Kiwi Designers at the Forefront of Forecourt Innovation

What spins Industrial Designer Graham Brewster’s wheels is a good idea and a clean sheet of paper. As co-founder of Procreate, an Auckland-based product design consultancy, Brewster’s job is to “bring ideas into existence.”

“It’s our job to make it happen,” he says.

One of their latest designs to hit the market is the POSTEC Outdoor Payment Terminal (OPT), a payment system for retailers, more specifically for petrol forecourts with target market being Asia/Pacific. Procreate designed and coordinated the local manufacture of POSTEC, along with providing their associated mechanical components.

POSTEC wanted a terminal that was easy to use and aesthetically pleasing,” says Brewster. “It needed to be as small as possible, while satisfying all necessary security requirements and hardy enough to withstand the harsh environment of a petrol forecourt.” He says the POSTEC OPT “brings together a number of third party interface modules “including a secure keypad, secure card reader, LCD and soft keys. “These are mounted in custom-designed housing allowing pay-at-pump customers to make transactions securely and efficiently.”

Procreate called upon past experience to meet the tight deadlines imposed. “We’ve developed products for similar environments before so were able to deliver workable designs on time.” This fast turnaround helped POSTEC secure significant international sales says Brewster. “POSTEC made delivery of 65-70 units which has given them traction and acceptance in the Asian market, and recently received an order for 1300 units.”

Procreate is a product design consultancy founded by Brewster and David Howse, a mechanical engineer. “We come from two different but very complementary disciplines, which means we take a very holistic approach to design,” says Brewster.

“David focuses very much on functionality and making sure a product will be reliable and can be manufactured at efficiently, while I’m concerned with the aesthetics of a product – how will it look, who is going to be using it and how it will work for them. We are quite unique in that respect.”