Skip to main content

Illustration · design · facilitation

Ideas made visible.

I’m Dylan Culhane — an illustrator, designer and facilitator in Aotearoa New Zealand. I help people make ideas visible through drawing, visual communication, websites, workshops and useful little systems.

See my work Wander around

Practice

What I do

Different doors into the same practice: making ideas clearer, more visible, more useful, or simply more alive.

Draw

Illustration, visual thinking, comics, graphic recording and drawn explanations.

Explore

Design

Websites, identities, resources, digital tools and visual systems.

Explore

Facilitate

Helping groups think together through visual facilitation, training and co-design.

Explore

Selected work

A few things I’ve made

Selected client work, collaborations and self-directed projects — enough to show the shape of the practice without making you browse the whole archive.

See all work

Network / trust

Worked with / alongside

TwoRanges.TV
Interactionz
Auckland Co-Design Lab
Jay Culhane
Mike
Mandy & Pat
Scott Townsend
Middleton Group
Keith Middleton
Ben Davis

Creative Metabolism

How ideas become things

Creative Metabolism is the framework I use to understand how something I encounter becomes something I can absorb, transform, express and eventually release.

Explore Creative Metabolism

1ForageEncounter things. Notice, collect and gather inspiration before you know what it is for.2ChewGive it attention. Slow it down, question it, pull it apart and chew on it.3DigestLet it sit. Connect the dots, combine it with what you already know and make meaning.4AbsorbDecide what stays. Take in what is useful and let the rest pass through.5MakeTransform it. Let what you absorbed become your own energy, direction and movement.6ExpressPut it into form. Create, write, draw, build, speak, prototype or perform.7ReleaseLet it go. Share, publish, send it out, archive it and stop carrying it.
Side processes that keep the cycle aliveIncubateSome things need time more than effort. Let them live quietly without forcing an outcome.RecycleNothing is wasted. Break old work down, learn from it and let its material become useful again.

Release makes space. Space becomes hunger. Hunger sends you foraging again.

Professional work

Interactionz

I also work for Interactionz, a community-focused organisation and charity based in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Through Interactionz I help with visual facilitation, graphic recording, live illustration, visual planning, training visuals, and accessible visual documents.
If you are looking for organisational visual communication or facilitation support, the best path is through Interactionz.

Personal and experimental projects live here on Culhane.nz. Organisational visual work is usually directed through Interactionz.

Visit Interactionz

Things

Wander the shelves

Not everything here is a service. Some things exist because I wanted to see if they could.

ComicsFontsWorldsToolsJourney DeckWriting

Wander somewhere unexpected