Pursuing a career in yacht design and marine technology was a no brainer for me. I have always been interested in boats and the sea and loved putting pen to paper to work up my ideas. As a kid when asked want I wanted to be, i always said boat designer. Little did i know, that it is not the most straight forward career choice and took me a few years to really get into it.

After completing a bachelor of technology, majoring in marine design. I was lucky enough to get work straight away and have many opportunities to give projects ago. Which I have found is the best way to learn. I have a huge amount of practical boat experience to help me with design, naval reserve back ground, yachting experience, off shore sailing, commercial ship building and a few thousand of hours mucking around on the Haruki gulf. It’s all been great. But my love for recreational boats such as trailer roundabouts and larger ribs has always stayed the same.

Graduating from Massey University’s school of design in 2005 Matt was awarded a bachelor of design with honours. The primary focus of Matt’s studies was on Marine design and Naval architecture.

Throughout this course, there was regular mentoring from industry heavyweights who excelled in boat design some actively working in Americas Cup campaigns. The knowledge obtained through completing this course provided the necessary skills for Matt to incorporate a freelance design business focusing on providing boat builders in New Zealand and offshore with design support.

After entering into the marine industry, Matt soon secured work designing boats for companies such as Vaudrey Miller Tenders (Superyacht tender manufacturer), Fulham Industries (Graham Hearts Superyacht Development Team) and Yacht Werft Meyer (Superyacht Tender Manufacturer, Bremen, Germany).

The initial successes for Matt were working collaboratively on Superyacht tenders designed and developed for clients such as Larry Allison, Andrey Melnichenko and Roman Abramovich. The pinnacle of Matts career so far has been working alongside world-famous designers Phillipe Stark (considered one of the industrial designer greats) and Patrick Banfield (considered the world most prolific Superyacht Tender designers).