Ko Ruahine te pae maunga
Ko Rangitikei te awa
Ko Takitimu te waka
Ko Ngāti Hauiti te iwi
Ko Potaka te whānau
Ko Brigham Anderson tōku ingoa (a.k.a Thinkbrig).
Kei te noho au ki Whanganui, Aotearoa.

My name is Brigham Anderson. This is some of my work.

Text, fonts have always fascinated me. They are simple shapes that when put together in an organised pattern communicate messages. I couldn’t (and still struggle to) read them well, but the shapes looked like there was information in them that needed to be known. I saw patterns in them and noticed that the different styles of fonts added to the story and so styles of fonts were as important as what they are communicating. To be honest, reading has always been a challenge to me, as a kid I would go to the second-hand bookshops to look for comics, but not just any comics, ones that had hardly any words in them. Funny aye, for someone to like text but not to like reading them, but it is the shapes of the text/fonts that I liked, not the reading of them.

The fascination of fonts extended to tukutuku in the whare tupuna. When I first saw them, they were words, but like the fonts I have seen, I did not know what they were saying, but the forms were beautiful to look at. They communicate stories using simple shapes. These shapes form patterns, in an organised way and the patterns repeat giving meanings to those stories. The stories remind us of lessons that others have learnt and remind us of our potentials.

My work uses text and incorporates tukutuku to compliment the design.

Where does the moniker Thinkbrig come from? We’ll there’s a wee bit of a story to that. I used to design clothes for bigger guys and I used Think Big as my very first website (no relation to Mr. Muldoon’s economic policies in the 80’s). So it’s a kind of a slight movement, but remembering my past and big and Brig (ham) happen to rhyme. Well, I want my designs to make you think. Not about me, but think about yourselves. Use them as a source of introspection. Wee bit deep aye.

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Tēnā koutou
Tēnā tātou koutou katoa!