Emma Kaniuk
Designer
Realising that if she pursued the Architectural dream someone may die, Emma switched to design, starting her career at a fellowship at Designworks. We chat about imposter syndrome, a 10 year design partnership at Akin and delve into where all the women in design leadership have gone in Aotearoa.
Emma was Co-Founder and Creative Director at Akin, as well as Design Director at the Special Group and now works globally, running her own design and strategy consultancy.
I grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau, in the suburban outskirts of West Auckland. My paternal grandparents immigrated here from Poland after World War 2 as refugees, and my maternal great-grandparents are from England and Scotland. I grew up in a lower-middle-class family that devoted a lot of time to reading, baking, sewing, gardening and hiking — we spent a lot of time at home, just the five of us. Much of the family knowledge passed down has been the practical knowledge of making.
I vividly recall getting our first Apple Mac Classic 2, which was shared by the whole family. It lived on a desk in the lounge, which was so very early ’90s. This was the first time that I interacted with the ideas of design and technology, and the first time I thought about fonts.
Later I studied Chicago, the operating system’s first font, and discovered how novel it was in terms of its proportional spacing. I remember it was actually nicknamed ‘Elefont’ by its designer, Susan Kare, due to its heavy weight.
:quality(82)/media/Macintosh_Classic_2.jpg)
:quality(82)/media/chicago_type.avif)
I really wanted to be an architect. In intermediate school, our class had an assignment to map out our lives on a timeline, and I spent most of the time drawing a to-scale house floorplan and side elevations on graph paper.
Due to the vernacular of the architecture I lived around growing up, I designed something very reflective of that: think a double-storey brick box, three bedrooms, and a kidney-bean-shaped pool and a bunch of fruit trees out back. At high school, my first dive into design was when I signed up for a technical drawing class. It was there I first came across Winsor & Newton promarkers, practising and mastering colour and tonal shading.
:quality(82)/media/winsor_promarkers.jpg)
I got really worried I would kill someone! We had to complete all our technical-drawing classes by hand — drawing plans and elevations, isometric drawings, orthographics. This was before mainstream computer use. I got straight A’s, but I was doing everything by eye and not using actual maths to work out the tangent angles and perspectives, like I should have been.
Funny to think back on that: if I’d foreseen the complete reliance we would come to have on technology and software, perhaps I would be an architect now. In my final years of high school, a new class was offered — I think it was simply called ‘graphic design’ — and I really enjoyed learning about brand and identity systems.
My high-school graphic design teacher, Naomi Bell, was a huge influence. She took the time to articulate the differences between the teaching methodologies at each university and introduced me to some of the tutors. There seemed to be more of a focus on creative freedom and critical practice at Unitec at the time, and that’s what appealed most to me. I was offered a full scholarship into their newly developed industrial design undergrad course, which would have given me automatic entry and paid tuition — ironically based on the technical drawing work I did at school.
But by then I was obsessed with graphic design (and not yet strategic in my decisions), so I declined and went into the general applications for a degree in graphic design, hoping my portfolio would get me over the line. It was quite competitive back then, with small class numbers. Luckily I got in, but of course I had to pay full tuition fees.
:quality(82)/media/blobber.png)
I quickly realised I was there to learn how to identify opportunities and seize them. How to open doors and say yes to everything that came my way. It was such an abundant time, a safe space to take risks and develop my own voice. It also wasn’t an easy time for me. I put a lot of pressure on myself to maintain good grades, but looking back it was more valuable to focus on learning how to be adaptable, build a network, and develop and trust my own taste. In my third year, one of my tutors expressed strong concerns about whether I was actually cut out for being a designer, as a lot of the coursework didn’t come naturally to me.
Of course! But it was deeply motivating for me as well. I’ve had my skills and experience questioned many times since then — often by people who had no business doing so — and I use that energy to push me forwards. A real ‘fuck you, watch me’ response.
In my fourth year, I was shortlisted for a fellowship at Designworks, back when they offered a year-long internship for final-year students, and each university put forward one student. It was an amazing and generous opportunity, and clearly I had turned things around from my third year. The final interview round ended up being between myself and another amazing designer, Dee Vallabh (now a design director at forpeople in London). Funnily enough, we had attended the same high school and were both in Naomi Bell’s class together.
I ended up getting the fellowship, and Dee ended up working with Simon Oosterdijk and Kelvin Soh at The Wilderness, which I was secretly a little envious of — they were doing some really cool work back then. My final interview was with Geoff Suvalko, Jef Wong and Tana Mitchell. I worried more about what to wear than I did about the interview itself. (This may be an odd thing to say, but I love interviews.) At the end of the fellowship, I was offered a full-time junior role at Designworks, which felt extremely validating.
I was hired into Tana Mitchell’s team; she was the design director, and Sarah Callesen was the senior on the team. Both are formidable women and designers. I read a statistic recently that only 20 per cent of creative directors globally are women, and 75 per cent of women in design have never worked with a female creative director. It makes me feel very lucky that I had that experience from the start. We were working on large-scale branding projects: clients like Air New Zealand, Comvita, Methven, Tatua Farms and Britomart.
Many times I would go home late at night, defeated, feeling like I should resign before anyone found out how little I knew. It was a not-so-well-kept secret that Tana would go back into my files at the end of a day and readjust all the kerning. I also lacked so many popular and historic cultural references that everyone else just seemed to know. ‘This brand should be in the style of this, or that’, or ‘The target consumer is like X from ZYX sitcom’, they would say, and I would write these things down, go home and research them so that the next day I wouldn’t feel as dumb. I’ve been through many more steep learning curves since then, the only difference is now I have a few more years of confidence to own what I don’t yet know.
I also recall looking around me as a young designer and wondering where all the women go. There were so many women in my classes at university, easily more than half of every class. My friends and I were getting into junior roles. But if I looked upwards, it really thinned o
In terms of seeing women in leadership roles? Yes, but nowhere near as dramatically as I would have hoped. I bought a small artwork recently — it is a pane of glass that has been shattered — and it reminded me somewhat perversely of the glass ceiling that still exists, the one I continually hit my head on. The industry is still overwhelmingly led and directed by men, and industry bodies support that status quo.
I’ve started mentoring young women through design careers, and so much of it comes down to a lack of opportunity. I think that isn’t because women are less talented or less deserving; it’s because we all see men as leaders, and there’s a persistent invisibility of women in leadership roles. We have so many amazing women in our industry who continue to be largely ignored by institutions here, yet still stick their necks out and fight for change. Women like Catherine Griffiths, to whom we all owe a lot.
:quality(82)/media/homewardbooks_stuff.avif)
:quality(82)/media/homewardbooks_snailthing.avif)
I knew Heath Lowe, one of the founders of Special Group, from my university days. I did a theory paper on Dutch design, and he had recently moved to Auckland from Amsterdam with a container-load of beautiful mid-century furniture.
He and his wife, Clare Buchanan, were selling from a beautiful studio and shop in Britomart, and I interviewed them as part of my coursework. By the time I was looking for my next role, Special had just launched and I was ready for a change and new experience. I talked Heath into taking me on so that we could build out a design team together, and we had an amazing creative partnership that lasted five years. I think some of our best work came from that period. We were new, the work was ambitious, and the four partners were even more so. I learnt the value of an ambitious client and — at a relatively young age — what it took to go from being a designer to a director.
One memory comes to mind: I had commissioned an illustrator for Karma Cola’s brand work, and I underestimated how dark the illustrator’s style was. What looked thrilling and fresh in his portfolio suddenly appeared overly intimidating once we put his initial sketches on a label and tested it on the shelf. Heath was overseas at this time, and I remember thinking I just had to deal with this, own my error of judgment, and make it right. I also had to make it right with the illustrator, ensuring that they were compensated correctly for their time and understood why we had to make a change, and I had to look after the client. It was a humbling experience, but it reflects what is important to me in a project: not just the outcome but the process, and working in a way that respects and cares for everyone who has chosen to work with me. So that was a lesson in not being afraid of failure along the way to something great.
It went on to be one of our most successful and enduring projects. It’s about 15 years old now, and while the range has expanded, the core illustrations — by Beck Wheeler — and branding remain almost untouched. It was awarded a Best Awards Purple Pin and won lots of awards offshore, too, but the real win for me is that it has survived the harsh reality of being in the market for that long.
Winning awards, or having work selected and promoted online, gives you a platform and visibility, but I generally find that it’s not healthy to get too attached to the pursuit of them.
I’ve always made decisions based on whatever is the biggest growth edge that I can find, and shifting from a design director to understanding how to run a business myself seemed like the most terrifying and exciting thing I could do at that point. I was still under 30 then. Plus Tana and I both felt strongly about adding to the canon of women-led design businesses. Heath was incredibly gracious and supportive of me. It was hard to tell him that I was leaving, but he really understood it, and he was one of our loudest early champions.
Heath used to always say ‘learn on someone else’s dime’. Every big move I’ve made in my career has come with a new set of things to figure out. But I had always been interested in the business side of running a studio, and at Special I took the time to understand building out budgets, what it took to win new business, how to build a team and put them first, and how to balance that with sustainable profit so as to be able to look after a team. But understanding something in theory and then being wholly responsible for it is a big leap. The first three years of running Akin were some of my hardest.
Akin had turned 10 years old, and I am forever thankful that Tana and I both arrived at the same decision at around the same time to each try something new. It was a happy and entirely amicable moment and milestone. I like to think about it like the best television series, which know how to end on a high.
In 2024 I took some time to do some learning, particularly in the AI (artificial intelligence) space, figuring out who was using what and how. Really picking at the edges of what it means to be a designer today and tomorrow.
I’m really interested in exploring different ways of working that aren’t as extractive as industry norms. I’ve positioned myself as an independent creative director, leading a decentralised, globally-located team across a range of direct-to-client projects, as well as working freelance with existing design teams. I’ve been pitching some work as half of a design/science journalist team with Rebekah White, solving some of the world’s complex science communication challenges. I’ve also been pitching and working with brand and comms strategist Bronwyn Williams and project manager Jo Hanson, a trio we jokingly call ‘a three-legged stool’, supporting larger-scale global-facing projects with clients who need end-to-end brand and market launch support. I’m working with an interactive animator in Dubai, a 4D animator in Tokyo, designers, web developers, illustrators and the like, all over the world. I collect collaborators like Pokémon — my Rolodex is everything.
I have this really cool perspective of having a hand in the full project lifecycle, because I get to see the broad challenges that plague many organisations, and that means I can help clients in ways that reach well beyond graphic design. But also sometimes it is just me, working on typesetting a book cover, in the weeds with type. And I love that, too.
I reckon the best way to collaborate still involves being in the same room, working side-by-side. So I operate a fairly borderless practice: wherever clients are, I will come to them. I invest a lot in being in the room with people — on the project, but also as part of their worlds, simply by being together. Some of the best breakthroughs in a project are worked out accidentally over a beer. Being single makes it really easy to jump on a plane without too much logistical coordination. I’ve been travelling continually for a while now; it’s fairly rare for me to be in one place for more than three months.
Maybe both. I guess at a very top level, when I think specifically about brand design and AI tools, I want them to allow me to make and think more, rather than less. When I see people using these tools to do and think less — to cut corners — I see a pretty bland future.
:quality(82)/media/karmabottles.png)
:quality(82)/media/karma_trolley.png)
Outside of money-making things — or at least the things that are for other people, on their terms — I aim to carve out time that is about what I need, and what I have inside of me that I need to get out, and trusting that whatever that is, it is worth pursuing. Without worrying too much about what it ladders up to.
When I was at Designworks, I undertook the first year of a BA in Anthropology and Ethnographic Studies to practise writing and to think about human behaviour more deeply. Through my years at Akin I started Dogdogdog, a dog products e‑comm company, Tradespeople, a directory of women and queer people in the trades, and Emma Makes, a community fruit-preserving project. I also started a community outdoor cinema during COVID lockdowns: a weekly screening open to anyone in the neighbourhood, and to friends and their friends. One of my favourite parts of that project was designing a very quick and dirty Instagram-story-sized poster for that week.
I think it is those things that have really helped me understand my potential as a human being, and also what I like doing and how I want to build my life. I am always questioning the container, and what it allows or presents to me. Removing the financial pressure has allowed me to be a lot more loose and experimental with something. Like, if I was going to buy a cinema and run it, there are rules or conventions you have to follow, right? People start having expectations. Whereas I formed this strange little outdoor version, which wasn’t beholden to any of that. It was lo-fi, but also weirdly quite hi-fi, and I got to explore curation through it.
In many ways, though, it is hard for me to truly differentiate work and play. At the very least, they are always in conversation with each other.
Perhaps most of all, what these side projects have given me is a different mentality in which to view my career. Maybe many of the rules of this industry are a bit silly and arbitrary to begin with. So as I sit in this transitory period of my career, I am able to judge my next steps on what makes sense for me, what makes me excited. Not just what is expected, which is generally the most boring version of life.
:quality(82)/media/Dog_Dog_Dog.jpg)
Never say never. I have such an insatiable need to be around people who are, in some way, smarter than me or better at something than me. People who know things that I don’t know, and who push me and push projects for the greater good. Wherever I find those kinds of people, that’s where I want to be.
If I’m lucky, I’ll get to keep working on projects that are meaningful to me in ways that are kind to my body and expansive to my brain.
:quality(82)/media/Paris2.png)
:quality(82)/media/Paris_one.png)