As the dust slowly clears in Christ­ch­urch, some folk's thoughts are start­ing to turn back to busi­ness, and there is quite a pre­dic­a­ment facing those in the busi­ness of design in the city. All types of busi­nesses are going to take a hit, but it seems inev­it­able that the city's small– and medium-sized firms, which often depend on homet­own work, might struggle to find it. Stephen McCarthy is a graphic designer with such a busi­ness. "It's pretty nuts," he says.

"Small design stu­dios [like us] are still reli­ant on work from people, and with most of our local cli­ents are in a state of limbo. If there are any large stu­dios out there – Auck­land, Wel­ling­ton – who have excess work they can farm out to the likes of us.… that would be awe­some. I know a few people in the same same shoes, small stu­dios.… but we've got our laptops and ready to roll. I guess the big thing for us, for long-term recov­ery, is to keep work­ing. I guess it's ask­ing people to stop and ask the fol­low­ing ques­tion: If the price is com­pet­it­ive can I pur­chase this product or ser­vice from Christ­ch­urch? If the answer is yes, you will be help­ing to rebuild Can­ter­bury and save jobs.…. It's kind of as simple as that."

McCarthy sent through the link below of his office's evac­u­ation, a rush from a third-floor build­ing in the CBD "just as a group of bricks landed on my mouse pad".

Some of McCarthy's recent pro­jects include the Busker's Fest­ival, design­ing posters for a pleth­ora of tour­ing bands, as well the well-received cam­paign for kerb­side recyc­ling. If any­thing, he says, the recent quake earth­quake has rein­forced the logic of hav­ing cli­ents from out of town. In a strange twist, the recent dis­aster has also seen him become sought after as a pub­lic speaker.

"I'm head­ing to SXSW (South by South­W­est) in Texas this month – just to hang out and see bands. This morn­ing I got an email to ask if i can be a speaker to talk about hav­ing a design stu­dio dur­ing a dis­aster… funny stuff."

Peter Oxley heads up Ratio, another small graphic design stu­dio in Christ­ch­urch. Oxley sub­mit­ted this poster after the Septem­ber quake (unfor­tu­nately it looks like we need a new one now). He says this:

"Myself and my part­ner Jan escaped unharmed and we had little dam­age to our house as this time around we were on the oppos­ite side of town to the epi­centre. In the first one we took the hit. Our thoughts are with every one affected in the badly hit areas, espe­cially of course the CBD zone which has been des­troyed. The extent of the dam­age is unbe­liev­able and to my mind will take sev­eral dec­ades to rebuild.

"All design­ers are going to suf­fer greatly from this nat­ural dis­aster in Christ­ch­urch; many city stu­dios are now gone. So work-wise we all need to find new cli­ents and leads out­side Christ­ch­urch as well as with those busi­nesses left loc­ally. If any North Island agen­cies can help with work I for one would be keen to get involved in any pro­jects. Its hard to think too clearly right now but in the com­ing weeks new approaches to work will be needed. If New Zea­l­and busi­ness out there can focus in any way on sup­port­ing Christ­ch­urch design stu­dios dur­ing the recov­ery phase it will help get Christ­ch­urch back on its feet. Ratio: for one is ready for work. In the long term I do hope art, design and archi­tec­ture plays a major role in rais­ing Christ­ch­urch to a new level of cul­tural and design import­ance not yet seen in New Zea­l­and – almost a blank can­vas is now offered to the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion to cre­ate great works."

Those are just two design­ers' stor­ies from Christ­ch­urch. If you'd like to con­trib­ute yours then please get in touch.

– Michael Barrett

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