Distant Horizons

Designing for Te Pae Tawhiti, New Zealand’s Speculative Fiction Awards

Website: https://tepaetawhitiawards.nz/

It has been my greatest honour to work with the phenomenal team at Te Pae Tawhiti to create the imagery for this ground breaking, history making national awards in NZ.

As someone who is extremely passionate about advocating for the recognition of speculative creatives, I was beyond thrilled when my design proposal was accepted by the committee. I spent many hours researching, consulting and exploring the concepts for the design.

For me, it was important the design be inclusive of all genre’s within the speculative realm, as well as honouring the rich diversity present in our beautiful country.

I hand drew all the images, filling my sketch book with idea’s exploring the kaupapa of Te Pae Tawhiti and the ethos behind the awards name. All the induvial parts were then hand traced again and again to refine and build into the composition. The compositions were then scanned and adjusted using both photoshop and canva as assistant tools to create the final images.

It was always important to me that the designs were clearly made by a human, using as many non digital techniques as possible.

Each aspect of the design is considered as part of visual storytelling. A story of what makes Aotearoa speculative fiction so special.

My work is not entirely done yet - I still have the trophy to finalise and I can’t wait to share more of this story with you in the coming months.