Bee Creative - Design & Digital

28/08/2026

Can you spot our cover designs?
One clue, we have 3

27/08/2026

Some weeks don’t go to plan, and that’s where the good stuff can happen.

Our Bee Creative South Island shoot was postponed by foul weather, which unexpectedly opened the door to something completely different: a music video.

6am start. Riverside. Mist on the water. A beautiful sunrise. A microphone briefly stolen by a dog. And through it all, beautiful music from Wildhorse.

A good reminder of why we love creative work: you make a plan, stay open to what happens next, and sometimes end up somewhere even better.

13/08/2026

We love seeing this one out in the wild 🥰

If you love books, authors and all things literary, make sure you’re following Ages of Pages for updates: https://www.agesofpagesbookfair.com/

And while you’re at it, block out Saturday, 1 May in your calendar — this is going to be a very special event. 📚

12/08/2026

Is building a website about to become the easy part?

OpenAI’s latest move into website building got me thinking about what this means for Base44, smaller CMS platforms, hosting companies...and businesses paying for digital projects.

My view is that the technology has never been the most important part.

I’ve always thought of a successful digital project as roughly ¾ understanding the business and its customers, and ¼ technical implementation.

AI is making that 25% dramatically easier and cheaper. That should give us more time to focus on the bit that actually matters: what are we building, who is it for, and how does it connect with everything else the business is doing?

I’ve written a few thoughts about where I think this is heading. Link in the comments.

If you run a business, build websites, or work in digital, I’d be genuinely interested to hear what you think. Where does the value move when building the technology itself becomes cheap?

22/07/2026

AI can help us build faster. It can also help people find and exploit weaknesses faster.

In our latest Bee Creative newsletter, we look at what this means for businesses, including:

→ urgent WordPress maintenance
→ safer and simpler website architecture
→ lessons from real-world app testing
→ AI privacy and self-sufficiency
→ and recent work across video, animation, web, apps and book covers

The future is not simply about using more AI. It is about using it in ways that make businesses more capable, secure and trusted.

Newsletter link is in the comments.

What is your business doing to prepare?

21/07/2026

We had a genuinely fun and useful user-testing session on Monday with the loudandproudbusinessnetworking network.

Together with Manuela Klevisser from EmpowerMe Collective, we invited a room of local business owners to work through a digital experience we are developing and tell us what they actually thought.

Not what we hoped they would think. Not what AI suggested they might think, but what real people noticed, questioned and misunderstood. That is where the useful learning happens.

AI can help us design, write and build faster, but it can also be dangerously kiss-ass: agreeing with our ideas when it should be questioning them. Real users are much better at finding unclear language, hidden assumptions and moments where an explanation is still missing. The session gave us valuable feedback, but it also showed the wider benefit of being part of a strong local business network.

Loud and Proud created a space where people could: test an early-stage idea safely, share honest feedback, learn from one another, make useful connections and contribute to something being built for local businesses

That kind of practical support is hard to create alone.

A big thank you to Loud and Proud, Judith, Manuela and everyone who participated so openly. You helped us leave with better questions, clearer next steps and a stronger development process.

We will keep applying this test–learn–improve approach across the websites and apps we are building, and sharing the useful lessons along the way.

Learn more about our digital, video and creative work:
https://beecreative.co.nz/

And for local business owners looking for an inclusive, supportive and genuinely engaged networking community, Loud and Proud is well worth connecting with.

14/07/2026

Is your business still easy to trust online?

That’s the question behind our latest Bee Creative newsletter.

We’ve been looking at how AI search, websites, privacy, video content and local AI systems are starting to change the way people find and judge businesses online.

We also share a few recent project updates, including our move to Hamilton East and some of the video, animation and app work we’ve been doing.

Newsletter link is in the comments.

Would love to know, are you feeling excited, cautious, or completely over the AI conversation already?

- Sami

27/06/2026

AI self-sufficiency is becoming a competitive advantage.

If your entire AI capability depends on someone else’s stack, their models, hardware, pricing, privacy settings and access rules, then your business is exposed. They can monitor, restrict, reprice, change terms, or deny access to the intelligence your work depends on.

For businesses handling client data, strategy, code, creative IP or valuable ideas, this is not just about productivity. It is about resilience and trust.
In countries like NZ, privacy will be a major part of this conversation.

What are you doing to build more AI independence without cutting yourself off from the best tools?

21/05/2026

Sometimes work takes you to unexpected places 🕷️

Today’s detour: a documentary exploring spiders, drugs, and the surprisingly specific ways different substances affect web design.

Nature is wild. Peer review pending 😂

My new feature film: https://youtu.be/qZXyx5acIAg?si=_EONnqHbKstmSes7Upcomingbook: https://www.darkwebstersdictionary.com/

19/05/2026

More filming this week and we love it…no matter what the camera thinks 🥰