Railways Studios: How a Government Design Studio Helped Build New Zealand: 2020

Description

For many decades the Railways Department's design studios, Railways Studio, was New Zealand's 'go-to' advertiser. Its tourism and product ads appear on railway-station hoardings and billboards throughout the land, and it developed some of New Zealand's most iconic graphic images. This big, beautiful book brings this treasure trove of design together for the first time.

Peter Alsop is a senior executive who has worked across the public and private sectors. He is a keen collector of New Zealand art, with particular interests in tourism publicity, hand-coloured photography and mid-century New Zealand landscape paintings. He is the author and co-author of six previous books, including Promoting Prosperity, Hand-Coloured New Zealand and Scenic Playground. Neill Atkinson is Chief Historian/Manager of Heritage Content at Manatu Taonga - Ministry for Culture and Heritage, where he is responsible for the Ministry's history and reference websites: Te Ara - Encyclopedia of NZ, Dictionary of NZ Biography, Te Tai Treaty Settlement Stories, 28th Maori Battalion and NZ History. He is the author of six books and a number of articles and chapters, mostly on New Zealand political and transport history, including Crew Culture: New Zealand Seafarers under Sail and Steam (Te Papa Press, 2001) and Trainland: How Railways Made New Zealand (Random House, 2007). Katherine Milburn is the ephemera collection curator at the Hocken Library, Dunedin, and has extensive knowledge of the Railways Studios' output. Richard Wolfe is an art, design and cultural historian who has a PhD in Art History from the University of Auckland and a BFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts. He was Curator of Display at Auckland War Memorial Museum from 1977 to 1997, and has written or co-authored around 40 books covering aspects of New Zealand art, history and popular culture. He has contributed over 50 articles to the quarterly Art New Zealand, as well as articles to other journals, and has curated or supported the development of multiple art exhibitions.

'"Railways Studios, the design studio of the New Zealand Railways" tells the remarkable story of the way in which a government department helped connect New Zealand physically and socially, producing advertising for a range of clients and dominating outdoor advertising ... The book is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of images alongside the well-researched chapters which touch on the history of rail transport in New Zealand.' - John Daly-Peoples, New Zealand Art Review; 'A seven-years-in-the-making, lavishly illustrated literary monument to the Kiwi commercial art of the advertising and design Studio of NZ Railways, which survived 67 years...a 385-page literary monument to New Zealand commercial art.' - NZ Listener, named among 101 Best Books of 2020; '... this book is a must-purchase. Highly recommended.' - Railway Observer; 'This big, beautiful book brings together a treasure trove of stunning New Zealand tourism and product ads ...' - Good magazine.