A dynamic capabilities brochure for a print and display services company. Sports photography given a bold digital treatment to dramatise the services offered – short-run printing, photoprinting, scanning, finishing, roll-up banners and exhibition displays. Strong, high-energy visual direction for what could have been a dull subject.

A witty client gift booklet in passport format, designed as a personalised send-off for a client heading to France on holiday. Sections on beer, wine and top-shelf spirits, with hand-drawn illustrations throughout. Copy and passport format from the client.

A pitch brochure presenting An Post’s full range of services through six visually distinct spreads. Each section has its own tone and treatment, from bold retro collage to dark minimal typography. A conceptually ambitious piece that treats postal services as anything but ordinary.

A richly illustrated children’s activity booklet built around the Chiquita banana brand and Miss Chiquita character. Includes original puzzles, a dot-to-dot, jungle facts, environmental messaging and a colouring page. A technically complex layout managing high-energy branded content across multiple formats – and a genuinely fun piece of work. Concepted with a copywriter, then I originated the games and puzzles, researched and wrote some of the content, commissioned and art directed the illustrations and colouring activity.

A celebration of Farmlands’ 50-year history presented as a hand-illustrated teatowel, mailed to customers in a tin. A genuinely memorable direct mail piece with strong standout as a lasting keepsake. I produced a detailed scamp for the teatowel and art directed the illustrator through to final artwork. I also produced the DM package with all its components.

A sophisticated seasonal fashion brochure structured as a love story. The creative challenge lay in adapting a high-end campaign for direct mail without losing its premium feel. One of several Ziera pieces produced across the DM programme. I curated/adapted a large supply of above-the-line assets for DM use, extended the concept across all touchpoints from envelopes to web, and executed all layouts through to finished art.

Beauty Club autumn brochure (‘Indulge Yourself’) and Beauty Week in-store leaflet. Imagery for brochure supplied by the ATL agency, and for Beauty Week leaflet I concepted the cover, commissioned & supervised photography, and brought all to final artwork.

• Grand Prix, RSVP Awards, 2005
• Gold, Best Loyalty/Relationship Programme, RSVP Awards, 2005
• Silver, Best Sales Generation, RSVP Awards, 2005
• Bronze, Best Mail, RSVP Awards, 2005

A subscription DM disguised as a beautiful restaurant degustation menu, personally addressed to the recipient as ‘Chef’. The outer carrier, menu card and reply form all sustain the restaurant conceit. I received copy written in a menu format, then originated the design, chose typography, did layout and finalised artwork.

• Gold, Publishing, DMA Echos, 2006
• Silver, Customer Retention, John Caples Awards, 2005
• Bronze, Best Flat Mail, DM Asia Awards, 2005
• Finalist, RSVP Awards, 2005
• Finalist, Axis Awards, 2005
• Finalist, Best Circulation Promotion of the Year, MPA Magazine of the Year, 2006

A die-cut invitation in dark grey board with a tall narrow format and die-cut windows revealing a yellow inner card telling the couple’s love story through witty, typographically-led copy. Multiple physical components including outer carrier, pull-out inner and response card. Concept was supplied by a copywriter friend and I ‘made it work’ – designed and illustrated the whole love story, then produced the final artwork, which had to be just right to show the content accurately.

A series of beermat designs entered into Heineken’s monthly design competition. Two category wins from the same series – ‘Music’ and ‘Film’. The ‘Film’ winner was a parody of a well-known late-90s slasher film.

• One of the Winners, ‘Music’ category, Heineken Beermat Competition, 2002
• One of the Winners, ‘Film’ category, Heineken Beermat Competition, 2002

Speculative logo concept for a pet shop. The negative space between M and W reveals a dog bone – a clever, memorable typographic detail. Clean, bold and instantly recognisable.

A comprehensive refresh of logo and comms style. Designed the new logo, selected and specified the typeface system for communications, art directed and commissioned custom illustrations, laid out the landing page, and built a DM template plus many DM pieces using it.

Logo, letterhead, business card and a static homepage mockup with a premium farm-to-table feel, for a North Island orchard business.

A bold wordmark pairing a geometric ‘J’ with an orange ‘1’ – the angled top stroke of the ‘1’ echoes the leading edge of a direct mail letter caught mid-fold at its first third, referencing the agency’s specialism in personal, one-to-one communication.

A confident, urban, 24/7 retail identity for Fix (formerly Star Mart). Bold lime green and orange wordmark with a star device as a nod to the Star Mart roots. The full launch suite included a trade brochure (‘The Fix Crew Member’s guide to the world of Fix’), window decals, signage and a range of POS templates from shelf-edge price tags to A0 promotional posters.

Logo and social media brand identity for a free community drop-in dance initiative, supported by local council funding. The hand-lettered script set inside a green heart is warm, inclusive and full of positive energy – just like the dance sessions I ran.

An IT company Maclean organised a B2B networking event, ‘Eden Park Session’, built around a rugby theme and served with breakfast. Designed the logo with a shield/crest device in navy and green with a laurel wreath, and created all the graphics for the event pack, including a printed drawstring bag and an invitation flyer.

Logo and full visual identity for the Irish Seafood Expo 2001 materials, staged at the Burlington Hotel, Dublin. The icon is a stylised fish and shellfish mark in blue, combining movement and form into a single memorable device.

The brief was to beef up the existing wordmark with ‘Be Bold’ messaging. I designed a lockup where three circular hand-drawn elements represent colourful bolts of cloth. Also introduced a more modern typeface and played its weights to add visual boldness to match the messaging. Work included a branded packaging sticker, a flyer with an airy image-led layout, an interior design services brochure, and the Bolt of Cloth Textile Design Award 2015 promotional poster.

A NZ-based importer of continental European food items. The wordmark incorporates a distinctive f/k ligature flowing through a blue heart – a subtle reference to the owner’s Finnish roots. A small heart device was also designed for selective use in airy corners of communication, such as business cards.

A bold typographic logo for an Auckland roofing company. The mark interlocks the letters of ‘Roof Roof’ into a hard-working wordmark that says more than just the company name.

A circular badge logo for a boutique party supplies business. Script lettering sits inside a fine-rule circle, presented in three powdery colourways – teal, pink and chocolate brown – giving the client flexible options across packaging and print.

A classic interlocked monogram for a Finnish badminton club I represented at one point in my life. The letters are woven together in a traditional crest style to form the silhouette of a shuttlecock – refined, timeless and well suited to club kit.

The PR team wanted to mark the 35-millionth tyre off the Bridgestone production line by sending a press release disguised as a tyre swing. Solution we came to together: rope neatly wrapped around the rim to form a handle, with a custom retro-feel tri-fold tag tied on. The press release was printed on the tag, with the last fold revealing a pocket containing a CD of all relevant digital media assets. A pseudo production-line number hand-written by me on each tyre completed the effect, making it a physical, tactile press gift that was impossible to ignore or throw away.

• Finalist, Craft, RSVP Awards 2006

An invite for a BeatsWork-style group drumming team-building event for the company. I illustrated the visuals to reflect the tribal nature of the event and sourced drumsticks from Nigeria to be sent as part of the pack, and it all worked out for the best. The physical packs were assembled and tied by hand in the office by a diligent team, me included!

Straight-talking acquisition DM for Woosh’s independent wireless network, built entirely around their anti-Telecom challenger positioning. No hedging, no corporate softening – just a direct, confident case for switching. Concepted with a copywriter.

• Bronze, Art of the Envelope Awards 2006
• Finalist, Craft, RSVP Awards 2006

The proposition – halving your phone bill – demonstrated in the most direct way imaginable: the DM itself arrived as two halves. One of several ideas explored in the usual creative team process; this was the one that made it through. Concepted with a copywriter.

A melting hot balance transfer DM with a tease-and-reveal mechanic at its heart. When opened, it revealed the benefit in the sweetest of ways. Concepted with a copywriter.

We received the theme and abundant campaign assets from the above-the-line agency. The DM and CRM components of this campaign were mine to originate – extending the look and feel consistently across all touchpoints from envelopes through to the brochure, and executing everything to finished art. The brochure for the same campaign appears separately under Design + Layout.

Instead of the usual agency Christmas bottle, the idea was to redirect that budget to fund clean water in a country that needed it – and make that the message. Developed with a copywriter and creative director pair; the concept evolved from a bottle of dirty water into something more refined: an empty wine bottle with a label that told the whole story.

I engineered an innovative self-mailer for a pack that had everything the customer needed to get started. The unfolding flaps revealed key information in digestible chunks – a considered alternative to a bulky welcome envelope.

A tease-and-reveal fold aimed at first-home buyers, highlighting one of the benefits of home ownership in a demographic-appropriate, identifiable way. I originated the concept, supervised the photoshoot, selected the final images from a wide range of options, and retouched them to work seamlessly across both tease and reveal states.

A self-initiated competition entry for a hypothetical fitness brand. The concept borrowed a deployable structure from drinks packaging: the mailer was folded flat to MaxPop size for efficient delivery, then expanded by the recipient to a 6-pack reveal – six individual pockets with aspirational gym imagery inside each. The reward mechanic completed the idea: bring your mailer into the gym on joining and get it filled with six energy drinks to take home.

• Category Winner, Art of the Envelope Awards

A self-initiated speculative competition entry. The envelope was the concept: ‘Feeling empty inside?’ printed on the outside, with a real depression helpline number. Nothing else needed. A simple, empathetic idea that used the medium as the message.

A self-initiated competition entry. The speculative DM would arrive in a transparent, futuristic tube – and challenge the recipient to fold the contents into a popcorn holder, which doubles as a redemption device for a free serving at the cinema.

An unaddressed letterbox piece promoting free Spotify Premium as a switching incentive. Presented as a VIP pass – lanyard pouch included – making the offer feel like access to something exclusive rather than a standard acquisition push. Concepted with a copywriter.

‘WinWin’.

WinWin is (or was) an elite retailer partnership programme designed to give Lotto NZ’s top 600 retailers the support they need to improve as a business. As part of the initial activities, I engineered this innovative multi-fold self-mailer from an SRA3 sheet and worked with a copywriter to tailor copy for each panel once the reveal order was clear. Designed using supplied brand assets, complemented with a custom 3D pyramid tier graph and other appropriate imagery. I also designed the WinWin guide with comprehensive tabbed sections containing everything about the programme itself.

As with most global mega brands, BMW had a TVC for a new car that needed test-driving. I came up with a quad cross-fold DM with a personalised mini letter that doubled as the address carrier through a window when nested inside. European imagery was supplied but reworked and art directed to feel relevant to the local market.

‘Oxfam Unwrapped’ is a project offering charity gift cards that do good. Each card represents a donation helping to transform the lives of people living in poverty. For example, a Chicken gift card helps families living in poverty to become chicken farmers.

Christmas was approaching fast and Oxfam wanted a campaign that would go viral and get people talking. Together with copywriter Michael Goldthorpe we came up with an idea of the giftable animals becoming the spokespersons for the campaign as stars in a fun music video, singing ‘Buy me!’

I drew the moodboard as a storyboard for the production company. Our above-the-line team, who happened to be semi-pro musicians, wrote and performed the original music, and a legendary VO artist was recruited for the video narrator role. Together with the production crew, Goldthorpe and I gave our voices to the animals. A true shoestring budget group effort.

During the first review, I suggested a content edit that became one of the many memorable moments in the spot: the donkey singing ‘Buy me’ so high it breaks the screen! Check it out here.

• Grand Prix, RSVP Awards 2007
• Gold, Sales Generation, RSVP Awards 2007
• Gold, Shoestring Budget, RSVP Awards 2007
• Silver, DMA Echos 2008
• Bronze, Charity/Not-For-Profit, EFFIE Awards 2008
• Winner, Not-For-Profit Marketing Award, TVNZ / NZ Marketing Magazine 2008
• Top 10 NZ campaigns across all media, The Big Won 2008

Front-end art direction and design for an eDM promotion. Received the concept and copy, produced mockup designs using stock shots, and selected a secondary font for campaign callouts. Handed over to a digital developer to build.

Front-end art direction and design across a range of digital communications: eDMs, landing pages, and a Personal Trainer app. For the eDMs and landing pages, copy was supplied and I art directed and produced mockup designs using stock shots. For the Personal Trainer app, I art directed and created all designs and icons from scratch. All pieces handed over to a digital developer to build.

The client had purchased a caravan to serve as a mobile breast health clinic. Working from supplied photos and technical drawings, I designed the full exterior wrap for all sides. Deliverables also included regional newspaper ads (one version per city/region), a poster template, and posters and flyers for inside the caravan.

A bus back oozing cheeky body-confidence for a light drink, vehicle wrap that turns heads for all the right reasons. Not confirmed whether this was ever presented to the client.

A blue-sky concept for an expo stand where visitors can take photographs in the perfect wedding dress with the perfect figure. A discreet pocket houses flyers promoting fitness classes – no staff required. Not confirmed whether this was ever presented to the client.

Stationary bikes placed in shopping centre environments, with membership discount rewards scaling to pedalling speed. The product becomes the activation. Not confirmed whether this was ever presented to the client.

A self-initiated speculative concept exploring branded luggage for Adidas, who was a client at the time. Not confirmed whether this was ever presented to the client.

Gift Frenzy was an online gifting platform. This launch video was aimed at trade – retailers and brands being invited to list on the site. I developed the storyboard, worked with the copywriter on messaging, commissioned the soundtrack, and supervised its production end to end.

An animated banner ad concept. The brief was clear: ‘It only takes one disaster to wipe out your data.’ Working from that, I developed the idea of a rotating die revealing disaster scenarios – flood, fire, earthquake – landing on that line. Simple and punchy, well suited to the banner format.

The DLB Sustainability e-issue, produced by the Marketing Association of New Zealand, needed a cover. The copy line was supplied; the rest was open. I thought of a ‘reverse tree-felling’ animation where felled trees rise back up by themselves. I created a static forest illustration in Adobe Illustrator and handed it to a digital developer to animate.

A speculative competition entry. An inventive ad placement for Real Groovy Records split vinyl sleeves A–K and L–Z across two phone book spines. The sleeve ends echoed yellow and light tones, the brand colour of the medium.

Bio Luvil detergent in Finland has always been the brand for families with kids, and the in-store promotions we did always delivered fun. The promotion theme ‘Suuri hukkajahti’ is a play on the Finnish word ‘hukka’ – meaning both ‘wolf’ and ‘waste’ – and ‘jahti’ meaning ‘hunt’, loosely translating to ‘The Great Wastebusters’. Consumers were challenged to save every detergent crumb from the jaws of the wasteful wolf.

Traffic signs and mobiles guided shoppers to ‘no waste’ zones where the container-packaged product could be found. The trade brochure surprised the reader with a popup mouth that had gobbled up the campaign message. Concepted with a copywriter.

• Finalist, AME Advertising Awards, New York Festivals, in-store promotion, 1998
• Finalist, Best of Finnish International Advertising, 1998

POS and digital materials for Subway’s Subcard loyalty card relaunch, encouraging customers to combine multiple Subcards for faster rewards. I briefed the illustrator to develop a flexible ‘mashup machine’ concept with additional building blocks, allowing the illustration to be adapted to fit different shapes and formats, such as the cubic table-talker I engineered.

Off-licence promotion built around the iconic Guinness limited edition posters. The central visual idea was to ‘mechanise’ each character to serve the campaign messaging: the Toucan’s beak opened as a teaser reveal for the promotional announcement; the Zookeeper’s legs spun for eye-catching movement in the trade sell-in pieces, which I engineered from the ground up. A retail display stand heroed the beautiful retro bottle. A campaign that respected the brand’s visual heritage while giving it genuine in-store energy. Concepted with a copywriter.

Macleans had a TVC running built around a brilliant fact: sharks grow their teeth back, we can’t, so brushing matters. The brief was to take that idea off-screen and into real life during school holidays, when families needed somewhere to go. The answer was obvious: Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World – Auckland’s home of sharks. We took over the entrance and created a ‘Did You Know?’ exhibit that turned the venue into an extension of the campaign. The hero piece was an authentic Otodus megalodon tooth – a jaw-dropping specimen that stopped kids and parents alike. An on-pack sticker leaflet drove purchase in-store, with a free child entry ticket redeemable at Kelly Tarlton’s bundled with every pack. I also concepted and art directed a short shark animation that was overlaid on the supplied TVC, and created a promo tail for the ad.

Concept designs for multi-pack retail packaging for HB – the Irish name for the Unilever Heartbrand range, known elsewhere as Streets, Wall’s, and GB Glace.

Retail dump bin designs for Starburst and Skittles, produced from supplied brand assets. Eye-catching solutions with a deliberately small footprint maximise shelf impact without demanding floor space. A 3D illustrator at the agency rendered the flat designs into presentation visuals.

Farmlands was running a Christmas promotion encouraging card holders to use their card across multiple partner retailers for a chance to win gourmet hampers, petrol vouchers, and a Gold Coast family holiday. They needed a festive tent card for the checkout counter. Concept copy was supplied; I engineered the format, designed and finished it.

A series of tent cards for various ASB campaigns, designed to grab customers’ attention while they queue. Bold 3D concepts made the wait worth a second look. I wrote the headline for the ‘cast’ concept and supervised its photography.

A fun tetra pak concept, just for the fun of it. It was a bit too ‘out there’ at the time for Finnish market.

Atria is one of Finland’s largest food companies, making this a substantial national-level brand packaging project from my early career in Helsinki. I originated the design solution myself and produced all the way to finished art.

A full-page press ad disguised as a genuine classifieds section. Each small line ad subtly transforms into a Department of Corrections recruitment message, highlighting key benefits – salary from $34k, full training, job security – before resolving to the DoC call-to-action. A larger ad at the bottom of the page completes the series and delivers the fuller picture. Produced ahead of the planned opening of Spring Hill Corrections Facility in January 2008. It is unclear whether this execution went into production.

An illustration-led editorial press ad celebrating Ribena’s New Zealand-grown blackcurrants, charting their journey from Nelson and Canterbury farms to the Ribena bottle. A confident departure from standard FMCG advertising after a vitamin C scandal that almost ruined the brand. Concepted with a copywriter. Illustration was originated and produced by me.

The above-the-line campaign was built around ‘Great Quotes’, such as Muhammad Ali’s ‘I am the greatest’. Briefed to bring the upcoming campaign to the top of mind for Bank of Ireland staff before launch, I developed a fun internal concept using Batman and Robin’s famous ‘Holy…’ theme. Deliverables were a deskdrop flyer and a staffroom poster, strictly for internal consumption.

AdMedia ran a series of ‘Create an ad from a stock photo’ competitions in the late 2000s. This ad won in 2007. It takes an absurd photo and turns it into a clever play between two of the many competing desires in Sylvia Park shopping centre. I entered this competition across three consecutive years, placing each time.

• Winner, AdMedia ‘Create an Ad from a Stock Photo’ competition, 2007

A speculative promotional ad built around the phased ban on shark finning coming into effect in NZ from 2014. The idea proposes that $1 from every can sold goes towards NZ shark conservation. Never presented.

The client had purchased a caravan to serve as a mobile breast health clinic. My job was to create everything for the Pink Caravan campaign, from vehicle wrap to printed and digital assets. Working only from supplied photos and technical drawings, with the decorated caravan itself not yet available to shoot, it quickly became evident the challenge was to create a visual style that let the caravan mockup shine. I chose a minimalist illustration style with a combination of powdery pastel and stronger fuchsia colours to create a sense of space and let the pink caravan pop in the landscape.

Printed deliverables included regional newspaper ads (one version per city/region), posters, and poster templates where exact location and time could be handwritten or overprinted. There were also several info posters and flyers for inside the caravan.

Designed and produced a large-scale icon library covering hundreds of appliance functions, across three distinct output contexts: touchscreen displays (TFT), product fascia panels and the Fisher & Paykel website. Each icon was engineered to meet the specific size, contrast and technical requirements of its context, while staying visually consistent across all three.

Created the style guide and grid rules governing how all icons are built – defining canvas sizes, line weights and minimum padding, and establishing a standardised method for on/off state icons. This gave the wider team a clear, reusable framework for any new icons to sit consistently within the existing system.

Documented complex compliance workflows – including the Declaration of Conformity process – in clear, visual formats the team could follow without specialist knowledge. Created standardised artwork templates alongside these to ensure visual consistency across all categories.

Joined the company during a strategic carton redesign phase and contributed to evolving the handling iconography to align with the broader Fisher & Paykel icon style in development at the time. Helped document the complete carton approach for global warehouse stakeholders – covering icon placement, safety pictograms, stacking limits, delivery labels, recycling lockups and unpacking instructions across carton faces. Over time, took ownership of producing all carton artworks across every product category globally.

Built a library of InDesign master templates for product documentation across global markets, covering User Guides, Install Guides, Safety & Warnings and more. The templates handle complex multi-language outputs – including EU, US/Canada and China, combining up to nine languages in a single document – with continuous pagination and automated tables of contents. Significantly reduced errors and production time across a high-volume, multi-product workload.

Championed automation and early AI adoption within the Product Content team. Developed and documented a suite of InDesign and Illustrator scripts for repetitive production tasks – including batch file renaming, style name find and replace, data merge from CSV to table rows, and Unicode character insertion. Built a file naming tool to help the team comply with a complex naming convention, and introduced AI-assisted workflows to reduce time on admin and data-heavy tasks.

Two original illustrations (cat and dog) applied across a range of products. The designs proved so popular that SPCA Victoria in Australia wanted to use them too, extending the range of fundraising merchandise to include umbrellas and can coolers, to name a few.

Demonstrates range and humour. Funland celebrates all the quirky Finnish world championship events, Dober Man is the superhero underdog, and Xtreme Ironing taps into the niche ‘sport’ of ironing in the most ridiculous places.

Competition entries that all won and went into production. A limited edition fundraising t-shirt range, all proceeds to the MHF. Modelled by NZ celebrities including Oscar Kightley, Mike King and Mario Gaoa. Featured on the MHF website, tied to the Winning Ways to Wellbeing platform.

A self-loving, self-hugging design with hand-drawn typography, reminding us to be kind to ourselves.

A parody of the Metallica wordmark harnessed for UAP ‘insider’ design. Strong conceptual wit – demonstrates personality and range.

Illustration for a dimensional DM piece built around a BeatsWork-style group drumming concept. I created a tribal patterning and paired it with intense colours that complemented ASB’s brand colour, yellow.

Three bold, minimalist illustrations to promote E&Y’s pioneering digital Knowledge Portal, which gave young entrepreneurs a special advantage by connecting them with the wider tech-startup community.

Detailed illustrations for Hunch’s client gift booklet, How to Get Authentically Hammered in France. Copy was supplied and I had free hands to create the drawings while laying out the booklet itself too.

A full-page editorial press ad with hand-crafted illustrations throughout. The imperfect illustration style and purple-led earthy palette give the ad a distinctly local, honest flavour.

A self-loving, self-hugging design with hand-drawn typography, reminding us to be kind to ourselves.

A cohesive suite of hand-lettered, illustration-driven graphic designs with a music and pop culture skew. Demonstrates illustration range and a consistent personal style.

A hand-drawn, hand-coloured greeting card illustration for a friend’s wedding. Charming, warm, and gently comedic. A good example of a different, more playful register.

Decorative artworks produced as canvas prints. Both feature highly stylised imagery and typography layered over a weathered timber texture.

A bull moose in a layered winter landscape, with a poetic prose passage embedded in the background texture. Atmospheric, detailed, and evocative – the kind of personal work that demonstrates range well beyond commercial output. Strong Scandinavian sensibility.

A set of miscellaneous studies showcasing range across media. Oil pastels let me work impressionistically and get my fingers messy; pencil and charcoal let me concentrate on light, shade and texture.