Andrea . Specialist Writer

14 years of business writing within creative industries - architecture and digital media - have taught me to write clearly, concisely and professionally. Three years of editorial writing for high-end design magazines, have added a journalistic style and, on occasion, a figurative edge.

Whether I am writing a design story or mapping a website, I love to see the big picture as much as diving into the detail, crafting astute and elegant text. This requires a strategic approach; the grit of interviewing and fact-finding; and the art of pulling it all together to engage the target audience.

I’ve written about the who’s who in New Zealand design for Australian magazines Habitus and Indesign, and Wallpaper* in the UK. In 2009 I wrote a book about human and natural histories of the Bay of Islands.

In digital media I have managed website developments for the likes of Neil Finn, Export Gold, Healtheries, Sovereign, BNZ Finance and Air New Zealand. And in a past life, I was an architect with Jasmax, Architectus and RTA Studio.

Business proposals, terms of reference, and creative and functional briefs were my training ground. This discipline, among other things, gave me a strong appreciation for the marketing objectives of a diverse range of organisations.

Along the way, I have completed a couple of postgraduate marketing papers at the University of Auckland.

These days - alongside writing for print - I am specialising in content strategy, information architecture and writing for the web. Digital publishing is here, and it requires a very different, and more dynamic, communication style than print.

Architecture and the building industry.
Design – interior, spatial, furniture, industrial, object, jewellery and fashion.
Natural health and nutrition.
Technical writing.
Website development – project definition, competitor review, content strategy, information architecture and writing for the web.

Well-paced
Rhythmic writing takes the reader on a joyful ride - sentence by sentence, detail by detail.

Well pitched
I pitch to the target audience. My favourite registers are conversational, lyrical and narrative.

Concise
The art for me is to use as few words as practical, to convey as much meaning as possible.

Elegantly voiced
This is the hallmark of my writing.

Design Quarterly (Magazine)

I wrote this article for Australian industry magazine Design Quarterly. It introduces the graphic design studio Inhouse in a light and conversational way, covering a lot of ground in few words.

Indesign (Magazine)

NZi3 is the University of Canterbury’s ICT research centre. In this piece, I describe the function of the building, and how, in metaphor, it portrays its purpose. I love the way the article moves between art and science - something for everyone.

Habitus (Magazine)

People profiles are often more challenging than writing about inanimate design objects - particularly when the person in question is the distinguished architect Marshall Cook. Just like the man himself, the article needed to be intelligent and insightful.