About

The first day of teaching any new students, I tell them to call me Michael, not Professor Shumate or Mr. Shumate. Then I tell them if they forget my name, they can always call me the Grand Poobah. That always gets a laugh from them and it establishes a rapport with my students. They know that even though I have much to teach them, I don’t take myself too seriously. Their respect for me will be earned and ego games are not something we’ll be playing.

For the last 19 years I’ve bee teaching Graphic Design at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario. My first 4 years I was a Teaching Master, for the last 15 years I’ve been a Professor. During that span of years I have taught Color Theory, Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Illustration including Computer Illustration, Branding Design, Art History and most recently Web Applications.

In addition to teaching, for more than 35 years I’ve been a graphic designer and commercial illustrator, a conceptualizer and writer, an organizer and motivator. For the seven years before becoming a teacher, I was Senior Designer/Illustrator for a mid-sized design studio / advertising agency.

My design experience extends to all areas including advertising, corporate identity, institutional design, annual reports, display and interpretive center design as well as print and web design. As a stock illustrator with The Image Bank.com, GettyOne.com and Theispot.com my illustration work has been used all over the work for such clients as British Airways Magazine, Kelley Services and Macmillan McGraw-Hill publishers. I am fluent in many illustration styles and in virtually every medium: oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolor as well as digital media of Illustrator and Photoshop. For a wide sampling of my design and illustration work, see the stock illustration sites mentioned above or at www.VisualEntity.com.