Meet The Panel – Christchurch Autumn Conversations 11 April 2019
Design Assembly is delighted to present our DA Conversations Autumn 2019 series taking place in Christchurch this Thursday 11th April.
The home of New Zealand Visual Design for 10 Years
To understand where we are going, we must know where we have come from.
This year Design Assembly celebrates ten years of supporting our community. We’re taking this milestone as an opportunity to look back at the last ten years, investigate where visual design currently is and to question what the future holds for New Zealand’s visual design industry and culture.
Thursday 11 April from 6pm – 8pm
Ministry of Awesome | Kahukura Building
Moorhouse Avenue
Tickets: $30 Professional / $20 Design Assembly Friend / $10 Design Assembly Student Friend + GST
(not a DA Friend? Sign up here)
In the lead up to the event, lets meet the panel:
Josh Smith
Josh’s experience as a developer spans 6 years touching almost anything digital from simple websites to apps. His proudest achievement is leading the winning team for the 2018 Xero Developer challenge. Working alongside Tim they both translate brands into digital solutions at Plato Creative.
Tim O’Neill
Former Head of Design for NZ startup app Postr, Tim walks the fine line between technology and creativity. A designer at heart, brand identities are Tim’s bread and butter. Working alongside Josh they both translate brands into digital solutions at Plato Creative.
Sarah Amazinnia
Sarah Amazinnia is an Arts Advisor to the Christchurch City Council. She led the design and management of the Creative Industries Fund in the post-earthquake CBD as an urban regeneration tool that put creativity front and centre and $1.7 million in financial backing.
Sarah began her career in the arts as director of the Space Contemporary Art Gallery, showcasing Christchurch’s up and coming contemporary artists, hosting avant-garde performance events, and managing a multi-disciplined studio facility.
A platform for an experimental and highly collaborative arts culture quickly emerged, with many creatives going on to launch their own ventures and testing out new approaches to combining creativity and business. These experiences across a range of disciplines and start-up ventures culminated in the model of the Creative Industries Fund. Sarah also project manages public art commissions for the city, is a poet published in three languages, and is inching ever closer to the restoration of her 154 year old house and garden in Lyttelton
Gray Rathgen
Gray manages the direction of Jade Software’s design. He started with Jade in 1996 as the Creative Director and has been delivering visual content for the past twenty years, championing ‘beautiful design’ as one of Jade’s corporate values. Now the Design Manager, he directs a team producing graphic design and shaping the company’s visual identity. Gray creates visual experiences for media including web, mobile, and print for both Jade and clients from a range of industries including energy, finance and logistics.
Margaret Pickering
Margaret has carved out serial and parallel careers in music, dressage, graphic design, web design and development, and has been involved in several startups. In 2012 she co-founded and is COO of Stickmen Media, a software development company specialising in mobile apps, games, virtual reality and augmented reality, as well as more ‘sciency’ projects solving problems with sensors, mesh networks, telemetry and so on.
Cat Tossell
Cat Tossell is a multi-faceted designer with over 12 years experience in both the public and private sectors. Currently working as a senior graphic designer at Christchurch City Council, she has gained a range of skills in all things design: from web UI and UX to animation, typography, illustration and branding. Cat has been a lead designer on a large scale web upgrade, service digitisation project and an in-house led identity rebrand as well as working on a wide range of print and digital campaigns for all Council sectors including the Libraries, Rec and Sport Centres, Parks and Gardens, Regulation, Finance and Corporate Services. Combining a genuine desire to create designs that serve a purpose with the remit of her role to ensure designs are for everyone, Cat is passionate about the role of accessibility, engagement and usability in her work.
