The AUT Design students and their Voices of the Future logo. Clockwise from top left: Farin Dickinson, Georgia Billman,
Cody Wadham-Burke, Katie Shepherd and Nick Zeff.
A group of AUT design students are thrilled their work has gone global, after they created the APEC Voices of the Future
2021 logo.
The five friends, who are graduating this year with a Bachelor in Communications Studies, majoring in Design, were asked
to create a digital brand for the AUT-hosted event, which is taking place in November.
They had previously worked on a branding assignment together as part of their degree but the Voices freelance commission
was their first experience working in the “world outside AUT. We’ve made something that has a real impact which is
awesome. It definitely feels good to have our work out there in the world”, says group spokesperson Farin Dickinson from
Ponsonby.
She and her colleagues - Georgia Billman (Clevedon), Katie Shepherd (Belmont), Cody Wadham-Burke (Albany) and Nick Zeff
(Huapai), all from Auckland and aged 20 and 21 – were given free rein to design the logo, with the colour palette the
only guide they needed to keep to.
Explaining their process, Farin says Voices is about bringing people together so they wanted to represent that
interconnectivity, while also paying homage to Auckland and New Zealand. “The intertwined blue shapes symbolise the
islands of Aotearoa in an abstract way, with a similar curvature and the winding, long, white cloud form.”
The five students have never been involved with Voices of the Future in the past but say they now are considering doing
so in the future. But, first, they are on the hunt for jobs in the advertising/design industry in New Zealand.
The students were supervised by Art and Design Lecturer, Tatiana Tavares from Department of Communication Design. “The
VOTF project is an example of the real-life, practical industry experience students get when they study with us at the
AUT Communication Design degree. This means our graduates are even more prepared when they enter the workforce.”
Voices of the Future is an annual youth event which brings together 18 to 24-year-olds from across the APEC region to
discuss the big issues facing the world and have their voices heard. Hosted by AUT, it is being held on November 9 and
10, and is part of APEC Leaders’ Week, the culmination of New Zealand’s hosting of APEC 2021. At the end of Voices,
youth delegates will present their Declaration to APEC 2021 Chair, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on behalf of the nearly
one billion young people across the APEC region.