Apparel | MagentaDot Brands

Black and white image of a Surface Active tuatara portrait printed on a black t-shirt, the tuatara is a lizard native to New Zealand.

Tuatara Portrait T-shirt: A Living Fossil on Two Sides

May 3, 2024 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

This unique two-sided t-shirt design explores the fascinating world of the Tuatara. The front features Shaun Waugh’s original pen-and-ink portrait of an 80 year old Henry, the revered tuatara residing at Invercargill’s Southland museum who is now over 120-years-old. The intricate details capture the reptilian skin texture, while the Southern Cross constellation hints at Henry’s age and connection to the ancient Southern Hemisphere. In the background is a glimpse of Stephens Island, a sanctuary for these “living fossils” extinct on the mainland for over a century.

Optional Back Design: For a complete story, choose to include a complementary map on the back. This map pinpoints Stephens Island and showcases fossil ammonites from Farewell Spit, Tasman Bay, further emphasising the Tuatara’s being a “living fossil” link to New Zealand’s prehistoric past as part of the supercontinent Gondwana, along with Antarctica and Australia, 85 million years ago.

Celebrate New Zealand’s unique wildlife and geological heritage. Get your Tuatara t-shirt today!

Native Animal Lovers Rejoice!

December 6, 2022 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

You can order your very own New Zealand nature t-shirts from our brand new exhibition at Brighton Gallery, open until January 8th. All works, t-shirts & original prints, are designed & printed in New Brighton. To order contact: www.surfaceactive.digitees.co.nz/contact

Looking for the perfect way to show your love for your favourite native animal? Order your kiwi t-shirt today. T-shirts are available in a variety of colours and styles for adults and kids, making it easy to find the right one for you.

Surface Active—New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company stores

November 16, 2021 / magentadotbrands.com / 2 Comments

November 2021
Dear Surface Dweller,

We’re excited to announce our two online retail stores, the Surface Active global store and the brand new New Zealand-based store! To celebrate this significant stage in the development of our clothing brand we are rewarding our customers with a discount offer.

🛍 NZ-based store
🛍 Global store: Use code: “PERFEC” for 5% off your purchase, storewide.

Links to goods featured in the ad image

Global store links: Adelie penguins, Jewelled gecko, and Kiwi iconic, light colour variant and the Treefern t-shirt, all-over printed.
NZ-based store links: Adelie penguins, Jewelled gecko, and Dolphins leaping, Kaikoura.

Actively yours,

Shaun Waugh (boss),

Chrissie Terpstra (bossier)

Surface Active Retrospective exhibition poster. New Zealand Nature & Kiwiana t-shirts 1986—2021. A closeup portrait of Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh. Their heads are bursting through a big sheet of paper. To their right are four Surface Active t-shirt designs on ghosted short sleeve t-shirts.

Surface Active: A Retrospective of New Zealand Printmakers Chrissie Terpstra & Shaun Waugh (1986–2021)

November 16, 2021 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

This is the first retrospective dedicated to the works of the design pARTners behind Surface Active—The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company—who mined their love of nature and of home, wonderful beautiful New Zealand.

Now, post 2020 lockdown, you can shop our range wildlife art t-shirts and wall art at;

• our international online retail store, SurfaceActive.NZ,

• our New Zealand-based store on the Digitees platform based in Papamoa, or

• view the range at our New Brighton Store, where I do the printing of the shirts myself (the online store is under construction, please email enquiries to hello@surfaceactive.nz).

Over the summer months you can shop at our New Brighton Seaside Market stall every Saturday in New Brighton mall; 10 am–2 pm, or check out our exhibition of shirts and wall art at Brighton Gallery on the corner of Carnaby Lane, New Brighton Mall (next door to PaperPlus) open 7 days; 10 am–4 pm.

You can also view our original native animal wall art and clothing at our exhibition at The Creatives Edit—The New Brighton Art and Craft Collective, 105 New Brighton Mall (Monday–Saturday). Browse here to view our range of large and small format, signed, original prints.

Surface Active: The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company

September 28, 2021 / magentadotbrands.com / 9 Comments

Retrospective: The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company—Surface Active, 1986–2021

South Brighton, Christchurch, September 2021

Pleased to announce Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh, the design pARTners behind Surface Active—The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company—have opened their second, New Zealand based online store.

Global store: Use Code “PERFEC” for 5% off.
New Zealand store

Tree fern t-shirt

April 30, 2021 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

Feel like a walk in the forest downunder? It’s hard to avoid the familiar sight of tree ferns, or punga, no matter where you go in New Zealand. Cool and bushy, this attractively umbrellarific all-over printed t-shirt design is repeated on the shirt back. Available in adult sizes XS–3XL on forest green or black shirts.

Shop using this link to the treefern design in our global store to receive a 5% discount, use promo code: “PERFEC”.

A boy in a studio posing in a terracotta coloured weta New Zealand t-shirt.

Weta New Zealand. Insect dinosaur.

April 28, 2021 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

Celebrate your love for nature and wildlife with this art print featuring New Zealand’s largest native insect, the weta. Don’t say “oooh!”, say “aaah!” for this is one of the best-looking weta you’ll ever see. The recently rediscovered Bluff weta can be found in scree and on rocky bluffs at Mt Somers in North Canterbury, and all over this t-shirt.

Designed by Chrissie and I and printed in the USA and Europe. Available as an ‘all-over’ teeshirt design for adults, and a two-sided placement print design version for adults and kids.

All purchases storewide made using this link to the weta design will receive a 5% discount that is applied automatically at checkout. Promo code: “PERFEC”.

For our New Zealand customers we have established this Digitees Surface Active store so your weta t-shirts can be printed in New Zealand, with a fast turnaround, shipping in 3–5 days + courier. Sale price: The NZ-based store prices are 10% discounted storewide.

A woman wearing a dolphins leaping New Zealand t-shirt with her hair all over her face.

Dolphin watercolour print

February 8, 2021 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

Designed by Chrissie and I and printed in the USA and Europe. My new absolute fav dolphin watercolour ‘all-over’ teeshirt print. All purchases made using this link to the global store will receive a 5% discount, use promo code: “PERFEC”.

Or shop at our New Zealand-based store: Sale price, the price of all the goods in the NZ store are 10% discounted.

The colourful print of four common dolphins leaping is brought to life with a watercolour splash. Common dolphins (Delphinus delphus) are seen in Kaikoura mainly in the summer time. Kaikoura is one of the best places in New Zealand to view marine wildlife and rated as one of the best in the world to swim with dolphins.

Spotted shags are the best kind

December 1, 2020 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

Now designed & printed in New Brighton

This t-shirt wildlife art print features a trio of Banks Peninsula spotted shags during breeding season, when nature gets heavy-handed with blue-green makeup and punk hair-dos. It is a multimedia design featuring a woodcut portrait of the birds and an airbrushed sky.

With their distinctive spotted feathers, bright blue-green colouring and tufted crests, these spotted shags/parekareka are thinking of romance (and fish.) What else does a shag do in it’s pre-nuptial plumage?

You can choose between having the large art printed on the front or the back of the shirt. This design looks great on grey marle, royal blue and deep royal. Email Shaun at mailto:hello@surfaceactive.nz to order direct from the graphic artist.

Shop for the double-sided version at our international store here with the big print on the back, and the single-sided version here with the big print on the front. Or shop at our Tauranga New Zealand-based online store here.

Close up of a woman wearing a black Surface Active paua t-shirt under her denim jacket.

My kind of shellfish

November 30, 2020 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

Just for you a Paua Pacific t-shirt 10% off link is here, use promo code “ARTYKIWI.”

These black and navy tees with the double-sided Paua Pacific print are perfect for the summer. For a 10% discount use the promo code “ARTYKIWI” here:

Cool, clean Pacific waters produce the bright iridescent colours of the paua shell—a watery treasure of New Zealand to keep you cool.

This art print is a composite of a charcoal drawing and hand-separated paua shell pattern printed in 6 colours which gives the paua design a shimmering quality. Illustration based on a photo by Rod Morris.

A young couple wearing two different Surface Active New Zealand nature t-shirts leaning against their VW kombi campervan. He is wearing the jewelled gecko design on a black t-shirt, she is wearing a cardinal red iconic kiwi roundel t-shirt.

Awesome New Zealand nature inspired t-shirts

November 23, 2020 / magentadotbrands.com / No Comments

Surface Active storewide 10% off, storewide, here, use promo code “ARTYKIWI.”

What a way to spend lockdown! As Surface Active’s graphic designer I built this new collection of awesome New Zealand Nature Inspired T-shirts from a mix of our legacy drawings, photolitho artwork and some new hand-rendered digital illustrations.

To celebrate the launch of Chrissie and my new store we’d like to share a storewide 10% discount offer. You can shop here https://surface-active.myteespring.co/?pr=ARTYKIWI to get your Surface Active teeshirts, use promo code “ARTYKIWI.”

The jewelled gecko is available here, and the kiwi is available here.

Surface Active: making waves in a sea of sameness.

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 / magentadotbrands.com / 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.
Keep on reading!