Fire and Emergency NZ

Fire and Emergency is New Zealand's unified urban and rural firefighting and emergency services organisation. It was established on 1 July 2017 to bring together the New Zealand Fire Service, the National Rural Fire Authority, and 38 rural fire districts and territorial authorities. They are responsible for New Zealand's fire safety, firefighting, hazardous substance incident response, vehicle extrication and urban search and rescue, employing over 1,800 professional career firefighters and over 11,000 volunteer firefighters. Fire and Emergency is a Crown Entity and is governed by a Crown Appointed Board.

From October 2019 to May 2022, I worked as the sole in-house designer at Fire and Emergency New Zealand, supporting a nationwide emergency services organisation during a period of rapid growth, public scrutiny, brand consolidation, and a global pandemic. I joined the week leading up to the SkyCity Convention Centre fire and was immediately producing high-profile public communications - including large-scale outdoor and digital messaging - before taking on a broad mix of campaign, brand, publication and internal design work.

A key part of my role was helping mature Fire and Emergency's emerging brand system as it had been established only two years prior. Over nearly three years, I delivered hundreds of design assets across campaigns, COVID-19 communications, Pride and Rainbow Network initiatives, animated video content, infographics, uniform applications, billboard advertising, social media storytelling, and long-form publications. I also designed multiple reports and internal resources, and led the art direction and design for Ignite, Fire and Emergency's quarterly staff magazine, distributed to thousands of firefighters and volunteers nationwide.

I worked on my first nationwide marketing campaigns as an in-house production artist, and was very proud to be a small part of incredible work created for Fire and Emergency by FCB, WonderLab, Flux, Mark Creative, Creature and many others. It was a life-changing role which taught me a lot about designing at scale, under pressure, and with real-world impact, and I am forever grateful to everyone at Fire and Emergency NZ.