The New Zealand wildlife art prints of Surface Active
A gallery of The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company wildlife art prints of Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh.
Since Chrissie and I were a kids we have been enthusiasts of the natural world and as design pARTners since 1985 our New Zealand nature wildlife art designs are an expression of this.
I finished four years of study in Graphic Design at Auckland Technical Institute in 1983. After a five year career as an advertising art director in Auckland, Christchurch, Hong Kong and Reykjavik I was equipped through illustration, graphic design, drawing and painting to achieve our aim of creating a variety of stimulating visual images that originate from the experiences and knowledge of the natural world that Chrissie and I bring to our collaborations. We create wildlife art of native birds, reptiles, mammals, insects, trees, plants and landscapes at locations all over New Zealand that I photograph, and we research the image libraries of renowned New Zealand wildlife photographers in search of reference for iconic imagery.
The Surface Active New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company range of t-shirt designs has been developed since the year 1986 when we first started screenprinting on the kitchen table in our flat, with frequent updates of new designs between 1988 to the present. We display our latest limited edition wildlife art prints using specialist room mock-up software. Please revisit every few weeks, I’m sure there will be some fresh images for you to look at. As full-time professionals 1988–2003 Chrissie and I designed over 100 original wildlife art designs with New Zealand, Antarctica and African “big five” megafauna themes. Since 2003 we have continued creating new designs and during lockdown 2020 and 2021 we created a new design every few weeks.
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.
Once 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.
Desktop publishing as in-house designer for Pionair was a path of discovery. Why is striving to make something look better worthy toil? There are benefits to clarity, ease of understanding for busy people justifies hours in production.
Pionair in both New Zealand and Australia was simultaneously an airline that specialised in private air charter and air cargo and a ‘best in class’ tour operator. At the start of 2007 Pionair owned 4 passenger Convair CV580 aircraft and two dedicated air cargo Convair. One passenger Convair operated in New Zealand out of Christchurch Harewood (operations having moved from Wigram in 2006) the other three, and the freighters operated in Australia from Sydney Bankstown airport and several others along the eastern seaboard, from Tasmania to Queensland.
“Welcome aboard”—the accordion six page folder format makes for an interactive and entertaining super-stretch sales brochure that contributed to the launch of a new Christchurch brand entering an already well served Canterbury regional market. Scale and weight are used to their fullest advantage in this lively, inviting flier.
MagentaDot Brands 