Shelby Putnam Tupper

Shelby Putnam Tupper is founder and creative director of Shelby Designs Inc., a small-but-mighty, full-service, customer-obsessed design consultancy. She graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut with a BS in biology and a minor in French. She did post-graduate work at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, where she received honors in the field of Medical & Scientific Illustration. She grew her entrepreneurial and design legs during her tenure at Harrison Design Group in San Francisco.

Since its founding, Shelby Designs has received more than 100 local, national and international awards, has had their work published in books and top trade journals and exhibited in shows at The Palace of Fine Arts, The Masonic Auditorium and The SF Center for the Book. Outside the office, Shelby is a faceted artisan intoxicated by pre-1900s scientific illustration, engraving and typography. She also enjoys fiddling with her golden mean calipers and the number 1.618, and tinkers with computational graphics and Voronoi diagrams. She makes dimensional art from the pressroom’s recycled trimmings and fires up her torches to create jewelry from glass and steel. Shelby was born and raised in Oakland, where she lives with her husband, son and daughter, four cats, a gecko—and a tortoise named Darwin.