"Music plays a key role in forming the identity and telling the stories of a city. We express ourselves through music, and in turn that music expresses who we are. 

For Māori, music is a divine gift passed down by the gods. It is embedded in traditional ceremony and preserves stories of the past. These stories live on today, woven into our culture and city. 

As time passes, our stories will mix with the songs and sounds of the future. Creating a new chorus and adding to the ever-evolving story of this place, Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland."

In late 2017, Tāmaki Makaurau was designated a UNESCO City of Music within the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. 

The designation acknowledges the long, rich musical history of the region and the cities commitment to further strengthening all aspects of music culturally, institutionally and from an industry standpoint. It sees Tāmaki Makaurau join a global network of 31 Cities of Music, and a wider network of over 180 Creative Cities.  

The brief was to develop a City of Music tohu (logo) that reflected the two key cornerstones of the designation; music and Māori culture. The tohu needed to work locally, nationally and internationally, and be a robust mark that performs at all sizes, across all future applications.

We started with storytelling. Writing the above quoted narrative as a poetic expression of music in Tāmaki Makaurau. This narrative was the springboard for our tohu design and helped steer all other aspects of the brand.

We designed a contemporary tohu that is a unique musical note for Tāmaki Makaurau. It connects music, Maori identity and storytelling. It references the dual tones of bass and treble represented by Papatūānuku and Ranginui, the rhythmic and lyrical qualities of Māori kōwhaiwhai patterning, and leverages off the most universally recognised symbol for music.

We designed a range of branded touchpoints for local, industry and governance level audiences. This included promotional story cards, lightboxes for festivals, t-shirts and stickers for local industry, animated tohu assets for use in video, silver pin badges for government stakeholders and international partners, a strategy document outlining the city’s short, medium and long term ambitions, and an accompanying launch website.

These elements, guided by our narrative and tohu, all play a part in helping to weave the story of music further into the fabric and identity of our city, Tāmaki Makaurau UNESCO Pā Puoro.