Not all heroes wear capes. Some come in wedges. 🧀😉
Dave Way has a gift for turning everyday subjects into characters with more flavour than a ripe Camembert. Give him a block of cheddar and suddenly it’s packed with a clever pun, a backstory and possibly some crackers on the side.
It’s grate work, honestly
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Most people unwind with Netflix. Nick Harris, on the other hand, decided to build a flight simulator from scratch. Not your standard flight sim either. This one’s inspired by New Zealand’s native bird species.
Nick started prototyping the physics of flight itself. Lift, drag, wing shape, weight, wingspan. All translated into bird/gliders that each behave differently in the air.
It’s less about flying from A to B, more about experiencing how each species has evolved to move through the world in its own way.
This is very much a peek at a project still taking shape, but if you’re curious, have a look at the Gameplay footage of Anabatica Glider. You can see more of Nick's portfolio on the Watermark Creative website.
If anything sparks an idea, feel free to reach out. We’d love to chat.
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To all the mums, stepmums, grandmothers, aunties, and mother figures who’ve steadied the ship through every stage of life. For your patience, care, worrying, cheering on, and the thousand other invisible things no one notices (until they’re older).
We’d just like to say a BIG thank you.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Illustration by Yulia Biktudina 👉 https://watermarkcreative.co/author/yulia-vysotskaya/
Remember tearing into a box of Weet-Bix trying to track down the one All Blacks card you didn’t have yet? The playground trades, the questionable swaps, the quiet bragging rights when you finally scored it.
Gee Hale’s illustrated series for Sanitarium taps straight back into that energy and gives brekkie a competitive streak again
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We continue our Approved by No-One series with something that makes you look twice.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our brains love patterns. Neat, predictable, easy to process. You spot something, recognise it, and move on without thinking twice.
Then something breaks the rhythm. Two ideas that shouldn’t sit together… but somehow do. And for a split second, your brain slows down, trying to make sense of it. That pause is where it gets interesting. It’s a visual hook creatives have been using forever to capture attention. And for something so simple, it works surprisingly well.
To be honest, Joseph Qiu usually works the other way. His work is controlled and precise. His oil paintings are built up slowly, layer by layer, with an almost obsessive level of detail.
Which is why this piece stood out. Pulled straight from his sketchbook, it's a playful idea that didn’t fit his usual pattern.
You can explore more of Joseph Qiu finely crafted work in his portfolio.
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Today is International Workers’ Day. A celebration of the men and women who keep things running. Electricians, nurses, cleaners, service crews. The kind of work that happens in the background while the rest of us get on with our day.
Trevor took that cue and nudged it sideways.
Instead of the usual roll call, he looked at something we rarely include. Beasts of burden.
The animals that have carried, pulled and worked alongside us for centuries. Still doing it in many parts of the world, just not part of the headline.
He pushes that idea through the language of early labour posters. Bold, direct, stripped back, everything working to give its subject weight.
Same day, same idea, just recognising a different set of labourers.
Ever stood next to a lizard the size of a Toyota Corolla?
Most museum trips involve squinting at bone fragments, but the Australian Museum wanted something you could actually look in the eye.
Elise Martinson brought these prehistoric megafauna back at full scale, turning a history lesson into a physical encounter that makes you feel very, very small.
It’s one thing to read about deep time; it’s another to have it staring back at you.
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This week we are talking about how cities can trigger memories in our Approved by No-one series.
Ever notice how travelling leaves you with a quirky set of mental postcards?
Lucie Blaze taps straight into that feeling with her latest series of illustrations, distilling each city down to its essence.
You might forget the name of that Spanish hotel, but the lemon-yellow Moroccan door remains vivid in your memory.
Lucie’s visual fragments become a kind of memory map. Some details pop, while others soften and fade, like a half-remembered weekend away.
With a tight colour palette and consistent style, the wildly different cities sit comfortably side by side.
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Many people have captured the futility of war through paintings, poetry and speeches. I’m not going to try and add to that.
All I’ll say is this. The scale of loss and sacrifice made by our fathers, grandfathers and their mates is hard to fathom in the world we live in today.
If you haven’t experienced it, go to a dawn service.
Stand in the dark.
Listen to the Last Post.
Feel the goosebumps as the first sliver of light creeps over the horizon.
Thanks to Daron Parton and Meng Tong for this elegant ANZAC tribute.
Lest we forget.
In this week’s Approved by No-one series, we look at human connection.
The well-known TED Talk by Susan Pinker titled “The secret to living longer may be your social life”, explores research suggesting that longevity isn’t just shaped by diet or exercise, but by regular human connection. The kind that happens in small, everyday repeated interactions.
Being known
A quick hello
Acknowledging others
Being acknowledged
That idea sits right at the heart of Jo Tronc’s latest piece.
Instead of the obvious, Jo placed the word Connect at the centre, embracing it with a living community and the environment we all share.
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Have you heard of “Wen Lambo”?
Back in 2013, an anonymous buyer walked into a Newport Beach dealership and bought a Lamborghini with 217 Bitcoin, and yes, the internet had a minor meltdown.
Samantha Asri captured that infamous moment for History of Bitcoin, the global art book by Smashtoshi, produced by Kisslabs.
Her GTA-inspired scene marks the point where crypto stopped being theory and bought something very, very real.
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In this week's Approved by No-one series, and it's all about that late night energy.
The air is thick and sticky. The streets are still buzzing.
Between neon shopfronts and narrow back alleys, people gather around bowls of ramen, like it’s the only meal that matters.
If you’ve travelled through parts of Asia, you’ll know this feeling and Gee Hale’s ‘Smash Ramen Odyssey’ comes straight out of that late night energy.
It’s Bold and Graphic.
This comic-book line style, stripped back to just three colours, an a punchy half-tone screen that give the whole image a serious bite.
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