"This is a way of recording New Zealand history in an illustrated way."
By drawing attention to such buildings, from one end of the country to the other, created a greater appreciation of them.
And while his latest book sparks off with profiles of Napier buildings as it was clearly "the centre of Art Deco in New Zealand", it delivers a remarkable succession of places where the design is also prevalent.
"Gore is one of them - it is great - there is an original service station and picture theatre there," Terry said, adding at Te Awamutu was also another centre which possessed Art Deco-inspired architecture.
He said it had an "intact" precinct of 1920s and 1930s buildings.
But many such buildings did not register with many people so creating the book created a national perspective he was passionate about.
"Because they shape the appearance of our streets."
It was no easy job for he and Rosie in creating the book.
Terry said he was not a big traveller so effectively spent two years on Google earth accessing where buildings were and cross-referencing them through archives.
He would get original photos and cross reference with contemporary photos, and would work in some of the extensive range of model cars he has to get the vehicle touch into what he created.
Accordingly, several of the images are of old service stations and garages.
"There are over 50 illustrations so it was a phenomenal amount of work - at one stage I figured we'd bitten off more than we could chew," he said with a laugh.
"Rosie and I would start working on it at 4.30 in the morning and go through until about 8 at night to get it done because we wanted to do a good job on it."
Napier and Hastings were blessed to possess such a landscape of Art Deco buildings, and history, Terry said.
For the past 10 years he has been working in with the Art Deco Trust and has created postcards and posters - the official 2008 festival poster was his work.
On that poster alone he used about 80 images to get what he wanted, and even researched car registration plate numbers to get it right - down to the letters, numbers and colours.
He grew up in the Waikato but said he had stayed here from time to time, but reiterated that he was not a great traveller these days.
He had always been drawn to art and writing, although his CV is a varied one.
"I've got a PR background and worked in communications but I've also been a factory worker and worked in forestry."
He said he wasn't sure where the art and writing fitted in but had always been interested in the heritage of the country so it grew from there - the desire to record it and accordingly cherish it .
So with Art Deco Airports and Art Deco New Zealand: An Illustrated Guide on the shelves, the focus is now on the air.
He and Rosie have embarked on what will be an extensively researched, designed and illustrated profile of the pioneers of New Zealand aviation - the Walsh brothers.
"They were the first to carry out powered flight in New Zealand - they were the first to fly Auckland to Wellington and they trained 110 pilots for the Great War, but not a lot of people would know much about them.
The planned book which he said would contain "a lot of illustration work" and which is planned for publication in 2018, would hopefully change that.
All part of New Zealand's history.
