Eurowood website showcase mockup displaying 3 different site page templates, the homepage, a product catalogue item page and the current projects news / blog page.

EuroWood web design & brand launch

Eurowood different engineered timber log profiles, different laminated timbers.

Eurowood different engineered timber log profiles, different laminated timbers.

The launch of New Zealand’s new solid wood, interlocking timber building construction firm EuroWood Construction’s information and promotional website and news blog in December 2014 was a combined brand launch and website design project. It has been well received by the client and their market. The project was a collaboration between MagentaDot Brands, Identity Signs, and the client who content managed/populated the site.
Keep on reading!

Portrait of TeKiwi Silver Cloud with shot glasses lined up outside Nicola's Cantina.

Launching Silver Cloud 100% agave spirit

“Silver Cloud” 100% Blue Agave Spirit is the product name originated by MagentaDot Brands for the first release of 30 bottles of New Zealand’s first Pure Agave Tequilana Spirit. Silver Cloud is the brainchild of Master Distiller Terry Knight of Kiwi Spirit Distillery whose idea it was to make a premium small batch 100% Agave Spirit from agave grown in Golden Bay and distilled by him. The name, “Silver Cloud”, the logo and packaging combined to position New Zealand’s first premium 100% Blue Agave Spirit at the premium price point of NZD $1,000 per bottle. This is a branding and packaging project at the high end of the international liquor market for which I was commissioned to create something handmade and special. My branding saw the first release of 30 bottles achieve selling to both a national and global market at the desired $1,000 per bottle price.
Keep on reading!

Waitui bottle labelling and gift packaging

Waitui product launch proposal

Introduction

Waitui logoThe product launch of the MagentaDot Brands renamed, rebranded and repackaged “Waitui Single Malt 6 year aged” is a critical time in the early stage of introducing this New Zealand Manuka Honey Small Batch Whiskey to the domestic and international liquor markets. Kiwi Spirit distillery is a small company so to create a big launch takes careful planning and sufficient lead time to organize all the contributing components. This is a company with small budgets and limited resources so there is a need to get as much value out of the budget and resources as possible.
Keep on reading!

Novel pop-up Hapuku Cafe and Lodge logo business card, a business card and a calling card rolled into one. Digital illustration, logo design and graphic design, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Print is going strong

Back in the 90s, when desktop computers, interactive media, the web and email first came into people’s homes, businesses and into daily use, the surge in popularity and the accessibility of the information superhighway lead some to predict the end of print communication. Brochures, books and magazines would be superseded because all the content that people wanted or needed was just a point-and-click away. However if you have a look around today predictions of the demise of print were hasty and premature. It has panned-out to be a similar situation to the predictions of the end of cinema when home video first entered the market in the late 70s.
Keep on reading!

Windsor-Urban web design showcase, three pages from the site displayed in an overlapping composition.

WindsorUrban website makeover

Windsor Urban symbol and type logo and trademark, two colours bright orange and dark grey on white. The symbol is a stylized pool of light drawn in coarse halftone dots that form a radial glow from the centre out within an implied slanted oval shape. Windsor Urban name is set as a unit, in clean extended sans-serif Eurostile font, the words differentiated by a colour change from dark grey to orange. Company rename and rebrand. Brands for New Zealand companies, Christchurch New Zealand.

When commissioned to produce a business logo for the likes of Christchurch manufacturer of street lighting and urban furniture WindsorUrban I begin by questioning the the client, researching the market niche, drawing rough thumbnails in my sketchbook and playing with type on the computer. The purpose is to visually and strategically explore a diverse set of logo options. I understand that making a formally successful logo is good, but making a logo design that is formally successful and communicates as a base for all the client’s endeavours, marketing communication, intra-company culture, business-to-business is critical.
Keep on reading!

Jewelled Gecko Giclée on white background, A1 size. Illustration, New Zealand wildlife art.

Lifelike gecko wildlife art print

Jewelled Gecko limited edition large format art print

Surface Active garment label embroidered

Surface Active | Making waves in a sea of sameness

Surface Active is an auto-printmaking design pARTnership established in 1986 by Shaun Waugh (boss) Chrissie Terpstra (bossier). Between 1986–2002 we were committed to producing original & indigenous designs of the highest design and screenprinting standards.

The technique of colour separating this design by hand involved breaking it down into eight separate designs, from which the screens are made. The separations are printed over each other, in layers to create the original hand screenprinted design. This crafty route is the only way to achieve the unparalleled vivid impression of the design.
Keep on reading!

Arts Centre Market logo applied to large Kraft paper shopping bag

Illustration beats explanation

Illustration and graphic design, made well in Christchurch New Zealand, effectively connects our international clientele with global customer markets

The Arts Centre Market logo. Brands for New Zealand companies, Christchurch, New Zealand.

To illustrate the logo for weekend The Arts Centre Market, the local artisan craft market located in the “Market Square” of the Christchurch Arts Centre, I used a custom pencil to draw inside and outside of selections to create the hard-edged graduated tones of a Charcoal pencil illustration style.

Whether it is part of a graphic design project for a client in Christchurch New Zealand with a local market—or with customers in Australia, the USA, Europe and Asia. Good illustrative design and infographics will always communicate clearly across language and cultural barriers.

The purpose of illustration is to make clear or to decorate an advertisement, brochure, logo, website or other textual story. Illustration continues to very often be the best way of providing visual communication or representation of something concrete described in the text or an abstract idea, function or process. Furthermore illustration will always guarantee that the client’s visual communication—whether logo, brochure, teeshirt trademark or website—is a unique brand expression.
Keep on reading!

Title, Opto short film.

Video is kinetic graphics

Title, Opto short film.Tree of Life short film title frameVideo is kinetic graphic design, and the field of video production is a subset of the visual communication and graphic design services MagentaDot Brands offers.

Tree_of_Life_alive__Phil_Price_Kinetics-8072Both in its long history and in the explosion of visual communication in the modern era there is at times a blurred distinction/fuzzy boundary between, and overlapping of, advertising art, graphic design and fine art. This is exemplified by the “Superstars” of 60s Pop Art such as Warhol and Lichtenstein—who made stylistically refined “high-brow” fine art works derived from banal and ubiquitous consumer goods and the media/tabloid starmaker machinery of celebrity culture i.e; Campbell’s Soup, Marilyn Munroe and low-brow Comic Book Art.
Keep on reading!

Cashel Street, Pop-up Mall, night photography, post earthquake, illuminated at night by WindsorUrban luminaires and lighting poles. Photo shot for WindsorUrban website redesign and rebrand project.

Photography: Represent your brand with quality imagery

Craft means you care and you know about what you are doing

With any visual communications project first and foremost it is essential to represent your identity or brand with professional imagery. MagentaDot Brands makes every effort to work with our clients so that the standard of their imagery and visual art design is to a high-quality professional standard. In addition to the photography services below;
Keep on reading!

Pilot drillshot, the bit enters and passes through the 5m entry pit, Horizontal Directional Drilling, Tru-Line Civil, documentary photography, Parklands West, Christchurch, New Zealand, Gravity Wastewater Replacement, HDD

HDD case study shoot: Parklands

Continuing the ongoing project to photograph the client, TruLine Civil’s range of work methodologies and then follow through by writing them up as Case Studies on their website. I was contracted to document the span of a day on location in Akaroa. The brief is to record a fine-grained record of TLC’s capability in the relatively new Civil Engineering field of “Trenchless Technology”, in this case specifically Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD). This fast and highly accurate “Horizontal Infrastructure” laying technique is achieved by way of a synchronised deployment of highly skilled and experienced operators, high tech machinery and tight coordination between the project team members. From skilled labourers and drivers up the chain to the site engineer—close communication is maintained between the project team members via modern telecommunications.
Keep on reading!

Windsor-Urban web design showcase, three pages from the site displayed in an overlapping composition.

WindsorUrban web project portfolio

Windsor Urban symbol and type logo and trademarkI originated the new company name, designed the new logo and implemented a strong repositioning strategy centred on the distinguishing feature of being the longest standing New Zealand manufacturer of street lighting and urban furniture. Increased sales and growth resulted. The WindsorUrban rebrand and website redesign saw their website to from being buried 12 pages deep when searching via Google, to among the top five. I built the new brand around strong market positioning, to which the large scale e-commerce WindsorUrban catalogue website redesign was key.
Keep on reading!