Studio Dawn is a creative growth studio. We grow brands, businesses and the creative humans building them. We work across brand strategy, creative direction, digital experiences, campaigns, products, platforms, communities and new ideas — helping people turn potential into something real.
Studio Dawn helps businesses, founders and creative people work out what's next, then bring it to life. That might mean defining a brand, repositioning a business, creating a campaign, building a digital product, developing a new platform, providing creative leadership or helping a creative business grow.
We don't start with outputs. We start with the opportunity. Studio Dawn combines business thinking, brand strategy, creative direction and human insight, then brings in the right tools, technology and people to make the idea real. We work selectively and prefer depth over volume.
Creative is the tool. Growth is the outcome. Studio Dawn works at the point where a business, brand, product or person is ready for its next chapter — defining the potential, finding the opportunity and creating the strategy, story, identity, experience or action needed to move forward.
We call ourselves a creative growth studio. Like a creative agency, we can lead brand strategy, brand identity and campaigns end to end. Unlike a large agency, you work directly with senior creative thinking rather than a rotating account team.
Studio Dawn is led by Kimberley Torrie, Creative Director, brand strategist and community builder, with experience across branding, advertising, design and strategy.
Studio Dawn is based in Auckland, New Zealand, and works with clients beyond Auckland and New Zealand. Distance has never been the thing that gets in the way of good work.
Yes. Studio Dawn can help businesses clarify where they are going, who they are becoming and how the brand needs to evolve to support that next chapter. This can include positioning, proposition, brand strategy, identity, storytelling, creative direction and implementation.
Yes. We can work from the very beginning — from an idea, opportunity or business model through to positioning, naming, brand identity, storytelling, digital presence and launch.
Yes. Studio Dawn can plug into existing teams and provide strategic or creative leadership without taking over everything. We can work alongside founders, marketers, designers, developers and other specialists.
There isn't a fixed company size. Studio Dawn is best suited to businesses, founders and teams with a meaningful opportunity to explore — whether that's a new chapter, a growth challenge, a new product or a need for senior creative thinking.
A creative agency runs projects for you, backed by a team. A fractional creative director works inside your business part-time, as senior creative leadership you're not ready to hire full-time. Studio Dawn offers both: full creative-agency-style projects, and fractional creative direction.
A brand strategist defines the foundation everything else gets built on. That means your positioning, your audience, your messaging and the space you own in the market — answering who you are, who you're for, and why anyone should choose you, before a single visual gets designed.
A one-off brand identity, campaign or launch usually suits a project-based creative engagement. Ongoing creative decisions, made well every week rather than once, usually suit fractional creative direction. Studio Dawn clients can move between the two as they grow.
Studio Dawn thrives in ambiguity, helping define what you actually need before you can quite name it yourself, then bringing that to life visually and tonally. That spans brand strategy and positioning, brand and visual identity systems, campaign strategy and design, development, production and social media, product launch strategy, repositioning, new venture strategy and fractional creative direction. Every project is scoped individually.
Yes. Early-stage and growth-stage businesses across New Zealand and Australia can work with Studio Dawn from first brand identity through to repositioning. Growth value arrangements can also be considered for the right early-stage fit.
It depends on scope. Every project is priced individually so you know exactly what you're paying for: a project fee, a monthly retainer for fractional creative direction, or a growth value arrangement for the right early-stage fit.
Creative Director for Creatives is for freelancers, studio founders, independent creative directors and small creative teams who need an experienced creative perspective on their work, their clients, their business — or all three.
That might include campaign thinking, creative reviews, positioning, brand strategy, pitching, pricing, client communication, white-labelled creative direction or simply having someone experienced to sense-check the work and challenge the thinking.
Even the best creatives need a sounding board. We can't do our best work in a vacuum; we need different brains, different experience and different viewpoints on the brief in front of us. That might be a few hours in a workshop or ongoing support over months.
It depends what you need. A creative direction agency gives you a team and a process. A freelance creative director gives you speed and a direct relationship. Studio Dawn sits between the two: senior creative direction backed by agency-level thinking, working directly with you or your client.
Yes. This is a core part of what we do. Freelancers, studio founders and independent creative directors come to us for a senior creative perspective on their own work or their client projects, without hiring a full agency.
Yes. Mentoring & Coaching is a space for creative people navigating growth, change or a new chapter. It can cover career direction, leadership, business models, positioning, pitching, confidence, decision-making and the bigger questions around what's next.
Creative coaching sharpens the work itself: the ideas, the craft, the pitch. Mentoring and career coaching go wider, into positioning, confidence and the next career move. Business coaching covers the commercial side: pricing, clients and the business model. Studio Dawn works across all three, because they're rarely separate problems.
It's for creatives at a pivot point. That might be a career change, coming back into the industry after time away, sharpening a portfolio, building creative confidence, working out how you want to work, pricing, going fractional, freelancing, moving countries, or simply needing an external creative brain.
Kimberley's background includes yoga and community building, so pranayama or yogic breathwork may sometimes be lightly woven in if useful to help calm and ground before a big decision or hard conversation. It's never the main event.
No. Some of our most meaningful work is one-on-one with individual creatives. We offer hourly, daily and project-based creative direction, plus skill exchange for the right fit.
Yes. Creative direction is available by the hour, the day or the project, as well as through ongoing, part-time fractional arrangements.
You don't have to keep working just because you're the person who normally makes the decisions. The Creative Business Babysitter provides temporary creative leadership and business cover while you're away, keeping agreed projects, teams, clients and creative decisions moving until you return.
Plan what needs to happen before you leave, communicate clearly with clients and make sure anything genuinely time-sensitive has an owner. For creative businesses, that can also mean having someone experienced available to oversee the work and make decisions while you're offline.
For a defined period, yes. Studio Dawn can temporarily step into the creative and business responsibilities that would normally depend on you. The scope is agreed before you leave, so you know what is covered and what can wait.
Yes. Studio Dawn can temporarily step into the senior creative role — overseeing designers, reviewing work, managing projects, joining client conversations and making agreed creative decisions.
Yes. Studio Dawn can provide temporary creative direction and leadership for designers, freelancers and small creative teams while the usual creative lead is away.
Yes. You don't need to have a team. Cover can focus on client projects, freelancers, collaborators, deadlines and creative decisions that would normally depend on you.
Before you leave, we'll establish what's active, what's coming up, who is responsible for what and which decisions need to be made. Studio Dawn then keeps the agreed work moving while you're away and provides a clear handover when you return.
Active projects, upcoming deadlines, key clients and contacts, responsibilities, current project status, decision-making authority, important systems and anything genuinely urgent. The aim isn't to document your entire business — it's to give someone enough context and authority to keep the important things moving.
It can be scoped from a few days to several weeks, depending on the work and level of involvement required. It can be light-touch or more hands-on.
Yes. The Creative Business Babysitter is designed to plug into your existing remote systems, communication channels and project management tools.
You'll receive a clear handover covering what's happened, what's complete, what's still moving and anything that needs your attention. Then you're back in the driver's seat.
No. Fractional Creative Direction is ongoing senior creative leadership within your business. The Creative Business Babysitter is temporary cover for a defined period when you need to step away.
No. Creative Director for Creatives gives independent creatives an experienced creative brain to work alongside. The Creative Business Babysitter temporarily steps into the business itself, so you can step out.
Yes. Studio Dawn works with businesses, founders and teams developing AI-enabled products, digital platforms, apps, tools and new ideas. We can work across the opportunity, proposition, brand, experience, creative direction, prototyping and AI-assisted development — bringing brand-level thinking and human storytelling into the build.
Yes. Some projects start as a loose idea, a problem worth solving or a new business opportunity. Studio Dawn can help shape that thinking into a clearer proposition and experience, then bring the brand and product to life using the right combination of creative, technology and development.
Yes. Studio Dawn can use AI-assisted design and development to prototype and build websites, apps, platforms, tools and digital experiences. AI is one of the tools we can use to make things happen faster and at greater scale. It isn't the reason to build something.
AI-enabled development means using AI tools and technologies as part of designing, prototyping and building a digital product. This can include AI-assisted coding, rapid prototyping, generative AI, automation, AI agents and AI features within a product. Studio Dawn combines these tools with strategy, creative direction, brand thinking and human judgement.
Because generating something isn't the same as making it meaningful. AI can create identities, images, copy and interfaces quickly. The harder questions are what the brand should stand for, who it is for, what makes it different, what people should feel and what story it should tell. Studio Dawn brings brand strategy, creative direction, connection, storytelling and human judgement to those decisions.
AI can generate possibilities at extraordinary speed. Creative direction helps decide which possibilities are worth pursuing, why they matter and how they connect to the wider brand and business. In a world of more content and more options, clarity, taste, empathy and human judgement become more important — not less.
Technology can make a product possible. Brand helps people understand why it matters, who it is for and why they should trust it. As AI makes products and content easier to create, distinctive positioning, human storytelling, meaningful connection and a recognisable brand become increasingly important.
No. Studio Dawn is human-first and AI-enabled second. We don't incorporate AI for AI's sake. We look at the problem, the people involved, the desired outcome and the wider context first, then decide where technology can genuinely improve the work, experience or scale.
It means people come before the technology. We start with human needs, empathy, connection, context, business value and the desired impact. AI and other technologies are then used selectively where they can help make the outcome better, more useful, more accessible or more scalable.
Yes. Human-centred design, thoughtful language, storytelling, intuitive experiences and a clear point of view can make the difference between technology that simply works and something people actually want to engage with. Studio Dawn brings brand, creative and human thinking into the product experience.
Yes. The starting point doesn't have to be "we need an AI product". It can be a business question: where could technology create a better experience, solve a real problem, create a new opportunity or help people do something better? Studio Dawn can help explore the opportunity and translate it into a brand, product, platform or experience.
Yes. Studio Dawn can plug into an existing team, agency, developer or technology stack. We can provide brand and creative direction, shape the product experience, define the visual and verbal language, work alongside developers or help turn a technical idea into something people understand and want to use.
Yes. AI businesses can easily start to sound and look alike. Studio Dawn can help define the positioning, personality, story, visual identity and experience that makes an AI product understandable, distinctive and human.
Yes. AI can change what a business offers, how it operates and how customers experience it. That makes it a brand question as well as a technology question. Studio Dawn can work across opportunity, positioning, proposition, experience, brand and creative expression so the technology and the brand are developed together.
Yes. Studio Dawn works across new platforms, apps, digital products, concepts, communities and emerging business ideas. We can help move from idea to opportunity, proposition, brand, experience and build — bringing the right creative and technical thinking together.
Yes. Digital products and platforms are brand environments too. Studio Dawn can think about how a brand behaves across interfaces, interactions, language, visual systems, community and the wider customer experience — not just how a logo looks.
Studio Dawn takes a considered, human-first approach. We care about empathy, connection, creativity, integrity and the impact of the things we help bring into the world. We are selective about the projects we work on and look for opportunities where the work can contribute something useful, positive or meaningful. If the technology is doing good for people and the world, we're interested in being part of it.
No. Studio Dawn works across brands, businesses, products, platforms, campaigns, communities, experiences and new ventures. That includes AI-enabled builds, digital products, apps, new platforms and emerging ideas where brand, creative thinking and technology need to work together.
AI can generate options. Creative direction determines which options are meaningful, distinctive and right for the brand, audience and business. The value is not simply in producing more possibilities — it's in knowing what to choose, what to reject and how to create a coherent experience around the idea.
AI is changing how creative work gets made, but it doesn't remove the need to decide what should be made, who it's for, what it means or how it connects to a wider business. Some production tasks may become faster or more accessible. At the same time, strategy, brand thinking, creative direction, empathy and human judgement become increasingly important.
Start with a conversation. You don't need to have the perfect brief. We'll talk through where you are, what you're trying to achieve, what's getting in the way and what kind of help might make the most sense.
No. Some of the most valuable work happens before the brief is fully formed. Bring the idea, problem, ambition or opportunity and we'll work out what needs solving.
Yes. Studio Dawn can work as a strategic and creative partner alongside founders, internal teams, developers, marketers and other specialists. The level of involvement can be project-based, fractional or more hands-on depending on the work.
Studio Dawn is deliberately selective. We look for work where creative thinking can make a meaningful difference and where there is a good fit in terms of people, ambition, values and opportunity. We care about doing good work, with good people, for a world that's better for it.
Yes, where it genuinely improves the outcome. We use technology to extend creative capability, prototype ideas, build new experiences and make good work more scalable. But the approach is always human first, AI-enabled second.
It's a simple filter for the work we choose to do. We care about the quality of the work, the people we do it with and the effect it has beyond the immediate project. Creativity is a tool, but how we use it matters.
It depends on the project. Every engagement is scoped individually: a project fee, a monthly retainer, or growth value for the right fit. The best starting point is a conversation.
You don't need to figure that out first. That's what the first conversation is for. Tell us where you're at and we'll work out the right way to work together.
Absolutely. You don't need to choose the right offer before you get in touch. Tell us where you're at and we'll work out the right way to work together — whether that's The Studio, Fractional Creative Direction, Creative Director for Creatives, Mentoring & Coaching, The Creative Business Babysitter or a more bespoke engagement.
Book a call or send an email through Studio Dawn's contact options. We read every message and will work out the right next step with you.