Social Media 2012
May 24th, 2012 • Graphic Design, Marketing, Social media, Web media • Comments Off
Hebe: a new brand for CMC Design
May 1st, 2012 • Graphic Design, Marketing • 1 comment
Wow, was this logo a long time coming!
We’ve been talking about the name for the www.cmcdesign.co.nz children’s range of furniture for over a year now. We started off with Seedlings, which we liked – I still like it – but there is a children’s retail outlet called Seedlings so we were going to be fighting against an existing brand that was too similar to Craig’s product.
After many cups of tea and much frowning, all we could really agree on was that the name should be a New Zealand word, an organic word, something not too long or hard to say, something that children would cotton-on to quickly. The word Hebe was a throwaway example, but somehow it stuck. Not only is it a native New Zealand plant, but it also happens to mean “youth”. In fact, in Greek mythology Hebe is no less than the Goddess of Youth. What a happy co-incidence.
Our budget for developing the logo was restricted. So together, Craig and I identified a font we liked as phase one. The second phase was to design a simple motif that would help illustrate the word. The obvious choice was an illustration of a hebe plant; after a few attempts to capture a likeness that would also work as a stamp, we reached this lovely, simple logo.
You will see from CMC Design’s Facebook page, our model Miss Evie is a wonderful sparky representative for this new brand!
Unless someone like you…
May 1st, 2012 • Conservation online • 1 comment
“Unless someone like you, cares a lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not!” the Lorax - Dr Suess
Kia ora from the ‘Aotearoa Is Not For Sale’ Hikoi, or g’day from the march for ‘kiwi’s opposing essential service sell offs’.
80% of us oppose SOE partial privatisation - that’s like the same numbers that like Marmite.
There are so many reasons why YOU need to be in Wellington on Friday (and it’s definitely not the weather). If we relinquish control of our SOEs to overseas corporates, directors, shareholders and politicians we risk the very land on which we walk on and depend – sounds mellow-dramatic, but electricity is the very life-blood of our economy. New Zealand’s heart beats on this indelible and, in New Zealand, mostly renewable resource: most is currently owned by ALL New Zealanders including ‘Moms and Dads’ and their kids.
As fossil fuels run out, electricity is the only practical option available to replace them. Every car company in the world is developing electric cars, because they know what’s coming (’Mr Fusion’ hasn’t happened so there is 110 new electric models for 2011/2012 alone). If we put OUR electricity in to the hands of overseas interests, we expose ourselves to a future in which we are NOT in control.
We are opposing the sale of our State Owned Assets – Mighty River Power, Genesis Energy, Meridian and Solid Energy – Air NZ, TNVZ are also included. If you want to see some detail behind the scenes visit: facebook: ‘boycott mercury energy’….to see who’s pulling strings and got their fingers in the sticky pieholes.
Turn up in droves to Palmy & Welly to make sure we keep our independence for our children and our children’s children, or our nieces and nephews.
Aotearoa IS NOT FOR SALE.
Palmerston North: Protest rally agains Asset Sales – Wednesday 1pm @ the Square
Johnsonville: Thur, May 3, 8am - Johnsonville railway carpark (Moorefeild entrance). Protest rally against Asset Sales and Peter Dunne. If Dunne retracts his support of the MIXED OWNERSHIP MODEL (MOM) bill, National and ACT can’t pass it.
Contact: John Maynard 027 220 7903 save.our.soes@hotmail.com
Wellington: Gather at Te Papa 12 noon this Friday and march to Parliament.
Please bring colourful signs, and dress up – it would be appropriate to wear BLUE – (think about it), don’t dress down.
In the words of the Lorax:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lorax
Be there, or be boxed into a corner [:-(]….
Forward, post, share, care, bare, as you see fit.
Craig Salmon
Mobile +64 21 412 741
Hikoi travels to Waikato after great turn out in Auckland
April 30th, 2012 • Uncategorized • Comments Off
Following a public turnout of thousands who marched up Queen St in Auckland yesterday, the hikoi ‘Aotearoa is Not For Sale’ travels to protest in Hamilton. This morning at 10am people will gather outside the BP on Victoria Street, Hamilton for a march to protest the sale of our assets and resources. Both SOE sales and plans for massive sand mining on the West Coast will be highlighted.
Paihia local Craig Salmon in Auckland protesting asset sales
Several large mining companies are looking to remove massive volumes of sand from 2,500 square kilometres of the west coast seabed, extending from Whanganui to the Kaipara Harbour.
Prospecting and exploration licenses extend from the low tide mark to the edge of the EEZ. Mining will likely occur in the inshore area.
One single permitted area off the Taranaki coast, would allow 30 million tons of sand to be extracted annually. This would mean 150 million tons of sand being disturbed each year in one small site for 35 years, with a right of renewal for the mining company.
After leaving Hamilton the hikoi will stop at Karapiro Dam on the Waikato River which was built in the 1940s. Karapiro Power Station is the last of the eight hydroelectric power stations on the Waikato River and currently owned by Mighty River Power, the first Government owned power company proposed for sale.
Every inch of rain that falls within the catchment of the mighty Waikato River, from the slopes of Ruapehu to the fertile Waikato plains, plays a part in powering our country’s homes, businesses and futures.
Eight hydroelectric dams owned by Mighty River Power are positioned along the 400km length of the Waikato River, and harness the power of water that falls from the sky for free, for the benefit of all New Zealanders.
Electricity is the oxygen of our economy. Morally and strategically power generation must remain in public hands and not the hands of a corporate few. Why would we sell such a strategic asset?
Auckland hikoi 2012
After staying at Apumoana Marae in Rotorua tonight, the hikoi will assemble at the lakefront in Rotorua at 8.30am (Tutanekai St) Monday to march to the National Party office at 9am.
At 1.15pm tomorrow the hikoi will join the people of Taupo for a march through the town, to the shores of Lake Taupo, the headwaters of the mighty Waikato River.
For more information and to arrange interviews please phone 022 140 1961 and talk to Dean.
Vets join Hikoi on ANZAC Day
April 26th, 2012 • Uncategorized • Comments Off
ANZAC Day saw local war veterans lead 60 people on the hikoi ‘Aotearoa is Not For Sale’ through Kaikohe, Moerewa and Kawakawa in the morning and Whangarei in the afternoon.
Remembered were those who fought and sacrificed in wars to protect this country and those who remained at home in the hope of their safe return, keeping the home fires burning. Their dreams of a safe future where they and their descendants could decide their own destiny.
Veterans expressed disgust at the current Government’s attempt to give overriding power to other countries through secret international trade deals, land and asset sales. Impacts on these smaller communities were recalled lest we forget the results of privatisation on our country during the 1980s.
While 150 people exchanged greetings in Moerewa a truck with a huge ancient swamp kauri trunk of several tonnes passed slowly. “There goes our asset now!” cried out one protester.
Ancient swamp kauri is being mined and wetlands destroyed from land promised to be returned in Treaty settlements. Vast amounts of swamp kauri is heading to China and also Italy, despite court orders to stop all works.
The presence of locked out freezing workers from Talley’s AFFCO in the Moerewa leg of the hikoi was strong. Talley’s is a New Zealand company attempting to destroy their worker’s conditions. If faceless overseas companies bought our assets would they care more?
The main street of Kawakawa rang with chants from 200 people of “John Key you’ve got mail, Aotearoa is not for sale” and “Wayne Brown you’ve got mail, Northland’s not for sale” in regard to the Far North District mayor’s cheerleading of mining in the region.
“Mayor Brown, you’re a clown, we don’t want mining in this town”, summed it up.
Whangarei saw a march of 80 people through the town, gathering outside the Far North District Council, then the Northland Regional Council.
A local Whangarei resident, highlighted to the hikoi the plight Northland faced from having the Auckland to Northland railway moth-balled. She also raised concerns about the Whangarei District Council cutting down 100 year old trees unnecessarily to make way for another lane on land that had been gifted to the public.
Speakers criticised both councils for their role in pulling resources out of communities with the most need and centralising them in areas with less need.
Today the hikoi arrives in Auckland. Numbers and momentum are expected to increase for a large march this Saturday 28 April.
For more information and to arrange interviews please phone 022 140 1961 and talk to Dean.
Aotearoa is not for sale!
April 25th, 2012 • Uncategorized • Comments Off
HIKOI SENT OFF FROM CAPE REINGA WITH POINTED MESSAGE FOR THE GOVERNMENT: AOTEAROA IS NOT FOR SALE
Tuesday 24 April 2012, Kerikeri: Today 60 people, including kaumatua of the northern tribes, gathered at Cape Reinga to send off the hikoi ‘Aotearoa is Not For Sale’. Those travelling on the hikoi were sent off with blessings and well wishes. Kaumatua stressed the importance of the message – a message they expect will resonate across the country – that our land, assets and resources are not to be flogged off to corporations.
At lunchtime 300 people of all ages marched and chanted along the main street of Kaitaia. “This is one hell of a big march for this little town”, said one protestor.
Banners were held by protestors reading ‘No drilling – don’t kill our coast’, ‘Northland no mining’ and ‘He taonga te whenua’.
Later, after a warm welcome at Kororipo Pa by te Wakameninga o nga hapu o Ngapuhi, protest moved to the Far North District Council headquarters in Kerikeri. Eighty protesters were in vocal opposition to the Council and district’s Mayor Wayne Brown being in collusion with the Ministry of Economic Development and Australasian mining interests in surveying Northland for minerals and acting without consent to entice multinational mining companies to Northland.
Banners read: ‘Ask us – don’t shaft us’, ‘Stop Undermining Paptuanuku’ and ‘We don’t a debt of toxic waste’.
Tomorrow war veterans will join the hikoi in Kaikohe, Kawakawa and Whangarei to commemorate ANZAC Day and express their displeasure at fighting to keep our country and its resources and assets safe in wartime, and their disgust and current Government plans.
The hikoi is expected to gather numbers and momentum as it travels to Auckland for a large march this Saturday 28 April
The journey of the hikoi began at the tail of the fish to end up at the head, Wellington in two weeks.
For more information and to arrange interviews please phone 022 140 1961 and talk to Dean.
Notes from a marine reserve campaigner
December 9th, 2011 • Conservation online, Copywriting, Personal • Comments Off
NOTE: since this article was written there have been two hui with key members of Bay of Islands and Northland hapu. Our vision continues to grow, as do our relationships. Our steps forward are tentative but exciting and positive.
Over the past 18 months I have been the impartial, mostly-reliable digital scribe of the Fish Forever campaign team, regularly sharing marine conservation news as @Wantmorefish on Twitter and on our Facebook page to help sustain our presence online. I was asked some time ago to provide an updated “crib sheet”, summing up what Fish Forever was about for journalists, local figures, influencers.
In a flash, my writing powers dried up.
No one was pressuring me to meet a deadline. Nor had I been issued an unrealistic brief. I had been asked only to write more of the same; words shaped to spoon-feed. But something didn’t feel right.
After procrastinating for weeks, I realised what the problem was. Simply put, I can no longer be objective about Fish Forever. If you want objective, go to the website – I wrote it; they are my measured, committee-approved words that tell you exactly what Fish Forever is about: http://www.fishforever.org.nz .
But don’t ask me to be objective anymore.
After a mentally and emotionally challenging 18 months since the inception of the campaign, I can no longer step back and give you the cool overview and balanced arguments for why we need a network of marine sanctuaries in the Bay of Islands. I still believe we do, harder than ever before. But the truth is that this campaign is not one you can be objective about. This campaign is hot and twisted and rankling. It’s exciting, exasperating, rewarding and, occasionally, deathly dull. It interferes with your working life, your private life. For one week a month it becomes your life.
I have said Fish Forever so many times, that it sounds silly in my head. But I’ll keep on saying it. As will the dozens and dozens of people who have been doing the same as me since the campaign began. As will the hundreds of people of who have been involved in any of the small volunteer groups operating in the Bay of Islands, all fighting to look after our waterways, manage our run-off, improve our sewerage, have a say in aquaculture plans, establish mataitai and so on.
The story is the same across the entire country – thousands of people in New Zealand fight for causes they believe in, causes that the government has outsourced to the country’s biggest non-profit public business – the incorporated society.
I could bleat about the injustice of this situation, in which the taxes we pay don’t appear to be sufficient to employ professionals to adequately represent the causes important to New Zealand citizens. I could, but I won’t because it doesn’t get us anywhere.
Instead, I’ll tell you more about the Fish Forever campaign from my own point of view. Fish Forever is the screaming baby of our incorporated society, the Bay of Islands Maritime Park Inc. The campaign was born soon after the screening of the End of the Line at the Turner Centre, Kerikeri on 16 May 2010. The campaign is for marine protected areas in the Bay of Islands. More specifically it is for the establishment of a network of marine reserves, as legislated for by the 1971 Marine Reserves Act. Note that we only choose marine reserves for want of a better tool. At present, there is no other tool available for the kind of long term protection needed to make a positive difference to the depleting biodiversity our ocean’s face. We’ve tried to find alternatives that deliver the same result. At present they don’t exist.
Fish Forever is a community initiative. It is largely volunteer-based. It has become the voice of marine conservation in the Bay of Islands. What the campaigners and supporters want is a healthy, replenished bay; a place that we can all live, work and play in. What we – and when I see we, I refer to every individual that has ever come to a meeting, hosted a hui, worn a tshirt, signed a mandate, marked a chart – what WE – the community, tangata whenua, business – what WE want is a Bay of Islands that teems with plants, birds and fish. We want a bay that provides kai for local Maori in their traditional gathering areas, right on their doorsteps. We want waters that can be fished sustainably by recreational and charter fishermen. We want a bay that offers economic and social benefits to the entire local community.
After wringing our hands for so long, reluctant to commit to a tool some find so officious, the core team of Fish Forever campaigners has committed to pursuing the application for a marine reserve network: this, with the understanding that although marine reserves are not the final answer, they are the only effective long term site-specific tool currently available. The team has not restricted its vision to just marine reserves, in terms of the wider philosophy of local marine management. However, after months of discussion, we feel this is the best means of galvanising our community and taking the first step towards the self-management of our marine environment.
First, to heal. Second, to manage. That is something we learned that from a highly regarded Maori representative, who is campaigning for Maori management rights the length of the Northland coast. We are looking at stage one – healing.
So, the job is not done when an application is handed in. In many ways, this campaign is just the start of a more holistic package, probably driven by traditional Maori tools that will help structure the long-term management of the whole of the Bay of Islands and wider Northland coast. And it probably won’t be called Fish Forever; but I have no doubt members of the Fish Forever team will continue working towards that greater goal.
So how did we get to where we are standing?
Fish Forever started out as a publicity campaign – the accessible face of our incorporated society. We wanted to appeal to the man on the street. We wanted to raise awareness about the severity of the problem of depleting biodiversity, to listen to the stories of how things used to be and to ask the community what they wanted for their bay.
We advocated for approximately 10% of the enclosed waters of the Bay of Islands to be established as a network of marine sanctuaries for at least a generation. These areas should be representative of the region, they should replicate habitat types throughout the network, the areas should be big enough to sustain the habitat type represented, they should be agreed by the community.
We invited people to sign a mandate – we have almost 1100 signatures (a drop in the ocean, but a sizeable proportion of our local community). More importantly, we invited people to engage in the debate about where a marine reserve network might be located – we received 410 responses. We appealed to fishermen to tell us areas that they’d find acceptable – that would neither unreasonably adversely affect their recreation and nor their business. We presented at the Bay of Islands Swordfish club – attendance was poor, so we need to do that again and again as we shape a proposal. We talked to Daryl Sykes, representative of the Rock Lobster industry, about how the commercial sector would respond to the call for a network of marine sanctuaries – he talked of opportunity adjustment – possibly meaning financial recompense for those who “lost” a percentage of their legal fishing area? We have approached members of the different hapu in the Bay to discuss what Maori want to see in the future – to learn about their plans for fisheries management and to find out how we can support each other to achieve mutually strong goals. And yes, we are still talking. We haven’t got there yet.
The tenet of “10% for a generation” proved both advantageous and a thorn in the side. Too much. Too little. Too limited a vision. For example, when Fish Forever campaigners were invited to the Te Tii marae in Waitangi in September, one of the challenges to us was “Why don’t you want to protect the entire bay?!”. They were astonished. And I suppose we were astonished aswell, for two reasons – firstly that it was possible that we could be misinterpreted and secondly, that we had put this limit on ourselves in the first place. Truly, the mantra for 10% hadn’t been intended as a limitation (look after the best bits, bugger the rest). It was about being realistic and having something concrete to campaign for. It was the figure selected because it recalled our government’s international commitment to international commitment that 10% of New Zealand’s waters should be in marine protected areas by 2010.
So do we still say 10%? Yes and no. Some people say 30% or more. Others say we can find different tools to protect a proportion of that percentage effectively, suggesting that a marine reserve may only end up constituting 3% or 4% of the Bay of Islands.
As we continue to talk with Maori about how we can support their own marine conservation and fisheries management aspirations, as we undertake more of the detailed scientific study necessary to ensure we know selected areas meet the criteria, as we venture back to places like the Swordfish Club to talk to the recreational and charter fishing representatives, we will continue to use this figure as an approximate guide for areas than need to be in long term protection in order to guarantee a healthy future for our marine environment.
After 18 months of hard debate, we still don’t have all the links in place. However, the process has started. It is going to be a very detailed, technical process that will undergo intense scrutiny. Alongside the technical work undertaken by our professional scientists, we will continue to engage in constructive dialogue so that once an application for a marine reserve hits the desk of the Minister of Conservation it will bear the stamp of our community. The application will have been shaped by and will do justice to the full spectrum of those encompassed by the overused words “our community” – it will reflect the aspirations of the local people who mourn the loss of a rich marine habitat, the local people who value Tangaroa for his plenty, those people who fear him for his strength and those who love him for the diversity of life he brings.
These are the people with and for whom Fish Forever campaigns.
Author: Catherine Langford, Fish Forever Campaigner
Date: 28 October 2011
New branding for Flying Kiwi Parasail
December 6th, 2011 • Graphic Design, Marketing • Comments Off
Langford Ink has been working with the Flying Kiwi Parasail team over the past few months, shaping up a new logo for them, tweaking their brochure and – finally – setting up a new website that is easy to update, search engine friendly and looks fresh, bright and accessible to all.
We’ve been working to a fairly strict budget, so the challenge has been to get a great new look on a fairly short shoe string.
First, the logo. What you see here, top right, is the result of some old fashioned sketching and few design iterations. The client was a pleasure to work with because they had a fairly good idea of what they wanted, were prepared to put in the effort to communicate that, but weren’t closed to alternative ideas and reasoning.
The team already had a cool parasailing kiwi cartoon, which they loved, but he was prohibitively expensive to print. Apart from this little chap, there wasn’t much in the way of consistent branding other than a font type used on the staff hoodies and, more recently, splashed across the new bright orange, custom-designed boat.
Game on — we had a brief: a very orange boat with the word PARASAIL in big blue letters down the side.
We were also given this sketch on a black and white photocopy of the staff hoodie, to show the idea of a kiwi being incorporated into the logo. From this starting point, we developed a series of options.
In good old fashioned graphic design style, we chopped up the different concepts, and mixed and matched until we got to a literally cut-and-pasted brief.
And now we’re getting close to a logo: we have a faded silhouette of the flying kiwi, a little bit abstract, but definitely of Aotearoa extraction; we have a typeface that ties in with the boat signwriting; we have the words Paihia and New Zealand included in the logo. The overriding feature is descriptive – the word parasail leaps out at you – but there’s also a more interesting visual language building up.
So from here, we came up with the almost final version, a blue logo with the words Bay of Islands, rather than Paihia.
And then, finally, because the team actually really like that zingy orange colour of their boat, we settled on the orange fade as the main iteration of the Flying Kiwi Parasail logo.
I may return
December 6th, 2011 • Copywriting, Personal • Comments Off
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| Bay of Islands |
“It’s been a while since I arrived in New Zealand and – geographically speaking – I haven’t gone all that far. Still, I’ve got know a little about Paihia and its winter inhabitants. I have also established an unexpectedly close acquaintance with the ocean in that I am sleeping on it most nights and rowing across it at least twice a day in Bob-short-for-Roberta the dinghy.
In the past three weeks I’ve watched the sunrise almost daily, helped rescue a sinking boat, had a private sitting at the best restaurant in town, body surfed down a huge sand dune (with a bit of unanticipated creek-planing at the end), cleaned a few bathrooms, washed and folded a good bit of linen, cooked and hosted two dinner parties and sailed a 19th century gaff-rig cutter. Oh, and made a few friends.
I’m officially an overstayer now, but I really do leave Northland next week for Brisbane and then onwards to Beijing and Mongolia. If the point of travelling is to experience different lifestyles and settle in to the rhythms of a place, then I’m doing ok.
I may yet return.”
Catherine Langford
June 2007