Art hub for Ōtautahi

We’ve partnered with Toi Ōtautahi to develop an online hub that promotes the work of the creative sector and celebrates the wealth of talent and diversity within the city.

As long-time supporters of local art initiatives and events, our team reached out as soon as we heard about the Toi Ōtautahi partnership project – a strategy that focuses on supporting local creatives and recognising the critical role that art plays in people’s lives and the city’s economy. 

Brought on board as creative and digital partner, our first port of call was to deliver a platform that serves as a one-stop-shop for all things related to arts and creativity in Ōtautahi. 

While the objectives for the website were clear, the design brief for this project gave our team the freedom to bring a new creative vision for the arts initiative to life. We created an expressive logo design and selected a colour palette, typography and other complementary elements that reflect the creativity within the community and tie all aspects of the brand together.

“Working with Publica on Toi Ōtautahi has been such an easy and enjoyable experience. We wanted a site that would deliver a vast and diverse amount of content in an accessible way and one that would meet the needs of our local creative community as well as be a one-stop shop for local Christchurch residents who want to explore our thriving arts scene. Publica designed a site that gave us all of those things, and one that feels fresh and contemporary. It’s a living site that is designed to be updated constantly and the feedback we’ve had so far from users has been super positive and we couldn’t be happier.” — Zara Potts, Christchurch City Council Arts Advisor

Inspired by editorial style websites, the new Toi Ōtautahi platform boasts a simplistic design with featured imagery, a combination of bold typefaces and digital animations to capture people’s attention and make the website feel alive. We added specific design elements such as the banner and mihi on the homepage to reflect the cultural motifs in Ōtautahi and developed an interactive map to make it easy for users to discover different art spaces within the city’s distinct neighbourhoods. 

Our team is delighted to be a part of the Toi Ōtautahi partnership project and looks forward to collaborating on this initiative in an effort to bring more attention to all aspects of art in Christchurch and commemorate the creativity within the city and the wider Waitaha region.