Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine

 

The great Maori explorer Haunui stood on the summit of the Rimutaka Hill and saw Lake Wairarapa sparkling in the sunlight beneath him so named the region “glistening waters”.

 

“I thought about it and realised that the whole Wairarapa is full of rivers all the way up the valley,” says Rod. The green background and simplified leaf shape was inspired by the region’s trees and native bush, but particularly for Rod, the area around Waiohine Gorge south of Carterton. “It’s just so beautiful and it has the best swimming hole,” he says.

 

A designer and creative director whose work has won awards in every media including magazines, television and the Internet, Rod moved from Wellington to Greytown in 1998. “We wanted more space and privacy,” he says, “And I came here on the condition that I would never have to mow the lawns again ,” he says, indicating an impressive acreage of flat, perfectly clipped lawn outside.

 

When he still lived in Wellington in the late ‘90s, Rod found himself making frequent trips over the Rimutaka Hill to work with a colleague who owned a vineyard near Martinborough. Sitting looking out over the vines proved to be a perfect place to thrash out concepts for ads. “ It was just great even if it was raining, and it started the thought of moving over here.”

 

 Moving plans were given a further nudge when Rod worked on the campaign for Tui that has made “yeah, right” part of the Kiwi lingo. “Tui was a Wairarapa or Massey beer then but they wanted to make it broader, so we drove up from Wellington early in the morning. We went on a tour of the Mangatainoka brewery at 9.30am and the funniest thing was that there were all these locals on the tour too because there was a free beer at the end,” he says.

 

When the agency won the business, Rod and his young family moved to Greytown . Years of commuting followed with days of the week spent in Wellington gradually whittling down to four. Five years ago Rod formed his company, Collaboratus, and is now based in his Greytown office, travelling to Wellington or Auckland when work requires it. He points out that even if he were living in either city most client contact these days would be by email, Skype or video conference. “Technology’s made it possible to live here without sacrificing income,” he says.

 

“I work much harder and put in more hours than I ever did. When you work for yourself you have to be an accountant, an admin person and a creative person. But what it does mean is that I’ve been able to head off in the middle of the day and see the children play sports. I’ve seen more of the children than I did before,” he says.

 

His clients include Smoke Free, Tower and Wishbone, and his work varies from designing a logo to being the creative director in charge of filming television ads. “My background is in advertising so I might take a different approach to other designers. I’ve always taken the view that if someone was ill on a project I could step in and do the job,” he says. “But whatever I’ve worked on, I’ve never done it alone. You sit down with a client or a photographer or an illustrator and an idea can come from that discussion.”

 

He believes that the best advertising rewards the intelligence of the viewer. “It’s like a good joke, you don’t spell it all out, you leave a gap for people to fill in. When you work on a concept you always take the client into account, but you also need to understand the audience. An ad should be something people want to look at rather than something that’s intrusive or forced upon them. You can shock people but not so much that they don’t want to see it.”