Wildlife Photo portrait of a Cheetah at Orana Wildlife Park

Where the wild things are

December 14, 2018 / / No Comments

Orana Wildlife Park is a great place for wildlife photography

ORANA WILDLIFE PARK, MCLEANS ISLAND, CHRISTCHURCH

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE GENRE of photography concerned with the documenting of wildlife in their natural habitat, Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch, is New Zealand’s only open range zoo. Visiting Orana Park therefore offers a unique opportunity for the self-assignment of exercising your photography skills because in the wild animals are difficult to approach, predicting their actions is hit and miss, whereas the animals at Orana Park are not perturbed when viewed from quite close up and because there are mostly no bars or cages capturing great images of them in interesting situations just takes a little patience to be in the right place at the right time.
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Antarctic Centre Adelies on ice Antarctica design on a white and a dark blue T-shirt

Cool T-shirts for Antarctica

September 28, 2018 / / No Comments

WILDLIFE ART FOR THE ANTARCTIC CENTRE – Surface Active design pARTners’ good art achieves standout 1991 competition win

Christchurch is the gateway to Antarctica, has been for well over a century. The International Antarctic Centre was established in 1990, the visitor ‘Antarctic Attraction’ was opened to the public two years later.

Getting Antarctic people to vote on the Antarctic T-shirt designs

In 1991 the Attraction’s “Antarctic shop” merchandising and trading manager invited New Zealand’s leading souvenir T-shirt screen printers to each enter a set of Antarctica T-shirt designs into a competition, speculatively, to be judged and voted on by staff members of the various national Antarctic programmes based in Christchurch—hundreds of world-class scientists, explorers, transport support staff and the likes involved in preparing for their work in Antarctica. The brief was wide open, wildlife art designs, historical designs pertaining to Christchurch’s involvement with the 1912 epic of Captain Scott’s race to the Pole.
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Orana Park Chapman’s Zebra screen prints on front and back of a navy T-shirt

Wildlife Park T-shirts for Africa

September 28, 2018 / / No Comments

Our 1992 competition winners, a range of wildlife art t-shirts that celebrate an international wildlife conservation success story: Orana’s African savannah top five

ORANA WILDLIFE PARK, MCLEANS ISLAND, CHRISTCHURCH

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 for this custom T-shirt design and print project.
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Poster Mr Fungus International Comic Mime

Fungustic slaprobatics: a poster for Mr Fungus

July 26, 2018 / / No Comments

A poster for New Zealand‘s loudest mime

After training in London at the Desmond Jones School of Mime and earning a living on the competitive streets of Covent Garden and at various international busking festivals, at age 25 Fergus returned to New Zealand to work full time as an entertainer. He needed a logo and self-promotional publicity kit to enable him to market himself and provide to talent agencies. This poster is a photo montage produced using old school paste up and photolitho methods. Inverting the chair handstand ‘fungustic slaprobatic’ trick into a free-falling Mr Fungus was to play with the audience with a sort of Irish parachute sight gag, and making a poster that could be hung “correctly” upside down and still not make sense.
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Vinevax PWD brochure redesign cover

Trichoseal-spray: pruning wound dressing makeover

July 17, 2018 / / No Comments

Vinevax_logo_radiused_256pxMore 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.

It’s exciting.
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Verso of Mr Fungus business card

Mr. Fungus logo & card: make a big impression at close range

July 17, 2018 / / No Comments

Graphics must be purposeful

Recently returned to settle back in Wellington from the U.K. in 1991, having done his time entertaining Covent Garden and international festival audiences, Fergus Aitken was a busker, a young exponent of clowning, juggling, mime and the bizarre who needed a logo and a business stationery promotional kit to advertise and promote his comic mime character Mr Fungus. More broadly he needed to promote his availability for various performing arts roles and as a mime workshop teacher in community, school and tertiary education settings. The first project, a card, would be handed over personally or included in direct mail campaigns to various audiences, where it would be viewed mainly at very close range.
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MTC 2015 launch catalogue

July 16, 2018 / / No Comments

MTC_logo_greys_256Once a mainstay of the graphic design business, nowadays print brochures are more the rarity but my fascination with ink on paper is perennial. I was inspired by the opportunity to create a small company launch and product catalogue brochure for MTC Equipment, that is short and to the point.
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Showcase of MTC Equipment online catalogue website. The three pages portrayed are the homepage, a catalogue overview page and the Ejector Trailer catalogue item page. The three key elements to the responsive online catalogue’s ease of use.

MTC Equipment website

July 16, 2018 / / No Comments

The MTC Equipment’s rename and rebrand project included designing their new logo and identity system, the design and populating of their catalogue website , and creating a direct mail brand launch and product catalogue.

It was a great opportunity to work with an established family company, formerly Murray Tractor Company, to implement a rename, rebrand, and repositioning their new business as import agents of Chieftain Trailers of Ireland in the New Zealand, and Australasian regional  markets.
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