Anna Brown
Professor of Design and Public Good | Director / Kaiwhakahaere: Toi Āria: Design for Public Good
Professor Anna Brown is the founder and research lead of Toi Āria: Design for Public Good in the College of Creative Arts. The team at Toi Āria believe that design has a role to play in delivering public good and are interested in how conversations and community engagement can drive social change. Their impact research seeks to connect organisations, government and communities with the views and needs of the ‘people most affected’.
Anna is a Principal Investigator at Te Punaha Mātatini, a Centre of Research Excellence hosted by the University of Auckland, an Associate Investigator at QuakeCore, and Special Advisor (Research) to the Digital Council for Aotearoa.
Anna is an award-winning practicing designer. She has completed commissions nationally and internationally with visual artists, curators, editors and musicians. She is chair of Massey University Press and enjoys supervising postgraduate students across the MDes, MFA and PhD programmes.
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Expertise
Participatory design, co-production, co-design, public good, community engagement, social impact research, editorial design, graphic design, typography.
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Recent research successes
Digital Council of Aotearoa
In 2021, Toi Āria was commissioned by the Digital Council of Aotearoa to undertake a co-design engagement, exploring the question: what is needed to ensure people in Aotearoa New Zealand have the right levels of trust required to harness the full societal benefits of digital and data-driven technologies? Most research on automated decision-making is produced in an academic context and does not include hearing directly from people who are most affected by these systems. To respond to the Council’s aim to hear from a diverse range of people Toi Āria ran a series of in-person and online workshops with over 180 participants during 2020, including blind and vision impaired; ethnic community leaders and youth; Māori and Pacific youth; women with migrant and refugee backgrounds; Whānau Ora navigators (Māori health advocates); young people with care experience; and members of the general public. Workshop participants shared their insights about how automated decision-making should be used now, and their vision for building a better digital future that centres on the needs and aspirations of people. The process used Toi Āria’s Comfort Board methodology, and is based on the principle that the people destined to use or be affected by a system should play a critical role in designing it. As a result of the research, the Digital Council for Aotearoa has provided seven recommendations to the Government.
Conversātiō - in the company of bees
Conversātiō - in the company of bees is the latest output of a 10-year creative partnership between artist Anne Noble and Anna Brown. Working with curator and editor Zara Stanhope, this 2021 book tracks the practice of contemporary photographer Anne Noble, set against the issues of ecosystem collapse and climate change and examining what an artist collaborations can do in response. Reminiscent of an artist book in its extensive visual content, the design of the book references in form and content the books' central work — a cabinet of wonder — revealing all the richness of the hybrid content: art, science, poetry and philosophical thinking, literature and education. Reviewed in Landfall Online, New Zealand Arts Review and on Radio New Zealand the book has also been Longlisted for the Bookseller Aotearoa New Zealand award for Illustrated Non-Ficton at the Ockham New Books Awards in 2022.
Wanted: The Search for the Modernist Murals of E. M. Taylor, edited by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, published by Massey University Press (2018) was a design commission for the E. Mervyn Taylor book exploring twelve murals for government and civic buildings in New Zealand between 1956-1964. Unfolding like a detective story the book is rich with archival material, detailing the murals’ creation, location and occasional destruction. Typographically the design references the 1950 Festival of Britain and draws on the visual style of the era. Winner of the 2019 Harper Collins Publishers Award for Best Cover at the Publishers Association of New Zealand Book Design Awards, and shortlisted for the 2019 Ockam New Zealand Book Awards.
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Qualifications
- BA (Hons) English and History (Victoria University)
- BFA in Design (Canterbury University)
- MDes with Distinction (Massey University)
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Professional affiliations or service roles
Board Chair, Massey University Press
