Neil Pardington

Image credit: Bruce Foster

“The design journey of the font that became synonymous with Parihaka…

The design journey began about ten years before the font was developed for the tohu (logo) for the exhibition Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance or the accompanying book.

In the 1990s, New Zealand Dominion Museum curator Tim Walker came to see me with a selection of photographs. They showed carvings and hand-lettered manuscripts from the museum collection. He asked me to design a plaque to accompany Kupe, the sculpture by John Bevan Ford (Ngāti Raukawa) that was to stand outside the museum entrance, and to use the photographs as inspiration. 

I chose an image of carved lettering and, inspired by what was there, I created the other letters needed for the plaque. For some unknown reason, when the stone masons came to engrave the words, they didn’t use my typeface. I think the plaque ended up in something like Times New Roman. So, my design sat, unused, on an old floppy disk for years.

Then the millennium arrived and Wellington City Gallery asked me to design the tohu for an exhibition they were curating in partnership with the Parihaka Pā Trust. The exhibition would bring together art, poetry and waiata to consider the 1881 invasion of the pacifist settlement at Parihaka and the legacy, strength and spirit of the Parihaka community. 

The deadline was tight. It was clear to me that despite the lack of time, we couldn’t begin work until we had made the journey to Parihaka. I knew that the development of this tohu had to be in conversation and that respect and care would be critical. 

Aaron McKirdy, the senior designer who worked with me at the time, and I gathered our thoughts, some home baking and a bouquet of flowers. We jumped in the car and drove to Taranaki. We met with Parihaka Kaitiaki Te Miringa Hohaia and Ngaahina Hohaia and they showed us around the marae. After sitting down together to eat, we began to talk about the tohu. Aaron and I had brought existing visual work with us, to spark ideas – and one of these was the lettering I had created for the John Bevan Ford plaque. 

There are no carvings of tupuna at Parihaka. It was a place for Māori from many different iwi, dispossessed by land confiscation, yet this lettering resonated because it had the sense of being carved. Te Miringa pretty much said ‘that’s it,’ when he saw it.

Back in Wellington, we made the decision to create a complete font to be used throughout the exhibition. Aaron McKirdy, George Clarke and I did the additional work without payment – it was a gift because we saw the importance of the exhibition and the broader project. Later, when the book was published, we worked on its design too and the font features on the cover and as title headings.

Both the book and font went on to win several design awards and people began to call the font we had created, the Parihaka font. It had become synonymous with Parihaka and so, while I retain the IP rights as the designer, we gifted the font to the Parihaka Trust for their exclusive use. 

A few years ago, a group attempted to freely distribute it online and there was an immediate public outpouring of indignation. I contacted those involved and explained that because the font represented and reflected Parihaka, use of it was restricted to Parihaka. That it’s a cultural icon that I look after for a community that has had so much taken from it.” 

Neil Pardington is a designer, photographer and artist.