Taipari Taitimu is a series of 30 site specific posters that highlight our inherent connection to water.

The brief was to design posters for a large row of hoardings surrounding a construction site in Auckland’s Britomart Precinct. The posters had to reference the area, and inform the public in a highly visual way. Our approach took elements of the past and paired them with the present day. 

Historically for Māori, in pre-colonial times the area was a bustling shoreline of incoming and outgoing waka (canoes) and offered a bounty of seafoods for local iwi (tribes). One key geographical difference was the location of the shoreline. The original Auckland shoreline sat much further inland, and if it were still in place today, our posters would be underwater. 

In the present day, the shoreline has long since been reclaimed, and is now home to Britomart, one of the busiest metropolitan precincts in our country. Despite all the manmade progress, it is still a point of convergence where people go to eat, meet and connect with the ocean.

Our posters sought to reflect this underlying sentiment and share the Māori worldview that people, water and life are inseparable. On first sight, from afar the posters resemble an ocean of currents flowing in all directions and acknowledge the original shoreline. Upon closer inspection we see an ocean of people, navigating their way through the ebbs and flows of daily life.

The result is a series of 30 unique and striking contemporary Māori posters that standout vividly in a busy urban setting. 

To accompany the hoardings, we designed a limited run of silver posters which were given out freely with an accompanying explanation sheet, during the 2 month duration of the placement.