That flash of electric blue lifting off an old wooden post is always inspiring down on the South Brighton estuary walk. I love how the digital watercolour painting wraps around the side so half of the post continues onto the back.
Available now on pure cotton tees in four coastal colours tuned to show off the kingfisher’s plumage!
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Living in a small New Zealand country town, my friend and client, a Freezing Worker with a passion for restoring classic American muscle cars, especially those from American Motors, approached me with a unique commission. His project was to immortalise his cherished 1970 Rambler Rebel SST on apparel, inspired by an advertisement from the April 1970 issue of New Zealand’s Reader’s Digest.
The brief was clear—to recreate the black and white ad of the Rambler Rebel SST in colour, but with a modern twist suitable for today’s fashion. The first step was understanding the nostalgia and the essence of the car’s era. The brief to maintain the advertisement’s simplicity yet enhance it with a contemporary touch to resonate with both car enthusiasts and fashion aficionados.
The inspiration for the design came from superlative wildlife photographer Rod Morris. Chrissie and I visited Rod’s image library in Dunedin back in the 90s when we were there exhibiting with The Great New Zealand Craft Shows. We were looking for slides that he had cherry-picked. These slides had the potential to be developed into hand-separated wildlife art for screen printing.
For the Kiwi who dares to dream big, this Kiwi Space Shuttle tee is a must-have. This black Surface Active tee showcases the beloved Kiwi icon of a classic MkII Zephyr transformed into a NASA spaceship, manned by three Kiwis soaring through space, bound for a drive on the moon.
The clever design incorporates the rocket science of the black fabric of the shirt as deep space for a comfortable fit. The design is also available on garments for women and kids.
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Chrissie and I are happy to announce the launch of our Surface Active New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company store. You can shop here to get your Surface Active teeshirts.
Chrissie and I created our New Zealand nature t-shirt company and clothing brand, Surface Active, in 1985. As design pARTners we create wildlife T-shirts in the spirit of fun. Our subject matter is native flora & fauna, landscapes and Kiwiana—designs that celebrate some of the unique and beautiful assets of our country that we love.
We have had many requests to make our most popular T-shirt designs available again. So I made it my lockdown 2020 project to complete the job of launching our brand new Surface Active Teespring store.
From whales to wetas, paua to penguins—please browse through our store to see if there’s something for you.
All the best,
Surface Active design pARTners: Shaun Waugh (boss), Chrissie Terpstra (bossier)
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EMG Events Management Group was a Christchurch firm established to support the performing arts and project manage the creation and development of large and small scale events such as outdoor theatre for the city council’s parks & recreation department, conferences, conventions and bespoke corporate events such as product launches and fundraisers.
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The set of brand new Craig Fletcher Art fully sculpturally embossed and match printed greeting cards were awarded the best of the best print special processes and embellishments in the 1995 New Zealand Pride In Print Awards.
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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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There’s a lot riding on the Mr Fungus (alias Fergus Aitken) business stationery system. It carries important information that must be clearly visible while overall making a good strong visual impression and being memorable (on a Scotsman’s budget).
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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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The A5 bifold brochures and Escape from the Straitjacket of the Mind promotional poster were produced to launch John Davey’s refreshing & inspirational new approach to delivering a corporate message at conferences or training seminars—“Lip Service”.
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When it comes to promoting entertainers, creating distinction is key.
Because of the tremendous competition in the market, promotions for Circus-Arts performers, children’s entertainers, need to be well thought out, be comprehensive and also entertain the reader in the same manner as performers do in order to capture the attention of any audience world wide.
Sillicon Planet’s New Zealand audience is a mash-up of schools, festival and event organisers, corporate clientele and talent agencies.
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