stars of aroha

We were in a dilemma – we had had a terrific idea to write a meditation book and develop some resources that would reflect the natural beauty of our landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand. There was a major problem though. Neither Nette or I could take our concept and turn it into something tangible. Importantly, we needed to find a graphic artist that we both felt we could connect with. We needed a person who could take our ideas and create a beautiful bicultural meditation system and make it fly. Thankfully, Sasha Maya was that person. In 2017, Air New Zealand chose Stars of Aroha Meditations to feature as an audio book on their inflight entertainment system. Sasha did all the illustrations, graphics and book lay out – she even organised the printing side as well. She literally made our product fly.

From the first phone call Sasha was warm, interested and confident. Whew! I knew we were going to be okay. We met Sasha a few days later and we told her our story and how this led to our dream to make the first ever bicultural meditation book and resources from Aotearoa New Zealand. Sasha brought our meditation system to life. We could not have published our book, created our Stars of Aroha Star Cards or Native Wood Rolling Star without Sasha’s graphic knowledge artistic skills and industry expertise. Happily for me, Sasha and I are now working together on another project. She is an excellent communicator who works to an agreed time-schedule and budget and this is essential for any small business owner.

Dr Tess Moeke-Maxwell, PhD, Stars of Aroha

the brief.

This was a very large project with a lot of creative and organisational work. On the creative site I got to design icons for each of the key elements. Create patterns for packaging. Do the design of the books and cards. It was a creative project that called on a wide range of skills which I thoroughly enjoyed. On the project management side I liaised with everyone from the casters of the silver rolling star, to the laser engravers of the wooden boxes, to printers. An absolutely wonderful project to be involved with, start to finish.