About the person behind the shelf
Drawing, designing and helping people make sense of things.
I’m Dylan Culhane — an illustrator, graphic and web designer, facilitator and maker in Aotearoa New Zealand. I make visual things that help ideas become clearer, more useful and easier to enter. I’m also a dad, which is part of the everyday life around all of this work.
Practice
What I bring to the work
My practice moves between illustration, visual facilitation, graphic and web design, and small digital tools. Sometimes the output is a drawing; sometimes a workshop, identity, website, map, deck or system. The thread is making something understandable enough for another person to use, respond to or build on.
How I think
I tend to work by noticing, collecting, drawing connections, talking things through and testing forms. Creative Metabolism is the language I use for that cycle: what catches attention, what gets digested, what becomes part of the work, and what can finally be released.
How I got here
I co-founded Infuse Creative and worked as a web designer from 2009–2012, then spent around fifteen years in mental-health mentoring and support with Emerge Aotearoa. Both still shape how I think about usability, accessibility, participation, communication and people.
Background
Background & experience
Web and graphic design, long-term community work, illustration and facilitation all sit underneath the way I make things now.
Experience
Qualifications
Working map
Skills, tools & working fluencyA quick view of the tools and disciplines I use most, from illustration and facilitation to websites and creative systems.Read more
Working map
Skills, tools & working fluencyA quick view of the tools and disciplines I use most, from illustration and facilitation to websites and creative systems.Read moreSide map
Personality, practice & other lensesA playful map of personality systems, practice, name and place — useful for reflection, not a definition of a person.Read more
Side map
Personality, practice & other lensesA playful map of personality systems, practice, name and place — useful for reflection, not a definition of a person.Read moreOverlapping lenses
Several maps of the same person.
Personality systems are interesting to me because they offer different ways of naming patterns. I treat them as overlapping lenses: useful when they reveal something, disposable when they do not.
The useful bit
None of these gets the whole person.
Loose lenses I use for reflection — useful maps, not definitions or destiny.
16 type / MBTI-style lens
INTP
A recent 16-type result lands on INTP, but the Thinking / Feeling axis sits right on the edge. That makes INFP a useful neighbouring lens rather than a contradiction.
Function stack in this model
Compare the nearby INFP stack
Enneagram
Type 5 · Quiet Specialist
The drive to understand
The deeper thread is a drive to understand: gathering information, building expertise, protecting thinking space, then trying to turn knowledge into something useful and shareable.
5 wing 4
The result I’m using here lands on 5w4. In this model, the wing adds a neighbouring influence to the core Five pattern. I treat it as another reflective lens rather than a complete description.
I treat both adjacent wings as developmental influences rather than fixed categories.
Social (SO)
The Social instinct adds another useful lens: belonging, recognition, groups and contribution become places where the Five drive for knowledge and expertise can show up. For me, that sits neatly between private specialist energy and public facilitation / community work.
Head → heart → hands
In the 2020 report, Thinking was the dominant centre and Action the least expressed. I treat that as a historical snapshot and reflection prompt, not a fixed capability score.
Moderate (2020 IEQ9)
I treat the integration score as a snapshot rather than a fixed measure. The useful direction is moving knowledge into presence, contribution and action: sharing more of the internal world, engaging the messy everyday, and using expertise in contact with other people.
Zodiac / symbolic lens
♎ Libra
The symbolic / playful lens: scales, balance, aesthetics, perspective-taking and trying to hold more than one side of a thing at once. I do not treat astrology as literal personality science.
Name / language
Two spellings, two layers of history.
Welsh: from dy (toward) + llanw (tide / flow). The mythological Dylan is strongly associated with the sea, I also believe my Mum just liked Bob Dylan
Etymology sourceDillon is commonly translated as "loyal" or "faithful" - I was told that this was what my name meant as I grew up & have likely internalized this! The name Dillon can also mean "like a lion" or "fierce" through its connection to old Norman and Irish roots.
Given-name sourceThe surname Culhane is an Irish patronymic name meaning "descendant of Cathalán," derived from the Gaelic personal name Cathal, which translates to "mighty in battle"
Place / context
Made in Aotearoa New Zealand — shaped by community work, visual communication, place, people, books, music and an unreasonable number of side projects.
Practice
The roles overlap more than they separate.
Tools & fluency
Skills, tools & working fluency
A rough self-map rather than a certification chart: deep, strong, working and learning are deliberately qualitative rather than scores.