Ngatea Primary School

When engaging with Sasha to develop our school visuals, it was not a working relationship, but a working experience. Sasha took us on an amazing journey to reconnect to our beliefs and values and our local community. Sasha listened to our stories, our needs, our vision and she paid us a visit to get a better understanding of our school culture and environment. And with her incredible talents, Sasha was able to transform all this information into some wonderful graphics, very specific to our needs and semi rural context. No task was too small or too large researching our school history, our connection to tangata whenua, and taking on board any feedback given. And now our school visuals form the centerpieces of our school environment. Thank you, Sasha. What an amazing experience with equally amazing outcomes.

Neil Fraser, Principal Ngatea Primary School

logo.

Ngatea Primary School had a logo which was an assemblage of clip art, which they didn’t even have in file formats or at a resolution to meet their day to day needs. However, as we undertook the full visual story / rebranding – the logo itself were all elements which they wished to retain. In totally they communicated the story of the local flora and fauna and the origin of the Hauraki Plains as wetlands. So the redesign of the logo retained all these important elements, while updating it to tie in with the full visual story / rebranding, and provide the school with all the files and formats they required.

visual story | branding

For the focus of Ngatea Primary School’s visual story / branding the focus of the imagery were the flora and fauna found in the local Kopuatai Peat Dome (and as representative of that which would have inhabited the wetlands of the plains pre-European inhabitation). The imagery created was used throughout their school wayfinding and classroom / studio signs including acting as binding elements through their vision, values and learning power mural signs.

school houses.

Ngatea Primary School had school houses which they believed to have been named after original boats working in the area. However, they’d never been able to confirm this information. In the process of researching for this job I was able to locate records of steamships working in the area and was able to confirm the school house names were indeed named after boats working in the area in early European times. We used these boats, tied in with elements of the school visual story / branding, to create shields for each school house.

values.

This substantial mural had several key focuses. Primarily it was to visually represent the school values in a way that the children could engage with and identify with. It included the local flora and fauna of the school visual story / branding – as well as reflecting the school community as it is today – largely a dairy farming community. The inclusion of the community and environment was relevant to the values as one of the levels was the community.

The bright colours were inspired by an existing mural created by a school parent that Ngatea Primary School wanted to tie in with.