Three friends in Surface Active t-shirts with designs of Adelie penguins, Paua shell, and a red-billed gull at dawn, posing for a selfie at New Brighton Pier.

Surface Active—New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company stores

November 16, 2021 / / 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.

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)

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Birds-eye view portrait of Surface Active t-shirt’s design pARTners, Chrissie Terpstra and Shaun Waugh, wearing Harlequin and Jewelled Gecko tees, against a white background, shot in a studio in 1996.

Surface Active: The New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company

September 28, 2021 / / 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

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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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Absolute-Proof website 1998 launch design

Absolute-Proof digital proofing launch website 1998

July 7, 2018 / / No Comments

Absolute-Proof | Digital Proofing Resolved | The 1998 product, website and brand launch

AbsoluteProof_logo_radiused_256px

Best-in-class colour-managed workflow hub / digital proofing software solution, brainchild of brilliant friend pre-press professional Hjórtur Kristínsson, named by me ‘Absolute-Proof ’, launched in 1998, this was the first iteration of the web design I designed for the product launch. The launch was aligned with Hugo showing at the Drupa print fair in Dusseldorf that year. The AbsoluteProof website was developed in collaboration with a web design firm in Reykjavik, Iceland.
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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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Windsor Urban brand use document cover

Brand use guide: WindsorUrban

June 20, 2017 / / No Comments

Setting brand standards that people will follow

WindsorUrban symbol and type logo greyscale iconThe brand use manual or corporate identity guide ensures the new WindsorUrban logo is applied correctly in every application where WindsorUrban is identified. The purpose of the brand manual is to enable and regulate a uniformity in the firm’s visual image. WindsorUrban aims to design and manufacture the “go to” product and service offering within their market niche, the brand that their customers think of first when they want urban furniture and street lighting. The guide’s basic job is to teach everyone who uses it, what the brand is and how to effectively implement it.
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WindsorUrban custom Microsoft Word quote template document.

Word template for WindsorUrban

May 18, 2017 / / No Comments

A user-friendly and attractive quotation template

Windsor UrbanThe chief benefit of the WindsorUrban rebrand is that the company’s vision and personality across traditional and interactive media now has the same voice. The new brand accurately reflects the company’s personality and supports the sales and marketing team. A well-written and perfectly formatted Microsoft Word quote document that’s high on readability and clearly laid out information makes the job of responding quickly to client requests, and of presenting a professional image, a lot easier for the sales staff.
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Pionair Unparalleled Journey’s “Affluent Travel” Agency toolkit. Ringbinder of agent information.

Pionair: Oceania “Affluent Travel” kit

May 17, 2017 / / No Comments

Unparalleled Journey’s “Affluent Travel” toolkit… the essentials.

Pionair logo, rebrandAside from being a private air charter firm, owning aircraft and having air crew and air operations personnel on staff, Pionair was also a “best-in-class” inbound wholesale travel operator to the world’s finest destinations in the Oceania region.

The Pionair travel department had a group focussed on designing, marketing and operating escorted group air tours and a Free Inboard Travel, Unparalleled Journeys (UPJ) “affluent travel” group whose clientele was high-end travel agents in the U.S. and internationally.
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Waitui bottle labelling and gift packaging

Waitui product launch proposal

December 7, 2014 / / No Comments

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!