The Cultigraphy Giving Guide for Ethical Kiwis 2023

December is here, which means Secret Santas are being hat-shaken to life in offices across Aotearoa (not another generic gift card, please), and it’s time to wrack your brains for the perfect prezzies for your mates.

At Cultigraphy, we love the Kiwi (and Aussie) scene of ethical and climate-positive businesses. We also love excellent design. There are seriously cool things popping out of our little country—things that are changing the world for the better, and also make for epic gifts under the tree. For the always escaping to the bush or the always somehow awake at 6am, here’s our best picks for festive gifts that are delightful, buzzing with character, and 100% not boring.

Spiced Orange Limited Edition Syrup | $19.50

Six Barrel Soda makes natural, low-waste syrups and seltz drops for the sparkliest water in Aotearoa. Teaming up with Everybody Eats, a pay-as-you-feel restaurant rescuing food, the syrup is made with orange rinds donated from a juice company.

Unyoked Nature Prescription | $269

Unyoked has just the right medicine for the worker bees who have spent way too much time in the hive this year. One night in the windswept wilderness might do the trick. A truly considered experience that we can personally vouch for.

Native Tree E-Card | $10+

Trees That Count is a charity planting trees in restoration projects all over Aotearoa. For a gift card that isn’t boring, send your coworker (who enjoys walking the Waitakeres on weekends) a beautiful digital card that helps to grow our brighter future.

The Local Project Annual Subscription | $127.50

Architecture and design lovers will rejoice in this annual subscription to Aussie-based editorial, The Local Project. Quiet, refined, and a real beauty to look at, the volumes feature some of the leading sustainable design firms in Aotearoa.

3 Box Taster Pack Specialty Coffee Pods | $34.50

Good coffee in cool packaging. It’s that simple. Flight Coffee works hard for ethically sourced beans and a recycling system that turns their bags into fence posts. Compatible with Nespresso for that buddy who can’t live without a morning brew.

Sevigny Apple Leather Crossbody Bag | $289

You heard right, this luxurious bag is made of apples. Velvet Heartbeat makes plant-based, slow fashion accessories, with minimal environmental impact.

Classic Towel Tangerine | $88

A super soft towel for lazing on the beach and dreaming you’re in Europe. Baskk makes them in Turkey with organic OEKO-TEX® certified cotton, and donates to regenerating Australian landscapes.

Softer Volumes: nōto | $49

nōto is for that creative who never stays in one place. The notebook draws inspiration from the subtle, warm Japanese aesthetic, and features hand-picked recommendations for 20 destinations. Softer Volumes is our go-to for purposeful contemporary design.

Charity Donations | $20+

There are plenty of local organisations you can support this Christmas, and humanitarian crises around the world to give help. Maybe pop the receipt in a nice card (that’s what we’re doing). Here’s our choice suggestions:

• For The Love of Bees | A regenerative farm in Tāmaki Makaurau

• Forest & Bird | Conservation of our native birds

• Orange Sky | Free laundry and showers for homeless Kiwis

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All product images belong to the respective brands. This is not a sponsorship, partnership, or affiliation post. We’re just big fans.

Community Event Recap—Sol + Gather: Spring Picnic

On a drizzly spring morning, 18 passionate creatives, business owners, & climate advocates (and Luigi the dog) gathered together to enjoy our very first Sol + Gather event.

A collaboration with Kaaio Studio, the Spring Picnic on Saturday 7 October was our inaugural Sol + Gather event—a regenerative community event series where we bring together Tamaki Makaurau’s folks to raise funds for climate initiatives, promote sustainable practices, and connect like-minded people across disciplines. Sol + Gather is good vibes, laidback, and relaxed—an opportunity to get to know people and discuss your journey, without the formal (at times awkward) atmosphere of traditional networking events.

From design, climate, tech, and law, the attendees were wonderfully diverse and sparked exciting conversations about their work & passions, challenges, and dreams for the future. Despite the rain disrupting our plans, the energy was palpable and everyone left in high spirits.

Thanks to the support of the attendees, we raised $250 for Plastic Oceans Australasia’s ‘Picnics Unwrapped’ campaign.

Plastic Oceans Australasia is a non-profit organisation working to change the world’s attitude to plastic within a generation. Their educational programs and research for enterprises and schools guide people towards more sustainable lifestyles.

The delicious kai for our picnic was plant-based, low waste, zero-plastic, and local—kindly curated by our collaborator The Sustainable Food Co.

Each Sol + Gather event works with or features great sustainable businesses in Aotearoa. Beverages were from Karma Sodas, a Kiwi company on a mission to be the world’s most ethical soft drink. Thank you LILA by Liv (conscious and contemporary fashion) for the gift cards we gave to our attendees; and Wonder & Bloom for the event photography.

Sol + Gather: Summer will be held in January 2024. Keep an eye out on our social media!

From Issue N°05: Websites for Sustainable Brands (That Aren’t Boring).

There’s a giant question looming over many a changemaker’s head, and it sounds something like this: how do we get the public to act upon climate change (and social equity)?

Getting the average person interested & participating in your initiative is a tricky problem, and one that can be argued back and forth upon from many different angles. Climate alarm? Optimism? How about not even mentioning climate at all?

What we can generally agree on is that climate movements tend to lack the excitement and cultural impact of consumerist, corporate-driven brands—take, for a recent example, the hot pink Barbie craze that swept across global social media.

Building that level of engagement is an immensely complex (and often high budget) challenge, but as changemakers, we can start with a simple goal—by creating brand experiences that aren’t boring!

For non-profits and community-focused organisations, ‘boring’ can be a particularly common trap when trying to engage the general public, but there’s plenty we can do to ramp up wider interest. Let’s begin with one of the most important touchpoints: the website. Here’s our 9 fave design tricks for engaging & inspiring web experiences that strengthen your impact!

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Immersive Visuals

Punchy Colours

A strong, bold application of brand colours tends to be plenty more fun than plain ol’ white. Different coloured sections & pages help to keep visitor attention switched on. With colour psychology, colours have the power to continuously communicate & strengthen the spirit of your organisation—without a single word.

Creative Use of Iconography

Icons are an ultra versatile asset in branding—they can be applied at different scales and patterns to create a delightful and consistent visual language. They can also provide tiny points of visual interest throughout a website to break up text (without imagery).

Full Page Imagery & Video

Transport your visitor to the community you’re building, the vibrant future you’re shaping, or wilderness you’re protecting with high-quality imagery and video that takes up the entire screen. By helping the viewer feel the place, you can build sympathy to your cause. Word of warning: large scale images and videos can generate bigger carbon emissions and loading times on websites. Try compressing the files or being selective.

Snappy Copywriting

Visual Emphasis

Linking copy to visuals—such as a call to action with a matching animation—can really drive your message home. This kind of copy to visual synchrony and storytelling is also just lots of fun for a visitor to scroll through.

Keep It Short!

There’s nothing more boring than a wall of 12pt text. Keep it short, snappy, and cool. Try communicate your message in the most concise word count for the greatest impact.

Brand Voice

Crafting an interesting brand voice and using it across the entire website can give your organisation a strong character that, if done right, can humanise your initiative and speak to the visitor on a relatable level. There’s also creative ways to apply your brand voice to inject humour and delight into the experience.

Dynamic Animations & Depth

Scroll Animations

As the visitor scrolls down the site, they trigger animated elements moving in, changing scale, rotating, etc. Scroll-based animations can create a super fun, effortless experience that compels the visitor to keep scrolling.

Reactive Effects

Similar to scroll animations, when a visitor does something (e.g. hover over an image) the specific element can animate; perhaps the cursor switches colour or the image flashes as a slideshow. These micro surprises encourage the visitor to keep exploring the site.

Parallax & Layering

Give depth and three-dimensionality to the site for a more immersive feel—almost as if the visitor is moving through a space. One way to achieve this is by layering elements; another is the parallax effect on scroll (background image moving at a different speed to the front elements).

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Keen to create an attention-hooking, compelling website for your cause?

From Issue N°04: Optimism & Hope in Communication for Purpose-Led Brands.

Now at the point where climate change is becoming a tangible reality for more and more people across the globe—in the form of destructive weather events like the January floods in Tāmaki Makaurau—the way we communicate climate issues, and solutions, is becoming more nuanced, complex, and under exponential pressure to make a real difference.

While exposing the devastation of climate change is absolutely crucial in climate activism, particularly when dealing with greenwashing and big polluters, fear-based communication runs the risk of pushing everyday citizens into the sand. For if the future is apocalyptic and we feel as if we’re powerless to stop it, the alternative (turning a blind eye to the issues and seeking comfort) is a hell of a lot more attractive. Even the most passionate climate activists understand this feeling all too well.

Hope-based communication is a powerful strategy to inspire collective action and unite communities. It can shift public opinions of climate action from pointless, too difficult, or irrelevant to me towards meaningful, enjoyable, and I want to help realise our better world. The majority of people already have enough worry and stress to deal with. When 9-5 humdrum, the rising cost of living, and climate anxiety are weighing on people’s shoulders—a hopeful, thriving, and beautiful future can be the shining light on the horizon.

For purpose-led businesses, non-profit organisations, and community groups, brand & communications strategy is the bridge to connect climate action and social equity with positive emotions (this is our approach at Cultigraphy). Here’s 3 different ways you can build that bridge!

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Light-Hearted Messaging

Brand Messaging (what message the brand wants to convey) and Tone of Voice (how a brand communicates the message) strongly influences how people feel. A cold, harsh, dominant tone can put people on edge and perhaps on the defensive; a down-to-earth, warm, and friendly tone can reassure people and make them feel more encouraged to participate. In recent, pandemic-and-disaster-riddled years, it’s easy to understand which tone everyday citizens will tend to gravitate to.

Light-hearted messaging (when done right—we don’t want to sound fake or cheesy!) can foster a sense of community and relatability that is essential when mobilising people to take certain actions. This is a key reason why cottagecore and retro nostalgia have been such popular Gen Z trends. The happiness and comforting atmospheres these trends envision are accessible and easy to bring into our everyday lives.

Dream up stirring messages and taglines with Brand Messaging, maintain a cohesive brand voice across employees with Tone of Voice Guidelines, and create delightful, relatable content with Copywriting!

Nurturing A Supportive Community

Community is not something people usually think of when it comes to branding, but the most successful businesses understand the importance of community in their brand strategies. For climate action, it’s always uplifting to see lots of other people pitching in for a shared goal (it was an exciting day when we discovered Creatives For Climate). Communities have the power to re-motivate people if they feel discouraged and provide support in their endeavours, opening up a safe space for conversation, connections, and collaboration.

Purpose-led brands can nurture collective hope & optimism for the future, and encourage action, by creating welcoming and inclusive spaces that people really want to join. This might be a digital platform with fun resources and user-generated content, or an in-person community with climate initiatives and get-togethers.

Identify the ways you can build community with Brand Strategy, draw people in with aesthetic Social Media Marketing, and host dreamy gatherings with Event Design.

Visceral Branding

Visceral: based on deep feeling and emotional reactions rather than on reason or thought.

Designing for feelings is a core principle of great brand design, and designing for visceral emotions can catalyse movements. Branding visualises and elicits specific emotions in audiences, using specific design elements woven together into a dynamic narrative. Techniques such as colour psychology create mental connections between a brand and preexisting associations, memories, and experiences.

Evoking hope with branding could mean bright, refreshing, and nature-infused colours; or easy to read and friendly typography; or perhaps bouncy animated elements. It’s all about being human, and uplifting energy. Combined with messaging and community, a lively and accessible vision for the future can be brought to life. Create a fresh and compelling visual narrative with Brand Identity, and strengthen your vision with a brand ecosystem traversing Website Design & Development, Product Design, and Print & Digital Marketing.

We can help you with all of this here!

From Issue N°03: Cult Brands & How to Build Them.

Brands that keep people coming back, earn raving referrals to friends, and build a lively community around an experience unlike any other. Cult status, or becoming a brand with a devoted following and press-worthy reputation, is a much talked about enigma. But how can we actually build a cult experience?

Here’s how our studio approaches this challenge—and how you can integrate brand experience techniques as a business owner or designer, no matter your size!

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A Powerful Hero Concept

At the heart of every cult brand is an incredibly strong force that drives everything they do: they know exactly who they are, what they stand for, and what they give to the world. This is where vision + values come in handy (read more on this here) because they give you a clear direction to identify these three pillars, and begin shaping a hero concept unique to your business.

A powerful brand concept often has very little to do with the actual products or services. It has everything to do with the dreams or frustrations of your people. Let’s look at Unyoked: an Aussie cabin brand with a devoted cult following. Instead of advertising as ‘luxury holiday cabins’ or ‘relaxing escapes’ (because there are thousands of those), they tap into the frazzled, over-worked 9-5 grind to create an entirely unique brand that is a beautiful antidote to this issue.

Cultigraphy dives beyond archetypes and target audience, gets right to the heart of the business, and identifies the seed of the vision. Often clients will have many things they want to do with their business or organisation—sometimes pointing in different directions—and it’s our job as a brand strategist to weave the directions into a single, powerful, catalysing force. It’s a process that requires hefty thinking and research, depending on the complexity of the business goals, but is an integral element of standout brands.

Non-Profit Initiative, The Climate Action Conference: A successful 2 day experience propelled by comprehensive branding.

A Three-Dimensional Experience

Once the hero concept has been created and focused into a single direction, an experience is built upon it. The brand visuals are just one aspect of this; copywriting, internal business strategy, marketing approach, adjacent business activities, and customer journey from touchpoint to touchpoint are equally as important. An unforgettable, glowing-review experience configures every single element of the journey, and overarching presence, to increasingly strengthen the hero concept.

You can discover more about the actual techniques Cultigraphy harnesses to build a three-dimensional experience in our upcoming newsletter!

Jewellery Brand, Linzie Smith: A temporal, poetic experience built on the discovery of ancient treasures.

An Agile Brand Ecosystem

Here’s where the visuals finally come into play! New, breakthrough, high-profit brands (note: this is different from individual viral products) typically share this characteristic in their visual design: a cohesive, flexible, dynamic system. This includes design elements such as colour, typography, and iconography. An ecosystem enables the brand to retain the strength of their presence across all touchpoints; while keeping it fresh, responsive to change, and always interesting.

Cultigraphy designs agile ecosystems that cut out the waste. No matter your size, we create powerful brand experiences that strike a real chord—for local businesses and national organisations alike.

Cult Concept, Major Aoraki: An organic coffee brand drawing from the wonders of the Southern night skies.

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From Issue N°02: The Art of Cultivating Impact.

Strengthening the impact of changemakers.

Our mission is to support changemakers, across diverse industries, via a combination of brand development (aka improving their marketing and communication) and financial boosts. Visual design, as an industry, generally stays away from the environmental and social climate—despite the hefty amount of capital moving around. We want to change that, and repurpose what we gain from a highly profitable industry for good.

Agile brand ecosystems that cut out the waste.

Our approach to brands doesn’t just stop at helping our inspiring clients—our business aims to propel change via clear, genuinely effective, and interdisciplinary climate action. No BS, just getting it done. As a young startup, our roster is currently limited to partnerships, non-profit discounts, tree funding, and research (you can read more about these on our Impact page) but there’s plenty more in the works! We’re lucky to be connected with Auckland’s community of changemakers and positioned in between multiple fields, from architecture to policy. Let’s make the most of it.

The Next 3 Steps In Our Climate Action Roadmap

1. Event Sponsorships — Building on our existing partnership model, we’re keen to directly support conferences/festivals that advance climate action + social equity in Aotearoa. Coming soon (hopefully).

2. Grassroots Initiatives — Educational and outdoor events that go beyond secondary support, such as awareness campaigns or organising tree plantings.

3. Grants Fund (or similar) — Further away, but something particularly important to us in the wake of Council budget cuts.

These actions are looking to roll out steadily from late 2023. Keep up-to-date on our progress at Instagram!

From Issue N°01: The Power of Vision + Values in Business.

Socially responsible visions and impactful values are becoming more and more important to modern day consumers. Inherently, sustainable and ethical business is driven by a collective vision: to make a positive difference, to help the environment recover, to do what they can (small or big) for a better future. This is a powerful thing, and understanding the potential of your vision + values for your business strategy gives you a significant advantage in a traditionally profit-driven market, as well as a tool to achieve that collective vision.

Vision, put simply, is your big picture. Perhaps something like this: a circular textile industry that pays workers fair wages.

Values are the principles that help achieve your vision. This may include: transparency, collaboration, compassion, etc.

Connecting, not Competing

Carving out your own unique position in the market decreases the need to compete, and enables you to better connect with people on an emotional basis. By integrating values into your business, you are no longer competing at the baseline of product. There’s always someone cheaper priced, more well known, or better skilled; if you’re merely competing product against product, or service against service, the reason for people to choose you may become imperceptible in the thousands of similar businesses. Sculpting your brand to exist as something more than selling & consuming automatically narrows down the scope and creates a deeper reason for people to fall in love with what you do.

Empathy & Relatability to Audience

Infusing your values into business gives it a beating heart that people with similar values will naturally gravitate to. This will enable you to really understand, emphasise, and adapt with your audience. As a sustainable business, one that genuinely cares about making a good impact for the environment (no greenwashing here), it also has a built-in degree of trustworthiness. When you clearly communicate this through branding, justify with high quality work or services, and build credibility through customer appreciation, your business can form a wonderfully positive, emotional, long-lasting connection with your people.

Resilience to Instability

Starting up a business is easy. Keeping that business alive past the first year is a lot damn harder. When businesses first launch, it’s difficult to gain visibility in the market regardless of your product quality, especially if you’re a small business starting from scratch. And there’s going to be mistakes, steep learning curves, and inconsistent revenue that can be incredibly discouraging. Where the power of vision + values truly shines is in these lows. When there’s something you truly care about beyond the numbers, there’s a much stronger motivation to keep moving forward, ride the wave, and most importantly, enjoy your business despite the struggles.

Clarity in Decision-Making

In relation to resilience, your vision + values act as a instinctual compass that, if consciously identified and strategically acted upon, can help you make the right decisions for your business. There’s countless business tips and marketing hacks out there. Realistically, many contradict each other and won’t be the right fit for your business journey. How do you figure out which of these strategies is best? Having vision + values that is true to who you are will naturally guide you to 1) identifying the target market your business will benefit the most and 2) making cohesive decisions that work together to shift your business forward.

Building a Viable Long-Term Strategy

Finally—it is also a powerful guiding tool in setting up a strong strategy and navigating the highs and lows of the years ahead. A unique brand identity and effective marketing strategy are both founded on visualising your business in the short-to-long term. Supported by market awareness, business knowledge, and financial literacy—your vision + values will help build a realistic, actionable, and crystal clear strategy that reaches your goals (revenue or impact) without burning you out.

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Our vision is a world taking the right actions to step back from the edge of climate breakdown. Our values are innovation, pragmatism, agility, and empathy. Every Cultigraphy brand is grown from the roots—we maximise the power of your purpose through deep-dive strategy and outstanding brand experience. Let me know your thoughts on vision + values (by replying to the newsletter) or check out how we can work together to strengthen your impact.