Dulux - Paint chip mosaic

Dulux had 5 3rd yr Massey students work with their idea to create these amazing pieces as part of the exhibition. Based on the following, I'd say Massey is good at passing on opportunities of work/experience and design jobs to students who are keen for it. Massey is an encouraging and inspiring place to study. 

Paint Chip Mosaic Showcases the power of colour to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary

Author: Dulux and Dock Street Group, Taken from the Dinz website.

What do you get when you take a two metre blank canvas, 21,000 Dulux paint chips in over 100 different colours, a whole lot of creativity and a bucket full of muscle?

Visitors at the internationally acclaimed World Press Photo exhibition, which was held in Wellington from September 17 to October 10, had the chance to find out for themselves, with leading New Zealand paint manufacturer Dulux teaming up with Massey University School of Design students to create an evolving work of art at the Shed 11 exhibition space that was made entirely out of thousands of Dulux Colours of New Zealand paint chips.

Showcasing the power of colour to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, over 21,000 Dulux paint chips were used over the course of the exhibition to create a large scale paint chip mosaic, which was transformed every second day to reveal a series of iconic Kiwi images, ranging from a Tiki to a Tui to a Maori warrior and concluding with a quintessential Kiwi bach.

“We wanted to show Kiwis the power of colour to transform a blank space into something magical, and thought what better way than to do that than creating Kiwi works of art using thousands of swatches from the Dulux Colours of New Zealand range,” said Shontelle Crosswell, Marketing Manager at Dulux New Zealand.

Each “work of art” was comprised of 1,750 paint chips, with each paint chip representing an individual pixel from each image. Following a “colours by numbers” approach, paint chips were individually hand applied to a blank canvas to form each image. Every second day of the exhibition, new paint chips were added, transforming one image into the next.

Third year design students Nandini Nair, Tara Fowler, Alice Murray, Sophie Tricker and Elspeth Hoskin from Massey University’s School of Design were responsible for designing the evolving, eye catching installation at the exhibition.

A video, showcasing the making of the installation, will be available to view on YouTube soon.

WHAT WAS INVOLVED IN MAKING THE DULUX PAINT CHIP MOSAIC:

• A 1.5 m x 2 m blank canvas
• 21,000 Dulux Colours of New Zealand paint chips in 109 different colours from Dulux’s Colours of New Zealand range
• A whole lot of muscle
• The creative talents of five Massey University students - Nandini Nair, Tara Fowler, Alice Murray, Sophie Tricker and Elspeth Hoskin.

BLAST - Dissolving design disciplines

BLAST is a great example of how Massey Lecturers and Tutors have got together and decided to run an event for the students to expose them to some local design work. It's always inspiring to see what people not a lot older than us are doing and this gave what we are learning at uni some context in the outside world. We could also see how people worked, some as collectives with even hierarchy, some in partners and others with friends in their spare time (all having full time day jobs). The exciting part after this initial idea is that some Massey 3rd year students got to design everything for the conference, which is a great experience and chance to build up work for their portfolio's.


The girls (Alice, Elspth, Sophie, Tara and Nanz) did a great job of putting together BLAST'S advertising and promotional stuff, as well as doing the set and taking care of the general running of the conference. Such a great idea to have a conference on a topic which the teachers were trying to find out more about. At University we major in a topic weather it be: Digital, Graphic Design, Textiles, Fashion, Photography, Interactive, Spatial, Illustration, Industrial, the list goes on a bit. What some of our lectures were trying to figure out, is do the disciplines exist to the same extent outside of the University walls. So we got to hear a variety of opinions on the matter from people within various practices; With quite different ways of running their businesses. Design can cover such a range of things it seeps its way into most things, or maybe thats just how we see it because we tend to take things with a very designedly approach. This further illustrates the collaborative side of massey both in the putting together of the conference, the speakers they chose and the topics for which they chose them for. 


For a full run down on what the speakers talked about see my initial blog on BLAST that I wrote not long after I attended.