The Art of the Print: Behind the Scenes with Tom Shaw
A Poster Artist Who Can't Draw?
Tom Shaw will be the first to tell you he can't draw to save his life. A poster artist who can't draw? We spent the entire morning in his studio finding out how that works, watching him build our Tiny House Concert Series poster from the ground up.
Documenting the Craft
As the morning unfolded, our team moved into position to document the craft in motion. Lainey locked down our sound and grip equipment. Meanwhile, I built out the A Cam, stayed close to Tony to assist, rigged a GoPro as our C Cam for tight close-ups of Tom's hands, and operated the B Cam to capture behind-the-scenes stills as the morning progressed.
From Collector to Creator
A Philadelphia-area native who landed in Wilmington, North Carolina, after studying Marketing at UNCW, his path began when he bought a cool poster for twenty dollars. That single purchase sparked a habit of buying, trading, and attending poster conventions until spending time on that side of the table pulled him toward creating his own work. He came up as a collector long before he became an artist, and that love shows in how deliberately he builds every layer of a print.
The Digital Heavy Lifting
Watching Tom work revealed just how much heavy lifting happens digitally before ink ever touches a physical screen. One of his favorite creative techniques is layering images over vintage maps, stacking visual art over geography until a poster carries a visceral sense of place. He frequently collaborates with other artists, merging contrasting styles into a unified print. For our Tiny House Concert Series, he was constructing a limited run design, with an exclusive smaller batch slated to become aluminum prints.
Hand-Pulled Quality
Since expanding into screen-printed concert posters and art prints in 2015, Tom has made a serious mark in the rock poster world, crafting artwork for artists like Billy Strings, Phish, and Widespread Panic. His reputation centers on hand-pulled quality and split fountain printing. This manual process shifts color gradients so that no two prints in a run ever come out identical.
On paper, Tom’s credentials speak volumes: he is a 1% for the Planet member with over $70,000 in charitable contributions, sits on the board of The Rock Poster Society, and has been featured by outlets like WECT and the Greater Wilmington Business Journal. But none of that hierarchy was in the room that morning. What we got was a welcoming host, endless great stories, and a poster taking shape in real time. It was handbuilt for a project of ours that mattered.
Check out Tom Shaw's work at tshawdesigns.com or on Instagram @tshaw_designs.
If your brand has a story worth telling, let's talk.
WRITTEN BY ANAGRACE MANSFIELD
