Scoop's autumn issue is available to read online. See page 92 for the New Zealand section of the global review, a feature I've been putting together for eight years. It feeds my love of design and justifies hours of web surfing design blogs. 

I am the co-ordinator and writer of the award-winning Thinking book for Strategy Design and Advertising. Each issue contains in-depth articles, snapshots of recent work and extended case studies. It's a great example of how editorial-style content can inspire customers and give them some value, while also telling them more about what you do. I think this kind of content-driven marketing will win out in 21st century ad-land.

For Heritage Magazine, a look at my home town just after the devastating 2011 earthquakes. 

Three weeks after the February 22nd quake and Lyttelton – the town at the epicentre - is still awash with rubble. Red volcanic stone walls, built over a century ago by hard labour gangs, have crumbled onto the streets and footpaths. The commercial zone of Norwich Quay is virtually uninhabited. One of the most-captured images of the town is a Norwich Quay café – it’s façade completely collapsed, a Subaru Legacy completely flattened under the bricks and the first floor sitting rooms laid bare and exposed like a doll’s house. Down Norwich Quay and up around the corner onto Oxford Street are red stickers – too many to count. Steel fences barely contain the rubble.

Just as Christchurch was struck by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake on 22 February, my article on the creative re-build of the city was at the Idealog printers. At first I cringed, because the scale of destruction on the second quake was so much greater but now I can see that the essence of the debate is still relevant.
Read the full story here:http://idealog.co.nz/magazine/32/after-shock

Just dug this one out of the archive - a story about female kick-boxing fights in Christchurch for Staple Magazine. Good old Staple. It was good mag.

What could possibly lure someone away from a lucrative, prestigious, globe-trotting career in management consulting? Disillusioned by the prospect of spending years continuing to chase the bottom line, Kate Bezar decided to feed the starved creative side of her brain instead. Putting values before profit, she set out to create something that resonated with ordinary people. Dumbo feather, pass it on, is unique in the publishing world; the half-magazine, half-book features the stories of five unique individuals in their own words. Her story is proof that if you follow your gut, the money will follow.

Online at idealog.co.nz

A chat about wine, milk and celebrity with actor Sam Neil. 

In your dreams, do you imagine yourself as part of a tightly-synchronised, Lycra-clad, 80s-inspired dance troupe? Do you still sing into your hairbrush? Or have fond memories of making up dance routines as a child and performing them to an appreciative audience of your mum and dad?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, chances are you are a Real Hot Bitch in waiting.

Fifty-seven percent of New Zealanders say they are worried about invasion of privacy through new technology. In the US – probably for good reason - the figure is 70% and in Australia, 64%.

Privacy advocates would say that this figure is too low – everyone with an email account and a credit card should be worried. But assistant privacy commissioner Katrine Evans says it’s not the technology we should be concerned about.

“Technology itself is neutral,” she says, “It’s what we do with it.”

Al Gore can justify his jet-setting contribution to climate change, but the rest of us are faced with a moral dilemma.Thanks to An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore is the poster boy for fighting global warming. Yet the image we see again and again is Gore on a plane, criss-crossing the globe to spread his message.

As an interview, it was a disaster. I spent seven hours with Bob Jones, during which time he ordered six bottles of wine and didn’t answer one of my questions.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Just before our lunch-time interview, he told radio presenter Mike Yardley that he was personally responsible for a recent increase in red wine consumption.

I walked away from an afternoon with Bob Jones with my head spinning, and not just from the wine. I couldn’t tell you when he got his OBE or how he got started in property investment, but I heard stories about him punching out the Czechoslovakian president and making a fortune by sending everyone in England a bill for 12 pounds. He spun yarns about discussing Rastafarianism with Lennox Lewis’s mother and meeting Haile Silassie - twice. 

People have looked at the stars for thousands of years, but only about 20 years ago did astronomers become interested in the stuff inbetween.
Reversing their focus on the sky, astronomers can see that dark patches in the Milky Way are really giant molecular clouds. These big blobs of gas can be many times the size of the sun. Eventually, these clouds fall in on themselves, the cool gas becomes hot and dense and a star is born.

Woman Today
By Kris Herbert

It’s hard to imagine New Zealand fashion without iconic Dunedin label, Nom*D, yet when Margarita (Margi) Robertson and her husband Chris started the company 1986, the words “New Zealand” and “fashion” were scarcely uttered in the same sentence.

Woman Today, September-October 2002

Trelise Cooper doesn’t apologise for doing business like a woman. In fact, her unorthodox ways and highly personal feminine values may go a long way towards explaining her success. The 44-year-old fashion designer, wife and mother steers one of New Zealand’s biggest fashion success stories.