BIOGRAPHY

Welcome, I am Stien Huizenga, I am finishing up a double major in Media Design and Communication Design, soon to graduate. I have a huge passion for photography, Film and Design which have kept me interested in moving forward and being innovative with what I design and create.

I have always messed around with cameras from a young age and loved the idea of capturing a moment in time which explains what is happening without words. This evolved into a passion which then expanded into a love for design and film, studying design at Waikato led me to be more creative and develop more styles for photography and film as well as create more advanced and in depth art works that appear simplistic, however have a deeper meaning. Over the 3 years of studying at Waikato, I have learned how effective design can be when it’s simplified, I also learned how to work effectively under pressure as well, I picked up some new skills and refined some existing skills. These skills range from poster designs, UX designs to short films and live production work.

Personal Website

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

For the capstone project, two classmates and I formed a group to create one large project. This worked well for us as we were from 3 different areas of design (Communication, Interface and Media). For our project, we decided to tackle the Hakarimata Walkway. Firstly, we had to visit the site and create a brand identity, after research and trial and error we finalised a colour palette, fonts and our very lovely logo. The Hakarimata Walkway is a wonderful walkway with great views and challenging climbs. However, the signage and information about these tracks are quite old and outdated. The current signs show visible wear and tear and are often overlooked, there is also a lack of safety and pathway information on the tracks. During our research we found that there was no modern website detailing the track, only the official government website and old brochures. We also found that there were little to no high quality detailed images of the track.

Christian, our Communication Designer had the task of redesigning and updating the old signage around the Summit/Waterworks Tracks on the Walkway. He also was tasked with creating brochures and introducing safety signage. To compliment this, Amish our Interface Designer was tasked with creating a clean (responsive) website and the main theme/design was based off the original website. As the Media Designer, I was tasked with creating a beautiful photo book, a promotional video and social media to complete our Hakarimata Fall Revamp “Package”. For the photos (Photobook and teammates projects) my main goal was to capture everything on location to give viewers a realistic look of the Hakarimata Walkway (Summit & Waterworks track). Furthermore, this would give the viewer an insight to what to expect on the trail (the main features) as well as something to look back onto if they completed the trail beforehand. Lastly for advertising the Hakarimata Walkway I have created Facebook and Instagram pages showcasing our work, as well as some images of the trails, tying in well with my short videos of the Hakarimata Walkway tracks. The videos contain short snippets of the track, not giving too much away so the viewers can experience the tracks themselves.

Our overall aim is to improve the environmental links between urban development as well as strengthen the economic value of the small town of Ngaruawahia. These improvements will attract more tourism and encourage people to get outside and be active, enjoying the fantastic scenic tracks scattered around New Zealand (this targets UN target goal 11.a from the UN goals list).