We credit our success to great relationships, commitment to quality and our love for collaboration.
Who We Are
Duo Design is the creative partnership of Joanne Hair and Andrew Newth. We've been building brands, websites, and communications strategies together since 2002. Not because we're the same but because we're not. What we share is a refusal to do work we don't believe in, and a genuine interest in the businesses we work with.
Andrew Newth
Before founding Duo Design, Andrew worked in radio and music production. He is a composer and musician, currently producing music as Southern Tribe and performing with System Corporation. This isn't incidental detail. It reflects the way he approaches the digital work: with an ear for structure, rhythm, and the way things need to feel as well as function.
Trained in multimedia, Andrew has designed and built hundreds of brands and websites over two decades. His range takes in content management systems, custom development, SEO strategy, and brand identity — but his particular gift is what clients describe as "big picture" thinking: the ability to hold the whole scope of a brief in mind while resolving its individual parts.
What sets him apart is not technical fluency, plenty of developers have that. It is the creative intelligence he brings to a build. Andrew doesn't just deliver what was asked for. He delivers what is needed, which occasionally is a different thing.
- Trained in Multimedia: website design, development & brand design
- Specialist in CMS, custom development, SEO, digital strategy, WordPress
- Hundreds of websites built and launched across 20+ years
- Composer and award-winning musician: Southern Tribe, System Corporation
- Background in radio and music production.
Joanne Hair
Jo's background is in visual communications, but her real discipline is translation: The ability to take what a business knows about itself and render it visible, legible, and compelling to the people who matter most to it. Her work spans architecture, science, education, healthcare, and engineering, sectors where the stakes are high and the tolerance for vague or decorative design is low. She has delivered brand strategy and identity to organisations that needed more than a logo refresh; they needed a brave brand strategy and coherent identity that could propel them into the next stage of their growth.
Jo currently contributes to Wintec's Visual Communication Degree as Designer in Residence and sits on the institute's Postgraduate Industry Panel.
Past projects have earned national recognition, including awards for annual reporting, event management, and the MfE New Zealand Green Ribbon Award for the Waikato Regional Council's State of the Environment report.
- Designer in Residence, Te Pūkenga Wintec Visual Communication Degree Member,
- Wintec Postgraduate Industry Panel
- MfE NZ Green Ribbon Award, Waikato Regional Council State of the Environment
- National awards: annual reporting, event management, brand identity
- Best Design Awards, Silver 2023
- External Examiner Masters of Arts
- Specialist sectors: science, architecture, education, healthcare, engineering, local government.
Do you have a coherent brand story? Are you clear about your digital strategy?
Let's talk about the vision for your business.
Let's Talk Business“When we re-branded we needed a completely new company identity. This included a logo, company branding and a new website. Duo Design made the entire process easy.”