Fresh from the Field — Spark NZ by Kate Hurthouse
This week’s Fresh from the Field features a project by Kate Hurthouse for Spark NZ.
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The brief:
Last year Spark announced that 100,000 customers are now on Wireless Broadband and the company will trial a ‘portable’ option over summer to allow customers to use their home broadband on holiday. Customers on the trial will simply unplug their modem at home and plug in at their New Zealand holiday destination – allowing them to use their home broadband on holiday. Spark is the first major New Zealand telecommunications provider to trial portable wireless broadband.
Over the peak summer period, thousands of Kiwis leave the major cities and towns to enjoy time off at a rental, a bach or a campground. For instance, last summer, Spark network data showed that nearly a quarter (23%) of Aucklanders left the city in the days following Christmas.
Each of the holiday modems will have a custom designed decal on the front to feature an original design. The design was to encompass the typical New Zealand summer for kiwis as they head away to the beach and Bach. It needed to be colourful and in keeping with the vibrancy of summer. The original brief was that the modem carry box would also have elements or additional designs on it. The design needed to be scalable to the dimensions of the modem, work around parts of the modem such as lights and incorporate the Spark logo.
Design response:
To begin I started brainstorming all the elements that make up a typical kiwi summer – the beach, ocean, native birds, summer plants, surfing, boating, camping, bbqs etc. I decided I didn’t want to cram too much into the relatively small space of the modem and chose to focus on the water, plants and native bird life that is so prominent throughout New Zealand. I began sketching ideas on paper before moving to my iPad pro and doing a final sketch with the Apple Pencil. We went through a couple of colour variations before settling on the Pink, Purple and Yellow from the Spark brand colours.
The overall artwork does not appear in its complete form on the modem. I was constantly switching the dieline layer on and off to make sure I was taking into consideration the shape and parts of the modem so even when the artwork was cropped it would still capture the essence. The original idea was the modem would go in a box but because of the portable nature of the modem is was decided it would have its own carry bag that had a print of part of the modem design on it.
The final artwork was digitised in Adobe Illustrator using a Wacom tablet and pen tool. This way the colours would match Sparks brand guidelines and allow for an easy printing process to get the design onto the modem carry bag.
Client: Spark NZ
PR / Media Agency: Sherson Willis
Illustration & Artwork: Kate Hursthouse | hello@katehursthouse.com | @katehursthouse
