Adrian Shaughnessy is a graphic designer and writer. He spent 15 years as creative director of Intro, the design studio he cofounded. He is cofounder and director of the publishing company Unit Editions. He has written and designed numerous books on design. His book How to Be a Graphic Designer, Without Losing Your Soul has sold over 80,000 copies. He writes regularly for Eye, Creative Review and for five years had a monthly column in Design Week. He is a contributing writer to Design Observer and hosts a series of weekly radio shows on Resonance FM called Graphic Design on the Radio. He is a member of AGI.
Adrian Shaughnessy is a graphic designer and design writer. He spent 15 years as creative director of Intro, the design studio he cofounded in 1989. During his time at Intro, the studio won numerous awards. It was an early adopter of digital technology and a pioneer of motion graphics within graphic design. At its height the company employed 40 people. A studio monograph titled Display Copy Only was published by Laurence King Publishing in 2001.
In 2004 Shaughnessy left to pursue an interest in writing and to work as an independent design consultant. Today he runs ShaughnessyWorks, a consultancy combining design and editorial direction. He is also a cofounder and director of the publishing company Unit Editions. The company publishes books on design and visual culture. It is actively engaged in forging new ways of publishing and distributing books in the digital era.
Shaughnessy has written, designed and art directed numerous books on design. His book How to Be a Graphic Designer, Without Losing Your Soul has sold over 80,000 copies and has been published in many foreign-language editions. His two most recent books are Graphic Design: A User’s Guide and Supergraphics: Transforming Space: Graphic Design for Walls, Buildings & Spaces. In 2012 he will publish a major book on the life and work of Herb Lubalin (Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer: 1918–81).
Shaughnessy is an external examiner at three UK universities (London College of Communication, Sheffield Hallam University and Liverpool John Moores University). Between 2006 and 2009 he was founding editor and creative director of Varoom: The Journal of Illustration and Made Images, a magazine dedicated to the analysis of contemporary image-making. He writes regularly for Eye and Creative Review, and for five years wrote a monthly column in Design Week. He is a contributor to the avant-garde music magazine The Wire and a contributing writer to Design Observer.
Shaughnessy lectures extensively around the world. In 2011 he was a keynote speaker at Design Yatra in Goa, India. He has lectured in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan. He hosts a regular series of one-hour weekly radio shows on Resonance FM called Graphic Design on the Radio.
Shaughnessy is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and was recently elected to AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale), an organisation that unites the world’s leading graphics designers and artists in a professional club of common interest and achievement.