, restaurants, breweries, bands, venues, people with an idea on a napkin. You get a real drawing and files your fabricator and printer won't call me about.

Brand identity and strategy, place branding for developments, signage, wayfinding and monuments, packaging and print, plus gig posters, album art and merch.