Comp winner: Orana Wildlife Park T-shirts
Celebrating a Christchurch wildlife conservation success story: Orana Park’s exotic species top five
The retail market of the garment trade is tough, for an open range zoo like Orana Park, with one foot in the quality recreational experience sector and the other in the tourism sector, trading is highly seasonal. The competition for the customer’s discretionary spending dollar and the fact the park is a charitable trust that generates 95% of its income from gate takings and their ‘Trading Post’, demanded that the very best way of developing the Park’s new T-shirt range be used be used for this custom T-shirt design and print project.
Inspiring and educational: Wildlife art-to-wear plays a constructive role in education and conservation advocacy
Christchurch has an international quality zoo that is testament to the amazing foresight of the founders. Over its four decades of operation since 1976 Orana Park has had notable success in the conservation of both native and exotic endangered species. The park participates in 23 zoo-based breeding programmes, over the years it is African megafauna; cheetah, scimitar-horned oryx, white rhinoceros, Chapman’s zebra and Rothschild’s giraffe that have been its headline exotic successes. The challenge had a kick-start as the client was familiar with our native New Zealand flora and fauna and International Antarctica Centre wildlife art T-shirt design successes. So design pARTner Chrissie Terpstra and I were able to go ahead with the confidence and clarity that our proven design research and development process could proceed to originate a set of highly finished visuals of seven designs for client presentation and approval.
The shirt front lets the picture tell the story as a wildlife artwork, uncluttered with type, while the complementary print on the back of the shirt showcases the new Orana Park branding and tells the conservation story. The presentation visuals of the T-shirt designs I rendered with magic markers. What can be visualised can be developed into hand-separated three or four colour finished artwork.
More compelling design doesn’t mean prettier, or more arty. By more compelling I mean richer, more complete, better because it is more efficient, better because it is attractive in useful ways. The design of Vinevax’s new brand collateral isn’t merely about their product looking better on the shelf, but actually functioning better as an advertisement for itself in a competitive retail environment. The design has to do with the work of increasing sales by making Vinevax’s packaging beautiful and clear.