Kia ora. Hello. I’m Dan Newman, a Creative Director and Designer
from Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Information

Over the last two decades, I’ve designed websites, apps, installations, conferences, swag, billboards, office fitouts, posters, advertising campaigns, design systems, logos, and brands — both working hands-on and directing teams.

I did most of this work as part of inhouse creative teams at startups, or for clients while working at design agencies. I’ve had the pleasure of working with amazingly talented folks and I could not have done any of this without them.

I take great pride in supporting creative teams to do their best work with an empathetic and encouraging leadership style. I’m experienced in the following areas of design and team management:

• — Visual design, art direction, and typography
• — Branding, identity design, and design systems
• — Advertising, marketing, and growth experimentation
• — User research, usability testing, and prototyping
• — Managing multidisciplinary teams and projects
• — Leading design ideation and creative process
• — Front-end engineering support and collaboration
• — Shipping and refining quality user experiences

If you’d like to see more of my work or just have a chat, send me an email.

Download Résumé (PDF)

Information

I live in Te Motu Kairangi/Miramar with my partner, Noush, and our dog, Ada. I’m Head of Design at Axiom, an observability and analytics application for developers. We’re a fully remote team of engineers and designers working asynchronously across 11 timezones.

Before Axiom I was a Design Lead at Stedi. They’re on a mission to build a modern EDI platform for developers. WTF is EDI? Well, it’s short for Electronic Data Interchange, and Wikipedia explains it much better than I can! While at Stedi we were working on creating a themeable system for stedi.com to promote a suite of EDI products and APIs. We had a really exciting vision for the brand, experimenting with colour, patterns (affectionately called EDI-fetti), and typographic glyphs/characters (~ * + % $ } / = etc.) as our core visual language. You can see this work in the archive.

Prior to Stedi I led a talented team of wireframe wranglers, alliteration artists, and pragmatic problem solvers at Springload, an independent design and development agency. They’re a team of 80-ish (plus a dog or two) who work with clients like ACC, Callaghan Innovation, DIA, Klim Type Foundry, Massey University, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and NZ On Air. The team said some incredibly kind things about me:

“[Dan] you are an absolute superhuman. I’ll always remember when I first met you for a coffee after you were hired as my boss. You asked “How can I help?” lol. I appreciate so much how you listened and included everyone in developing our team and practices. The care and sensitivity in how you mentor people and their work, realising that words really matter, and people receive things differently. I have seen the people and work flourish, and how thoughtfully you’ve looked after team members facing challenges. You have been the bedrock of our wonderful, fun and inclusive team culture, thank you for all you have given (and all the sleep you have lost!)”
— Lizy Cretney (Design Director, Springload)

Before joining Springload I was Head of Design at Koordinates where I obsessed over contours, maps, and geospatial data from the likes of LINZ and Stats NZ. With the team in Wellington, Auckland, and Edinburgh, we helped people around the world “Discover Earth’s Data”, or more close to home, the Wellington Wind Zones (it’s called the ‘windy city’ for a reason).

Prior to Koordinates I was Creative Director at Xero where I led the design of xero.com, Xerocon, and all things brand. With a team spread around the world in New Zealand, Australia, England, and the United States, we helped convince hundreds of thousands of small businesses to “Try Xero for Free”.

“I’m extremely grateful to Dan for always pushing us to deliver truly beautiful work, while building and mentoring a powerhouse team (from 2 people to nearly 20), under incredibly challenging pressures and timeframes. Thanks to Dan’s talent, commitment and resilience our work and our team delivered to an extremely high standard on every project. We couldn’t have scaled the team or maintained our high quality standards without him. It’s an understatement to say Dan had a huge and very positive impact on Xero.”
— Philip Fierlinger (Head of Design, Xero)

Before all that, I designed skeuomorphic mobile and tablet applications for clients like The Economist, France Télévisions, Al Jazeera, and American Express at Tigerspike in London. Even longer before that, I was creating sites for clothing made from merino sheep and interactives for museums with colossal squids while at Flightless in Wellington. Finally, right back at the beginning I ran a little design company with friends, The D.A., while studying in Whanganui.

I have a Masters Degree in Computer Graphic Design from the Whanganui School of Design and the University of Waikato where I also gained a scholarship to study abroad as a visiting researcher at FH Oberösterreich in Austria and Nottingham University in England.

“Dan is one of the most organised and dedicated designers I have met. He has a natural energy, warmth, and drive, which I believe reflects in his approach to life and his design work.”
— Rick Hargreaves (Thesis Advisor, Whanganui School of Design)

I’ve previously been a judge for the Best Awards, I’ve also been a guest lecturer for universities, and I’m a member of DINZ, the Green Party, Forest & Bird, and donate to the 1% Collective.

When I’m not working, I’m most likely taking photos on my iPhone & GF1, walking my fantastic floof, Ada, or perpetually weeding my garden.

You can also find me tweeting on Twitter, applying black and white filters to photos (mainly of Ada) on Instagram, listening to The National’s music on Spotify, tracking films on Letterboxd, dribbbling shots on Dribbble, copying and pasting code from Github, and being professional on LinkedIn.

I still use capital letters and full stops. You can get in touch by email.

Work

• Axiom, Head of Design (2022—Present)
• Stedi, Design Lead (2021—2022)
• Springload, Creative Director (2017—2021)
• Koordinates, Head of Design (2015—2017)
• Xero, Creative Director (2012—2015)
• Tigerspike, Creative Director (2010—2012)
• Flightless, Designer / Front-end Developer (2007—2009)
• The D.A., Founder (2004—2007)
• Freelance, Designer (2001—2004)

Experiments

• Knolling, Director (2021—Present)
• Unlimited Editions, Designer (2020—Present)

Volunteering

• The Design Unit, Design Mentor (2021—Present)
• Lighting Lab, Startup Mentor (2013—2014)
• BGI, Youth Mentor (2008—2009)

Education

• Whanganui School of Design & Waikato University, Masters Degree (2001—2006)
• Nottingham University & FH Oberösterreich, Scholarship (2005—2006)

Clients / Projects

• Stedi (2021—2022)
• Callaghan Innovation (2021)
• Forma11y (2021)
• Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa, Massey University (2020—2021)
• DIA: Taumata Arowai (2020—2021)
• Springlabs (2020—2021)
• Office of the Chief Freshwater Commissioner, MfE (2020)
• He Pou a Rangi, Climate Change Commission (2020)
• Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa, Massey University: Virtual Open Days (2020)
• Delivereasy (2020)
• Touchless (2020)
• Simple Trace (2020)
• Austin Assessment (2020)
• ACC: Accent Pattern Library (2020)
• Te Hiringa Hauora, Health Promotion Agency: Alcohol Journeys (2020)
• Ratonga Taiohi, Youth Service, MSD (2020)
• NZTE (2020)
• BRANZ (2020)
• Klim Type Foundry: Neue Klim (2018—2020)
• DIA: NZGDS (2019)
• ACC: MyACC (2018—2019)
• Inquisitive (2018—2020)
• School Leavers Toolkit, MOE (2019)
• Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand: Quake Nation (2019)
• NZ Customs: Frontline Mobility App (2019)
• Klim Type Foundry: Klim Goods (2019)
• MTF (2019)
• NOW NZ (2018)
• Formway: Noho (2018)
• Irirangi Te Motu, NZ On Air (2018)
• Te Pipītanga, Springload: Brand & Site (2018—2021)
• Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand: Project Draw/Tuhi (2018)
• Experience Week (2018)
• Accuro (2018)
• Engineering NZ (2018)
• Kiwibank (2018)
• Klim Type Foundry: Fonts In Use (2018)
• Klim Type Foundry: Stripe (2018)
• Airwallex (2017—2018)
• LIC (2017)
• Koordinates (2015—2017)
• Meddbase (2015—2016)
• Xero (2012—2015)
• Tigerspike (2010—2012)
• American Express (2012)
• Al Jazeera (2012)
• ODEON Cinemas (2011)
• France Télévisions (2011)
• ESPN Cricinfo (2011)
• Travelex (2011)
• The Economist (2010—2011)
• Virgin (2010)
• Topshop (2010)
• The Telegraph (2010)
• Pik Pok (2009)
• Nintendo (2009)
• Spy Valley Wines (2009)
• Sidhe Interactive (2008)
• Exhibition Services (2008)
• Direct FX (2008)
• Eklektus (2008)
• SPCA (2008)
• Icebreaker (2007—2008)
• Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand: The Colossal Squid (2007)
• Various (2000—2007)

Talks

• Neue Klim, Misc. (2020—2021)
• Best of the Best — Designers Speak®, DINZ (2021)
• Under The Hood, Design Assembly (2020)
• Pioneer, Creative Mornings (2017)
• Geospatial Design, Tech Week (2017)
• World of VexilLOLogy, Design Meetup (2015)
• Science of Design, Gather (2014)
• Buy Experiences Not Things, UX Design Day (2014)
• Design Decisions, Design Meetup (2012)

Interested in hearing a few words and seeing a few pictures. Get in touch.

Details

• Organised in Notion.
• Written in iA Writer.
• Designed in Figma & Safari.
• Built in VS Code.
• Hosted on Github.
• Analytics by Fathom.
• Fonts by Klim Type Foundry & Berkeley Graphics.

Colophon

• Local Timezone (GMT+12 / NZST)
• Current Location (41°18'52.7"S 174°49'20.8"E)
• Last Updated (15.10.2022)

Map of Wellington (Te Whanganui-a-Tara) is derived from the Wellington City 1m contours data published by Wellington City Council and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.