At Isthmus we take an open-minded, inquisitive and inter-disciplinary approach to design. We start without knowing the answer and we pay careful attention to the creative process. Our studio culture incubates ideas; the closer and more collaboratively we work together, the more chance ideas have of spreading, growing, cross-pollinating and transforming.
We are very pleased to welcome into our studio the design thinker Nick Kapica. Nick is a problem solver, a connecter and a communicator who is totally at home in the overlap of our dynamic, inter-disciplinary design studio. He joins us as as Principal, based in Wellington.
Nick studied Visual Communication at Ravensbourne College in the UK then worked as a designer at The Independent newspaper before moving to Berlin in 1989 where he founded SV Associates. Over a 20 year period his work evolved from visual communication to experience design with a strongly human-centered focus.
Nick moved to New Zealand in 2009 to take up the post of Senior Lecturer in Design at Massey University. As a design researcher he operated within two distinct yet related areas of design practice: visual communication design within spatial environments, and the use of spatial environments to enhance and affect users’ experiences within them. In 2017 he joined Wellington City Council as the Design Lead responsible for Brand Experience and pushing ‘design as a process’ deeper into the city council.
Nick is happiest when bringing different people together to build diverse teams that try to understand complex problems and search for unusual solutions. He is already adding his experience in place branding, community collaboration, wayfinding and environmental graphic design into the mix of Isthmus projects across New Zealand.