This was the view (sort of) from my Wellington CBD office window for 15 or so years. In idle moments I used to imagine different shapes of the hills as if an earthquake was happening. I decided that the idea might work for the phone book cover – which (randomly) left me only a weekend to do it before entries closed.
So I listed what Telecom would want – bright colours/contrasts (ie easier to find), matt surface (easier to photograph), recognisable image/s, relevance to 2003 local events etc. The big deal in May 2003 was filming of the 3rd part of Lord of the Rings and the world premiere in December – lots of self-congratulation about how creative Welly is blah blah. Yet its also a city dressed in black and full of civil servants, bless them.
So I had Gollum shaking the corporate carpet with the creative side underneath. He originally had fingers and a nose poking over the top – except that I stopped to take the kids to sport and the mix dried on me (hot day) – I couldn’t possibly have found it again (colour blind!) so the fingers, and that concept perhaps, had to go. I also broke their rule re not breaching copyright – I figured that if they wanted it badly enough, they would sort it.
Telecom took forever to announce the winner – as that went on, I started to imagine it might be because, maybe, copyright problems. By the time that the Telecom lady called, I was getting more persuaded, so she was a bit taken aback when I didn’t get excessively excited (plus I was in work mode) – 300,000 copies and $3500 for 10 hours work which funded an extra month off the following summer. And Telecom auctioned it for $650 to benefit Woman’s Refuge.
And that’s my story.
Alistair McDonald's Art 