Art Direction
Design
Photography
Branding and Packing for Zeelandt Brewery
AGENCY: Beatnik
CLIENT: Zeelandt
YEAR: 2010 –
Bronze Pin – Designers Institute of NZ Best Awards 2017
Project Management
Art Direction & Cover Design
Tail of the Taniwha, a short story collection by Courtney Sina Meredith, is the unique result of an iterative writing/design strategy involving close collaboration between author and designer. The design is entwined with the text to an extraordinary extent, in order to convey meaning and affect, while also offering a highly attractive aesthetic that provides style continuity with Meredith’s earlier book.
Tail of the Taniwha successfully challenges the restrictive assumption that layout cannot be integral to non-illustrative fiction. Indeed, some stories require page turning, to emphasise their repetition, patterns and revelations. For ToT, in the beginning was not the Word but the physical Book; this inspired exciting and intellectually stimulating design innovations.
Thinking
Tail of the Taniwha contains “ergodic literature”, requiring more reader involvement than merely following lines of text and turning pages. The challenge: interpret the stories with design that guides the reader towards playful engagement.
For example, “Taniwha House” contains several simultaneous conversations/internal dialogues in different rooms of a home. So the layout of each double-page spread evokes a house cross-section: the lower left page presents the kitchen, the upper right page presents an upstairs bedroom, and so on. The geographical layout invites the reader to “read” the design not just the words.
In another example, “X” offers the occasional correspondence of two ex-lovers. The white space between conversations indicates how much time has passed: the bigger the space, the longer the silence.
In other stories, the last sentence is placed on its own in the middle of a blank page, emphasising its significance.
Concept
The design was required to attract a highly literate audience, and emphasise Tail of the Taniwha’s contrasting of contemporary situations with life’s mysteries.
To highlight the collection’s mystery and richness, the taniwha and the night sky became design touchstones. The roughly-textured gold cover evokes taniwha skin and entices with its tasteful sheen; a striking contrast to unexpectedly dark-blue pages within. To help guide readers, the thin line of the taniwha’s tail along the bottom of the pages shows stories’ beginnings and endings; it’s mythology evoked with elegant minimalism, for a practical purpose.
The entire book was printed with a single night-sky colour (Pantone 2767). The Māori astrology in “Aotahi” influenced this choice. “Aotahi”’s type emerges gradually over several pages before it becomes completely legible, just as stars slowly become visible in the night sky – an impression reinforced by reversing the printing colours, so light type shows on a night background.
Tail of the Taniwha’s innovative design is still aligned with Meredith’s poetry collection Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick: both books feature a monochromatic cover with an epigrammatic line motif that continues inside; contrasting figurative end paper images (of Meredith); and the same font.
Art Direction
Design
Photography
Golden Month by Jenny Allison
PANZ Book Design Award 2017
Cover design
Illustration
Photography
Design
Illustration
PANZ Book Design Award 2016
Project Management
Art Direction
Design
AWARDS:
Designers Institute of NZ Best Awards – Bronze – 2011
Storylines - Finalist, Notable Non-Fiction Book
Who You Are Is What You Do – Making Choices About Life After School grew from author Heather McAllister’s academic research into authenticity, and her experience counselling and advising students regarding the transition from secondary to tertiary education. McAllister had the content for an informative workbook, designed to help teenagers make good decisions about education and jobs after high school. There are many career guides and prospectuses available yet the publisher saw McAllister’s idea as the unique opportunity to fill a gap left by these existing publications by incorporating her background in philosophy.
Who You Are Is What You Do is unique in the ways it presents ideas designed to help school leavers decide which of their myriad options they want to pursue. This is achieved through case studies, real life examples, and an overview of what the word ‘career’ means in the 2010s. Perhaps the most notable feature of the book is the presentation of different philosophers’ approaches to the question “Who am I?” and how the sense of self can help guide an individual on a career path.
The design challenge was how to showcase this difference while presenting a complex subject to an already overwhelmed audience and making the book accessible and fun to use.
This was accomplished in format by providing space for readers to scribble their own thoughts and answers to the questions posed in Who You Are Is What You Do. The design makes the variation and amount of information accessible with a focus on typography choices and hierarchy.
Imagery and textures taken from school stationary, 1960s schoolbooks, and popular culture are intertwined with a striking and playful use of typography and colour. This creates a design that is humorous and appealing to its target audience, while still appropriate for its content.
Who You Are Is What You Do was printed using only three spot colours. The use of spot inks results in vivid and consistent colour and reinforces the retro look of the book. In addition, it allows the colours to be used for small typography, adding an additional level of hierarchy and texture to the design. A limited colour palette proved to be a fun challenge for the design team and prompted plenty of experimentation with overlays of colour in both the imagery and typography.
Together, the content and design encourage self-discovery in a quirky and entertaining format, and as a result the reader is left with a sense of enthusiasm and direction.
Art Direction
Design
AUT graduation project turned into a business in London. 2000 - 2002
Fashion design
Product Design
Photography
Brand Identity
Pattern Design
Screen Printing
Photography shot using a large format film camera.
Concept, creative and photography for Johnny Arrow Dry Cider advertising campaign.
AGENCY: Running with Scissors
CLIENT: DB Breweries
YEAR: 2011
