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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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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Waitui Single Malt Manuka Honey Golden Bay Whiskey full packaging label system, front, back and top. Waitui is a small batch Whiskey, barrel aged 4 years. Hand crafted in Takaka, New Zealand.

Waitui single malt: name, logo & packaging

July 8, 2018 / / No Comments

Waitui logoWaitui, a Small Batch, Single Malt, Manuka Honey, Golden Bay Whiskey, a unique New Zealand made prestige product, one of the few true ‘Honey whiskies’ made in the world today—in Takaka, Golden Bay.

Waitui, previously named ‘Bush Whiskey’ required renaming, rebranding and packaging to a standard that properly reflects the product. The result of the rebrand and repackaging has been outstanding at achieving the client’s goals; greatly increasing sales volume, profitability, and enabling the product to be distributed to prestige Whisky specialist retailers such as Whiskey Galore in Christchurch.
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Silver Cloud, 100% Blue Agave Spirit, Terry Knight

Silver Cloud 100% agave spirit launch event

July 7, 2018 / / No Comments
Silver Cloud product launch even invitation.

Silver Cloud product launch even invitation.

A documentary photo essay that I shot of the fabulous Silver Cloud 100% Pure Agave liquor launch event at Nicola’s Cantina in Nelson New Zealand.

The feature of the launch event was the auction by Terry Knight of only the first two of the thirty bottle limited release, bottles number 30 and 29, which sold on the night for a tidy NZD$400 and $450 respectively, a fitting testament to the quality of the pure agave liquor, the packaging, the branding and the success of the well promoted and event managed launch of event.
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A logo for a website mapping all of Christchurch’s post earthquake recovery street art

Top Marks: top 40 logos

July 7, 2018 / / No Comments

Waitui Single Malt Manuka Honey Golden Bay Whiskey packaging label
The power of visual communication is the ability to…

Talk less.

Although I’ve worked on many high-profile projects, I strive to give equal attention to the more commonplace assignments and small business clients. This is the small things that need to be precise—the directional signs, capabilities brochures, websites, product packaging, corporate collateral, After almost 40 years of practice, I am still excited by that challenge and the possibilities each new project presents.
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‘Jewel Gecko - New Zealand’ eight colour T-shirt print on dark green fabric.

Jewelled Gecko: lifelike graphics make a vivid impression

July 6, 2018 / / No Comments

Surface Active | Making waves in a sea of sameness.

Hyper-real graphics like the Jewel Gecko make a vivid impression. Why? Because people relate to them! Dramatic lifelike renderings of wildlife produce a prompt and typically positive response in a person’s mind. People relate to real things and enjoy them most. It is the route to why people relate to many of our eye-catching and impactful “SurfaceActive” wildlife-art-to-wear designs.

How did we do it? 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.

It helps that beauty is permanent

Fashions come and go, then come around again, but the fundamentals stay. The inspiration for the designs came from getting to know superlative alpine/wildlife photographer Colin Monteith, and renowned wildlife photographer Rod Morris. We visited their image libraries to cherrypick the most beautiful jewels in their amazing archives that we could see had the potential to be developed into hand-separated wildlife art screen gems.
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Portrait of TeKiwi Silver Cloud with shot glasses lined up outside Nicola's Cantina.

Launching Silver Cloud 100% agave spirit

December 10, 2014 / / No Comments

“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.
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