Kate Costello

Kate Costello is the Marketing and Creative Lead at Telling Your Stories, an illustrator and creative storyteller with a passion for turning rich, complex stories into visual worlds that feel engaging, meaningful and true to place.

As the lead illustrator for Telling Your Stories, Kate has illustrated many of the project’s stories across Aotearoa, helping bring histories, people, landscapes and local identities to life for tamariki and rangatahi. She also works closely with illustrators around New Zealand, helping match creative styles to individual stories and guiding the visual development so each project feels deeply connected to the community it represents. Kate also is head of digital development and print.

Alongside illustration, Kate leads the creative direction and marketing of Telling Your Stories, shaping how the work is presented, shared and experienced across print, digital and live projects.

At the heart of her work is a belief that illustration is more than decoration - it's literacy. It is another language of telling the story — adding perspective, emotion, detail and meaning that words alone sometimes cannot.