Anzac Tasker
Guardians
Growing up on Waikehe, a small remote island and being instilled with Māori Culture from an Early Age helped forge a life ingrained in the tactile nature of design and tikanga. From Auckland to Melbourne and back for one long stint at Designworks and how making the shift from a global owned company to his own has let him fully integrate te ao Māori into his design.
I was raised on Waiheke, an island of only 4,000 people at the time. It’s a place with a strong sense of identity and community; something that’s often harder to find in bigger cities. The island had real spirit, character and personality. It felt like being brought up in paradise. My dad was, and still is, a ceramic artist. Being raised in clay and surrounded by the world of arts and crafts influenced the way I see things. It laid the foundation for a practice that sits somewhere between art and design. I find it difficult to separate the two, although in some areas they couldn’t be more different.
That creative atmosphere, infused by my dad and grounded in tikanga and culture, gave me a unique lens. Arts and culture weren’t something separate; they were simply part of the everyday. Waiheke was a kind of melting pot, creatively rich and culturally layered. At the time I probably didn’t fully appreciate how lucky I was to grow up in that kind of environment, but looking back it was dense with creativity, and I feel grateful to have been immersed in it.
Definitely. I’ve always felt the need to be connected to the work I inform. Working with tangible materials keeps you grounded in the process. Being raised around ceramics hardwired that appreciation into me. Even though we’re living in a digital era, I don’t think we should rush away from the tactile. The digital space can create a kind of disconnection — from yourself, from others, and from the work. I’ll always value the way physical objects can serve as a source of creative language. Māori creativity, in particular, is nourished by a culture that is much broader than traditional art. We have kapa haka, reo Māori, fashion, architecture, astronomy all woven in whakapapa: it’s a whole system of expression that lives outside a Western framework.
These forms constantly influence one another: fashion intersects with graphic design; storytelling is infused with metaphor through te reo Māori. We shape objects with purpose; for beauty, yes, but also for survival and legacy. Take the hei toki, for example. Today, it’s worn as jewellery, but originally it was a tool for construction because we didn’t have pockets. Design had a practical origin first and foremost, and sometimes we forget that. I feel lucky that I wasn’t raised with the internet.
There was a beautiful kind of honesty in the analogue world. You couldn’t be idle without truly being idle. On the island, our playground was the natural world. We built huts, carved tracks, and shaped our world with what was available. There was something pure about that; something I miss in that world.
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Waiheke is small, and the upside of that is also the downside: everyone knows each other. I got bored, started getting into trouble, and turned to weed and drinking at a pretty young age. Leaving at 15 was one of the best things that could have happened. Northcote College gave me a fresh start. I leaned into design and education more seriously in my later school years. I’d found a medium that let me tell stories and communicate ideas in ways that welcomed others in. We didn’t have much money. I was the poor kid, walking home from rugby because we didn’t have gas in the car. So university wasn’t really about choice, AUT was simply the most viable option — and it turned out to be exactly where I needed to be.
I had amazing tutors: Mark Stammers, Jonty Valentine, Peter Gilderdale, Eden Potter. They weren’t just passionate educators — they were practitioners who lived and breathed design. I’ve always gravitated to great teachers, and a few became mentors. Even in school, despite getting into trouble, I had good relationships with my teachers. They believed in me, and you try harder when someone’s backing you.
I’ve always been competitive. Sport taught me that. I didn’t just want to get by — I wanted to do well. Early on, I was strategic: build trust, show capability, then use that to push the boundaries creatively.
Whether it’s your first job or parenthood, you can’t skip the fundamentals. Once you know the basics, you earn the right to explore. By my second and third years, I wasn’t chasing top grades — I was chasing my own curiosity. I wanted to explore ideas that hadn’t yet been explored.
I’ve always been a bit defiant. I didn’t want to blindly follow trends. When Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop began dominating, the handmade, tactile side of design started to vanish. I pushed back on that. I wanted analogue processes to remain part of our toolkit — not for nostalgia, but because serendipity lives in those moments.
At one point I was told I might not pass third year because I was ‘making a sculpture, not design’. They asked me to create a book to justify the work. That piece merged typography and sculpture, bringing together the ceramic world I grew up in with a typography medium. We found a middle ground that challenged the divide between digital and analogue, art and design.
I probably frustrated my tutors. But I think that’s the role of a designer: not just to answer the brief, but to challenge it. We need to question whether the brief is asking the right thing in the first place.
Tana Mitchell and Jef Wong at Designworks gave me a shot. Jef approached me in my third year, but I asked to stay another year to sharpen my thinking and craft. They supported that, offering mentorship and a fellowship.
At the time, we were all a bit naïve about what a design career really looked like. I remember applying for a job doing Bunnings catalogues — $30,000 a year sounded great to me. Then I was shortlisted by Designworks as one of 14 students from across Aotearoa. I presented my final-year project and was probably chosen more for my attitude than just the work, and that opportunity turned into 13 years.
Starting out, I knew I had to master the basics. I wasn’t chasing the best jobs — I simply tried to be the most reliable person in the room. If you’re dependable, people trust you, and that’s how the bigger projects eventually land. So I was doing the best I could each day. I remember being the junior in the studio and saying, ‘Can we just do cool stuff?’ Now I look back and realise how naïve that was.
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Amy — my wife, who I met at AUT — and I were looking for an overseas adventure. Designworks had a Melbourne studio, so it was an easy move that still offered some safety. Eventually I joined Frost* Collective, where Anthony Donovan was the creative director. He taught me a lot about finding the core idea, and that sometimes it’s right in front of you. That lesson helped me transition from a graphic designer into more of a design thinker.
Being Māori in Melbourne was a big shift. The design culture there felt less connected to place, which clashed with how I had been raised. Looking back, I realise that I’d started to lose sight of the parts of design I care most deeply about: identity, meaning and connection.
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We’re heading in the right direction, but it’s not straightforward. Design isn’t math — there’s no single right answer. It’s about the approach.
The integration of te ao Māori into design here is, I believe, world-leading. Our cultural threads are woven through our design language in a really powerful way. Curiosity is key to that: it keeps us asking better questions. I’m not surprised that we’re seeing beautiful expressions of Aotearoa in our design now.
It’s a privilege to be part of a generation guiding change in our practice; with this I recognise those who laid the foundations for us did so, in a world of discrimination I want to thank them for cracking the door open. I didn’t set out to be a Māori graphic designer, and I didn’t go to Designworks to learn tikanga, but over time that part of me grew stronger. Now it’s hardwired into my work. That growth has been both a blessing and a responsibility.
Not often, because I try to ground the process in manaakitanga. You need to be clear on your intentions: that you’re not doing it for the wrong reasons, and that your clients aren’t asking for the wrong reasons. Great design is the byproduct. The process should be steeped in storytelling and listening. If you’ve truly heard what the client wants, then the work you present should feel like a natural extension of their vision — not an imposition of your own.
When pushback does happen, I don’t shy away from reminding people that they’ve invested in design professionals for a reason. It’s okay to ask for trust.
There were a few factors, but at the heart of it I was ready to start again. I felt the Māori world calling me back to something more independent. Practising tikanga and te ao Māori within a foreign-owned agency created tension. Pair that with the current Coalition government and its stance on Māori issues, and the timing felt right to move on.
That’s how Guardians was born: a name that speaks to design guardianship, to protecting and nurturing identity. I now work more directly with mana whenua and collaborate at the source. Guardians isn’t a Māori agency — it’s a human agency. Our work is driven by intention. Being Māori is core to what I do, and that means I’ll always have Māori’s best interests at heart. But ultimately we’re here to serve people who want to do good — for society, the environment, communities, and for our many cultures.
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Definitely. These big life-shifts are humbling. They make you vulnerable, but they also spark growth. I wanted to stay true to myself as a designer, and it felt increasingly at odds to lead cultural work from within a structure that didn’t reflect those values. Now, 12 months into Guardians, we’re fully booked through to the end of the year, and we’re attracting clients with the right spirit. It was a risk, but in many ways staying would have been riskier — at least for my spiritual growth and authenticity as a practitioner.
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