About me....
Big human-centered energy and a deep passion for storytelling.
The Backstory ...
I’m Shannon "DOAH", a creative director, filmmaker, and producer based in the DMV. I earned my BA in Psychology with an emphasis in Media Communications at the University of New Hampshire, a pairing that taught me how people think and feel, and how stories and images reach them. Psychology gave me a way to understand people, and intuition is what I rely on most. Data can tell you what people did. I’m more interested in what they felt, and I build from there. Stats might tell you lighting matters in a booth, but choosing the right fixtures and placing them just so is what shapes how a space feels. You have to be in the room to know what works.
Where It Took Me
My career has taken me from leading design and multimedia campaigns for a national trade association to building a premium soap brand, from packaging made for high-end retail shelves to a website that carries the same momentum. I’ve produced a film for a symphony orchestra and taken on deep-dive design projects for universities, hospitals, and local broadcast networks. I move comfortably between scales, from a single product label to full trade show environments, and I lead the teams, schedules, and creative decisions that carry an idea from concept to completion.
My Design Side
Trade show design is where my work becomes a place. I design wayfinding that’s easy to engage whether you’re near or far, and booths people actually want to walk through, built for more than the eye. Scent, touch, and sound each have a role, so the environment feels like one cohesive experience. The industry I designed for, paint and coatings, is often seen through a scientific lens, so color carries a lot of the weight, speaking its language so a technical subject never feels boring.
The Film & Storytelling Side
What's next...
I love working with organizations, big and small, that need solutions and value the human experience, the ones who know soft skills and hard skills work best together. Explore the work, and let’s create something that resonates with the people it’s made for.
Film is where my storytelling goes deepest. I write, direct, and produce. My short film Beat the Machine won Best Film at the Alexandria Film Festival, I created the comedic web series Genereckless, and I’m currently developing live shows for The Rens sketch comedy troupe. As an associate producer on the upcoming documentary Reunion Choir, about Washington, D.C.’s legendary Eastern High School Choir and its beloved retired music teacher, Joyce Garrett, I dug through three quarters of a century of archival footage and documents to build the context for the film, and handled field production and rights clearance.
Excerpt from my first short film
"Liberty's Hollow"
May 2016