Lecturers
Our Graphic Design faculty have a bevy of knowledge between them, particularly in typography, brand, print and publishing.
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Maria Walls
Position:
Programme Leader, Bachelor of Media Design
A progressive interdisciplinary artist, writer and academic, Maria has worked between industry and the New Zealand higher education sector for more than twelve years. Her career has spanned fine art, media, teaching and commercial application. At Media Design School she provides specialist team management, vision and future-focused teaching. Maria holds a doctorate from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, a Masters with Distinction and a First Class Honours degree from the University of Canterbury.
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Don Chooi
Position:
Course Leader Graphic Design
Don has a Bachelor of Graphic Design from AUT. His career began at boutique design firm Grafikos – run by the late David Bartlett – where he immediately plugged into the many design disciplines and mediums involving print and multimedia. After a couple of years, Don moved to Electric Art as a senior designer where he became more involved with studio management, art and creative directing. After nearly 13 years in the role, Don joined Media Design School as its Course Leader in the Graphic Design department. Though having worked in various mediums - ranging from photography, advertising, web and print design – his passion for illustration remains.
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Matthew Stevens
Position:
Course Leader Digital Media
Matt has seven years experience in the web field and works as a freelance website designer in addition to lecturing. In his previous life, Matt ran his own independent cinema and film distribution company, was involved in the music industry and worked as a computer programmer. He brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the school.
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Steve Rood
Position:
Senior Lecturer, Media Design
Steve has spent more than 20 years in the creative industries as a designer and photographer. He studied photography at the Royal Academy in Holland and did his masters at AUT with a focus on photography and digital media. Working in Europe as a photographer for a number of years, his practice developed into a designer’s role specialising in digital media. Prior to joining Media Design School he worked at Manukau Institute of Technology.
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Katala McGregor
Position:
Lecturer, Graphic Design
Katala has a Diploma of Graphic Design and a Graduate Diploma of Digital Media from Natcoll. She began her career doing in-house work for a travel company called GO Travel, where she worked in a fast-paced environment producing a lot of print. After several years there, she moved on to Electric Art Advertising. Katala worked on a wide variety of advertising projects, which primarily included a lot of online media. Now she works as a Graphic Design lecturer at Media Design School.
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Jim Murray
Position:
Lecturer, Graphic Design
Jim Murray originally trained in England, and received a Diploma of Graphic Design from Harlow College and a degree in 3D Design from the University of De Montford. He has since had more than ten years' experience in the field of graphic design. Six of those years were spent at Interbrand, which is one of the world's leading brand consultancies. James now works at Media Design School as a Graphic Design Lecturer.
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Tatiana Tavares
Position:
Lecturer, Graphic Design
Tatiana began her career 11 years ago in her homeland of Brazil, working within Graphic Design for the Packaging Industry. Calling New Zealand home now for seven years, Tatiana also has her Masters degree in Art & Design from the Auckland University of Technology. Her research involved one of her favourite interests - Photomontage, and was entitled 'Carnival Land' a story about coming to New Zealand. Tatiana is now a lecturer of Graphic Design at Media Design School.
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Brad Hawkins
Position:
Lecturer, Digital Media
Brad specialises in front-end design and dev: UX design, branding, graphic and web interface design principles, rich banner design, HTML5, CSS3, and JQuery foundations. His career in digital media includes designer/webmaster/analyst for the Ministry of Environment in British Columbia and web designer for Draft FCB. He is a graduate of Media Design School’s Diploma of New Media Design and has a bachelor degree from Massey University.
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Ramon Thackwell
Position:
Lecturer, Digital Media
Ramon has worked in the broadcast media industry across IT systems architecture and engineering, broadcast graphic design and web design since the late 1990s, in both New Zealand and the UK. In recent years, he's focussed primarily on freelance web and interaction design/development – producing and directing a variety of material for C4TV, FOUR TV, TV3, The Edge FM, Mai FM, RadioLIVE and more while tutoring part-time. He joined Media Design School in 2012.
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Aki Fukuoka
Position:
Tutor, Traditional Art and Illustration
Aki has a bachelor degree from Elam School of Fine Arts, during which she won three awards in her final year. She has illustrated more than 70 children's books, school journals and magazines. Her best selling chapter book series Billie B has sold more than one million copies and been translated into many languages including Spanish, French, Thai, Indonesian and Turkish. Aki has worked with major publishing companies globally including Pearson, Scholastic, Hardie Grant Egmont and Learning Media. Refer to her Facebook page for recent activities and publishing information.
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Christophe Jannin
Position:
Tutor, Traditional Art
Originally from Paris, Christophe has a Masters degree specialising in Medieval Art History. He has been involved in the arts for 25 years and lectured on the topic of the French National Heritage at Reims’s Cathedral (France) and several other major monuments classified as world heritage by UNESCO. He has also worked for Hewlett Packard France as a senior graphic designer, which included producing graphic design for asset management software. In 1999, he started a successful parallel career as an independent artist and illustrator, showing his work in France, the UK, Belgium, USA and NZ.
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Anna Tokareva
Position:
Tutor
Anna completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at the Elam School of Fine Arts (University of Auckland) and a Diploma of Graphic Design at Media Design School. Anna's interests span illustration, collage, photography and graphic design. Her primary concern is with the place and importance of graphic design within society, and how visual communication and design thinking can be applied to addressing the larger issues facing the world. Currently, she is exploring the middle ground between art and graphic design and the way in which they can interact with the public in a positive, meaningful and compelling way.