Bespoke illustrations for Creative NZ’s new arts advocacy guide.

In 2022, Create NZ worked with the Workshop to produce Changing the story on arts, culture, and creativity in Aotearoa, a guide which instructs arts advocates on how to build support for a future where artists and creativity thrive. I was asked to produce a set of illustrations to be included in the guide, to help communicate several of the guide’s main ideas in straightforward ways. 

The artworks produced needed to take into consideration a lot of specific factors. Firstly they needed to show a wide range of art disciplines, including ngā toi Māori. Secondly they needed to include as diverse a range of New Zealanders as possible to be shown engaging with the arts. Thirdly, each illustration needed to convey very specific principles and ideas that were explored in each section of the guide, and often each illustration needed to communicate multiple ideas at once. Lastly, the illustrations needed to fit visually with the guide, designed by Lauren Maree Stewart. 

In total, 15 sketched concepts were developed, as well as nine smaller ‘metaphor’ illustrations and a style example illustration. The chosen style was fun and colourful, with soft hand-drawn linework combined with bold blocks of colour and watercolour-style washes to add depth. Flourishes in red linework were added to communicate an intangible quality of “creativity” into the scenes, as a recurring theme throughout the set of illustrations. The concepts all relied on extensive use of visual metaphor.

Once the concepts were locked in, production of the artworks commenced, with tireless illustration assistance from Sophie Tse. As a follow up to this project, I produced portraits of the ten members of CreativeNZ’s Arts Advocacy Ropū, which would go on to be animated by Sophie Tse and Jade Paynter to help market the guide on social media platforms.

‍