Hall of Fame gala dinner, 2016
The Hall of Fame celebrates graduates of the College who have made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand’s economy, reputation and national identity.
Many of the College's alumni are understated about their achievements, and their contribution to New Zealand culture often goes unrecognised. This changed in 2007 with the launch of the College’s Hall of Fame.
The Hall of Fame gala dinner has quickly gained respect in the creative community as a prestigious event that gives long overdue recognition to the role of art and design in everyday life and credit to those who create it.
Annie Collins
Annie Collins studied at the Wellington School of Design, and went into film editing under the guidance of filmmaker Pat Cox, where she grew over the past four decades into one of New Zealand’s most acclaimed film editors.
Anne Noble
Anne Noble is one of New Zealand’s most recognised and respected contemporary photographers, with a career spanning four decades over which time she has produced landscape, portrait and documentary photography, installations, and moving imagery.
Jon Toogood
As Shihad’s high profile founding frontman and leader of The Adults rock supergroup, Jon Toogood has spent 30 years at the forefront of Aotearoa’s music scene, writing, singing, performing, mentoring, managing, directing, producing, DJ-ing, programming and promoting.
Gordon Tovey
Gordon was one of the most influential people in the history of New Zealand education, and lead a revolution in the teaching of art and craft in schools in New Zealand and the South Pacific.
Kate Sylvester
Kate Sylvester was a student at Wellington Polytechnic between 1985-86. Kate is one of New Zealand’s most commercially successful and respected fashion designers.
Collette Dinnigan
Collette Dinnigan is a global fashion phenomenon. The Australia-based fashion designer studied fashion design at the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design.
Danny Coster
During a visit to the United States in 1993, Danny showed his portfolio to studios in New York and California and began working for Apple Computers. Since then, his contributions to Apple's industrial design team have been recognised by numerous international awards.
Arthur Riley
In 2016 the College celebrated the 130 year heritage of the Wellington School of Design and honoured its founding director Arthur Dewhurst Riley (1860-1929).
Avis Higgs
After graduating Avis soon became the head designer for Silk and Textile Printers in Sydney, a firm famed for its avant garde approach to textiles. With her inspired and refreshing ideas Avis quickly earned a reputation as one of Australasia's most innovative textile designers.
Bill Toomath
Bill Toomath headed the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design for ten years (1979-1989), and was a key player in the development of modernist architecture in New Zealand for over five decades.
Donna Cross & Scott Kennedy
Donna Cross and Scott Kennedy have shaped how Wellingtonians see themselves.
E. Mervyn Taylor
Mervyn dedicated his life to being both an artist and a communicator; bringing art close to people. He was of a generation that wanted to cast off colonialism and discover a way to see the world and interpret its character from a South Pacific perspective.
Fane Flaws
Fane Flaws has spent the last 30 years working in multiple media art forms. He has worked as a musician, songwriter, painter and graphic designer, and has directed music videos, short films and TVCs, as well as writing and publishing children’s literature.
Gordon Walters
Gordon’s iconic, and at times controversial, contribution to New Zealand culture is largely due to his synthesis of Māori and European symbols through geometric abstraction.
Grant Alexander
Grant Alexander graduated from Wellington Polytechnic in 1969 with a diploma in graphic design and has since become a stalwart of the New Zealand design industry.
Grant Davidson
During his time studying industrial design at Wellington Polytechnic School of Design, Grant Davidson was introduced to Philips, the largest and most prestigious electronics company in Holland and a global corporation of significance.
Grenville Main
Grenville Main has made a significant contribution to the design profession and to design in general in New Zealand.
Gus Hunter
Gus has been enormously successful in carving out a career for himself in the film industry driven by his talent and passion. His work has gained international recognition, helped the New Zealand economy, and he has been a great role model for those inspired by his work.
Guy Ngan
Guy Ngan is described as one of New Zealand’s most prolific artists, with many large-scale public artworks located throughout the country.
Jane Ussher
Joining the New Zealand Listener as chief photographer in 1977, Jane went on to photograph almost every major figure and documented the changing political and cultural landscape of New Zealand over the following thirty years.
John Drawbridge
John's career spanned more than 50 years and his work attracted international recognition, while informing the reception of Modernism in New Zealand, and of New Zealand art overseas.
Joseph Churchward
Joseph Churchward (1932-2013) was one of the world’s most productive typesetters in his lifetime, having handcrafted more than 600 original typefaces.
Judy Darragh
Judy Darragh’s multi-disciplined and multi-media works have transformed found, recycled, industrial, and domestic materials into new contexts and new meanings. In the process she has transported the imaginations of many New Zealanders and provided them with a new way of seeing.
Julia Morison
Julia Morison has had a stellar career spanning more than three decades with extensive exhibitions throughout New Zealand and internationally.
Kate Hawley
Kate Hawley’s feature film credits include Pacific Rim and The Hobbit, along with numerous other costume and set design credits ranging across film, television, theatre and opera in Europe, the US and Australasia.
Kura Te Waru Rewiri
Kura Te Waru Rewiri is one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most celebrated Māori women artists.
Len Lye
Len Lye (1901-1980) was a pioneer of kinetic sculpture and experimental filmmaking and one of New Zealand’s most renowned modernist artists.
Manos Nathan
Graduating from the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design in 1970, Manos Nathan has been at the forefront of the development of the Māori ceramic movement in Aotearoa New Zealand since the mid 1980s.
Mark Cleverley
Mark Cleverley has had a distinguished and varied design career, spanning architecture, graphic design, ceramics, packaging and postage stamps.
Mark Elmore
Today Mark is the head of industrial design at Fisher & Paykel, a multi-award winning design-led company that produces user-centred products for people around the world.
Mark Pennington
Mark Pennington is design director and consultant for Formway Design, a Petone business respected as a major global player in the design of inspirational, leading edge high performance office seating and furniture.
Matt Holmes
Matt has moved from creating some of Nike’s most iconic and successful shoes to directing Creative Strategy for Nikes 100+ footwear designers.
Maud Sherwood
Maud Kimbell's family moved to Wellington in the early 1890s and it was then that Maud’s long association with the Wellington Technical School began.
Paul Dyne
Paul Dyne is one of New Zealand’s most experienced and highly regarded jazz musicians and teachers.
Rebecca Taylor
Rebecca Taylor is one of the best known New Zealand designers living abroad. Today there are 51 Rebecca Taylor stores worldwide, 40 of them in Japan alone.
Robin Hammond
Robin Hammond has produced an outstanding concentration of revelatory documentary photography.
Sharon Murdoch
In a short space of time Sharon Murdoch has become a professional cartoonist and in so doing become a trailblazer for other women interested in creating a role in political cartooning.
Sir Richard Taylor
Sir Richard Taylor is famed for his work alongside Peter Jackson in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. A multiple Oscar winner, Richard studied at the Wellington School of Design from 1982 to 1984, where he tended to ‘alter the brief to suit his skills’.
Warren Maxwell
Warren Maxwell has made a significant contribution to music both in New Zealand and internationally as a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and a driving force behind many musical projects.
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