Beyond Guitar Shapes: go "outside the Box".

"Shapes" or "Boxes" have been often used over the years to memorize and visualize scales on fretted instruments. Joe Pass is a famous example of "in-the-box-playing," while Mick Goodrick is quite the opposite (check his "unicord" concept!).
I am personally "against" shapes as they make you play "like a guitar player" while you should be representing yourself, no matter the fact you are using a guitar (or bass, or upright, or mandolin, etc.). To do so, we need to have a "love and hate" relationship with shapes: use them but not depend on them. One of my favorite ways of visualizing shapes is to play them in the form of licks, very easy 1/8 note licks, below a few examples.

Cmaj 7

G7

Fmaj