Mark Cleverley

Mark Cleverley (21 November 1933 – 7 May 2022) was a New Zealand designer active from the 1960s to the 1990s. He was most notable for his work as Development Designer at Crown Lynn Potteries from 1968 until the early 1980s.

Early life Cleverly was born in 1933 in Papakura.

Career Cleverley started his career at age 18 when living in Hamilton. During this time he worked as an architectural draughtsman at the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy. After this, he moved to Christchurch to work at Warren and Mahoney before winning a scholarship to the Ilam School of Fine Arts where he became one of the first students in the new graphic design programme. Postage stamps were considered one of the most consistent means of advertising and projecting New Zealand identity aboard. As a result, it was important that the stamps both moulded and encapsulated public taste. Cleverley's stamps completed to a dramatic shift in the New Zealand design aesthetic as they were very different from what had been done before.

Some of Cleverley's most distinctive postage stamps included the Ross Dependency series and 1970 New Zealand Exposition stamps.

Some of his most well known work included the New Zealand parliamentary dining suite for the Bellamy's restaurant and the floral Echo design. His students noted his passion for typography and design history, in addition to his enthusiasm and engagement with their projects. He was also nominated as the New Zealand representative in the 1974 International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) Interdesign conference in Canada.

Cleverley was also awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship for a research project on bilingual design in 1987. In 2013, the was elected to the Massey University College of Creative Arts Hall of Fame.

In 2014, Cleverley was received a Black Pin for Outstanding Achievement by The Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ), awarded to those who have made a lasting contribution to the design profession.