EIT’s newly-appointed graphic communication lecturer Anthony Chiappin brings a multitude of talents and experience to the role.

The Australian national has a Master of Visual Arts from Monash University and an academic career that includes his most recent stint teaching at Melbourne’s Swinburne TAFE. He has worked as a design and advertising industry professional for 21 years, and Air New Zealand Holidays was for seven years his biggest client.

Anthony (whose surname is pronounced ‘key-ar-pin) is a practising visual artist who has exhibited in Australia, Cuba and the USA.

His teaching methods are based on concept discovery via intense research and development, with students encouraged to look beyond a narrow focus of their area of inquiry.

“Instead I encourage them to look beyond or ‘outside the square’. This creates a dialogue of ideas, which I direct, opening the students to much stronger concepts, to search for an original expression which is innately a response based on their own cognition.”

Anthony and wife Nikki, a textile designer, were seeking a rural lifestyle in making the move to New Zealand. Never having been to Hawke’s Bay before, the couple are delighted with everything the region has to offer.