Matariki Calendar Illustrations 2012

The past 4 years, I have been contracted by Native Council to design and produce the Matariki Calendar for Mana Recruitment and the Māori Pacific Job Board, celebrating the Māori New Year. The Matariki Calendar consists of illustrated whakatauki or proverbs for each month with each year following a consistent theme.

The theme for the Matariki 2012-2013 Calendar was on our native and endemic birdlife (nga manu) for which our country is well known. All the whakatauki chosen made mention of Aotearoa’s birdlife in general or speaks of a specific manu.

I began by illustrating concepts for each manu and their backgrounds before bringing the concepts into Illustrator and vectorising them. In Illustrator I added texture and colours while also making sure to leave enough space in the layout for the name of each manu and their respective whakatauki and explanations.

Following this the illustrations were placed into the Calendar layout using Indesign and the rest is history.