About me

Shaun van Oorde-Grainger

Growing up in a family of artists and living in a house owned by Peter Blake, you could say my design education began at a very young age. I have always been a keen drawer and began designing my own typefaces in primary school.

During my final year of high school I began working on a number of small freelance graphic design jobs and upon graduating began to focus my efforts on this fulltime. Over the next year I continued to expand my portfolio with a number of jobs for local businesses, council and community art projects. While I was able to generate a reasonable income through these projects, the nature of the work was becoming repetitive and in order for me to develop further I felt a need to formally study.

I decided to enrol in a one year Advanced Diploma of Design at the TAFE college of Art in Perth, a multi-disciplinary Design course that not only covered the fundamentals of Graphics but also Photography, Multimedia, Product and Fashion design. While I learn a huge amount from the course, it did more to enhance my foundations then actually advance my graphic design abilities and left me hungry for more.

The following summer I enrolled in the Bachelor of Design course at Curtin University of Technology, Perth. A three year degree the first year of which was again multidisciplinary- teaching Graphic, Multimedia, Photography and Product Design to all students. It was here that I got my first real taste of Product design and found that it married my creative and artistic talents with my other high-school love of Maths and Science, while allowing me to create objects and products that could benefit society by changing the way we interact with the world.

Never happy to settle for second best, I applied to the Product Design degree at the Royal Melbourne University of Technology, the oldest and most prestigious design course in the country. My application was successful and I moved to Melbourne for a gruelling first semester, playing catching up with the second year students. During my second semester I was fortunate enough to win a tender to design the behavioural enrichment equipment for the new Orang-utan enclosure that was being built at the Melbourne Zoo and was awarded a scholarship to study overseas.

After a seemingly endless search I secured an exchange at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, working in collaborating with Philips Design on a project for the 2006 Dutch Design Week. The University was referred to me by my head professor at RMIT, who felt it would be an ideal environment for me to utilise my strong graphic abilities. With close ties to Philips Design, TUE is renowned for its adoption of emerging technologies and pioneering work in interaction design- a relatively new field of Product design that incorporates both Graphic Design and Product Design to create the visual and physical interfaces used in the consumer electronics industry.

With this new experience I decided to try and make the most of the European design industry and found a paid internship at GE. A four month internship, working in the design and engineering department on a mixture of graphic and product design projects, creating design proposals and presentations for clients such as Nissan, DAF Trucks, Philishave, Sony, White Knight and more.

After a fantastic year of travelling I returned to Australia to begin work on my honours project, a self-directed project in which I setup a partnership with SPELD, the Australian Dyslexia Association. Working with two dyslexic children to develop a tangible interaction based learning aid. SPELD were huge fans of the project and I was awarded second place in the Victorian Student Design Awards for the work.

After graduating in December 2007 (BSc Industrial Design, 1st Class Honours) I relocated to London with the aim of familiarise myself with the city I grew up in, while gaining professional experience that couldn’t be acquired in Australia. I’ve spent the past year working as an in-house designer at the NCT, Britain’s largest charity for parents, where I was brought in to help with the rebrand and launch of the new website. Working closely with the Marketing and communications department I was responsible for the design and artwork of all the organisations printed and digital communications.

I am currently residing in London and available for fulltime or contract work. Whatever you’d like to discuss ie; future employment, freelance availability, project collaborations, please don’t hesitate to send me an email or call me. I would love to hear from you.