Simon Dixon - Co-Founder of DixonBaxi

0:08Welcome to My Life in Design, brought to you by the DBA and design-focused PR agency, Red Setter. I'm Claire Blythe, co-founder of Red Setter. In this series, I'll be speaking to more people who are shaping the world of design, finding out how they discovered that design was a thing you could base a career around, and how they got to where they are today. This week, I am here with Simon Dixon, co-founder of one of my favourite design agencies, Dixon Baxi. We're recording live from the Crown and Two Chairman pub in London, Soho, a place where I've spent way too long in my 20s and quite a lot in my early 30s.

0:44So it's really nice to be back here. It's a lot posher than it used to be. Simon co-founded Dixon Baxi 20 years ago? 24. 24 years ago. Wow. Okay. 2001, of course. 2001, yeah. Favourite film. And works with some of the most iconic brands in the world. He works with brands such as AC Milan, Everton, Roblox, Formula One, ITVX, Hulu, Samsung, Apple, Google, ESPN, Netflix. The list goes on. Simon, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So can I go back to, I assume, so when you were a child, like when did you realise design was something you could do as a career? I grew up in a very bohemian house.

1:26So my dad was a journalist and a photographer. fair oh okay I was homeschooled so I didn't go to school were you how's that I suppose the comparison but it's fantastic but myself and my two sisters were homeschooled by my mother and certain friends so that meant we met the world in a very different way to other people I guess I don't know the difference really because I didn't experience the alternative but I was always a person who was visual so I like to draw I used to make comics I was very much about how things looked and what was what happened was in the house there was a lot of 12 inch records yeah my parents friends would be rolling joints on them and sat around looking at them endlessly and when I looked at those things I thought well the design of this the visual aspect of it matches the music and somebody has made that decision to do that and then I saw names on the back of those albums and I thought well that's cool someone has done that as a as a thing yeah it must be a career so I figured why don't I look into that so I didn't go to university I went to provincial college but I tried lots of different things I tried photography illustration did you do a foundation course yeah I did a foundation course but I'd been drawing and painting and making things my entire life so I think it's really interesting that you noticed that I had loads of albums in my bedroom and was really into the music but it never entered my head that that was something that someone did as a career I think it's brilliant yeah and you know I wanted to be an astronaut of course that's And then a paleontologist and then a professional footballer.

2:58And my lack of intelligence and physical ability got rid of all of those quite quickly. So what was left was making things. And I just, I've always learned by making and doing. I just think I find that much easier to try things. So when I was younger, I just would make things and try it. And some things were better than others. But I found that the visual language and storytelling and visual systems just seemed to suit my mindset and how I met the world. did you sort of find that out at art foundation and sort of get into the graphic side of things so i used to like all the kind of graphic graphic stuff so i go into typography actually that's what i like so i used to kind of nerd out on kerning and typography and i read a lot about swiss typography going to that but at the same time i was into painters like rothko and roush but roushenberg sorry and they were very kind of expressive and materialistic in the sense of there was a structure to how they made things yeah so i just used to layer things together I'd try photography with typography I'd make things for real I'd scan them in and I just tried different processes and this was at the point in the 80s when digitization came in so we had you know very very very simple computers and I mixed that with real world work and I found that graphic art suited me I was never going to be an artist I didn't have a specific vision for art but I found that I could make things that connected to other people for a reason and that's why i did it wow interesting that's so is that what you then went on study at university or did you go to university no i started my first agency uh on a provincial design college they called it an ordinary national diploma okay which was highly motivating and i only got um i don't even know if it passed that actually but um so you started an agency when i was 19 what stopped you a what stopped you going to university and b what stopped you going to work with someone else i didn't get into any universities so a lack of talent intelligence ability to communicate i don't know i was a very shy young man so i found it very difficult to talk to people i started to build the capacity to do that as i built my practice but when we started the agency we were too stupid and young to realize we shouldn't have a company and we did that until the point that we realized that financially it wouldn't work but it was great while we did it yeah definitely so you went out and won clients and yeah i mean kind of manhandled them into the studio i think most of them were our friends so they were people who put uh like um rave nights on i would make music yeah so a lot of it was through the music industry so we would go to nightclubs and speak to people and say we can make you flyers yeah rave flyers are a whole art form i love it yeah and they're disposable yeah so you make one you share it with people and you know if they like instantly and then the next day you can make another one and the next day you can make another one yeah and also you can design all day and then go out all night so there's a lovely balance to that lifestyle certainly in your 20s yeah yeah yeah i wouldn't do that now obviously but it was it was like um it was a life choice so i've i've always loved the idea of creating for a living is an amazing thing to be able to express yourself professionally is an amazing thing so i've I always had a, I haven't really had a life work balance in that kind of traditional sense.

6:12Obviously I try not to burn myself out, but I just like making things for people. And if you go out and meet people and hang out with them, you have a better understanding of whether or not your work works. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So what happened? What happened to that agency? What was it called? Orange. Orange. Yeah. My granddad always used to say we should have sold the name to Orange, the telecommunications company, but we folded just a bit too soon. So yeah, we're a bit of a disaster. Our logo was a blue circle. Why? Because when you look away from a blue circle, you see an orange circle.

6:43Interesting. That's how bad we were. I like that. That's how much into the details we were. But it was a great thing. So we did that for about three or four years. And we did make some money. We could obviously live. We traded work with a record company for an office space in the back of the record shop. And we got to live and hang out. And we learned about the basics of running a business. Yeah. albeit not very successfully. So then when we developed our careers, we'd at least determined what type of work we'd like to make. And who was that? Was that you and... A guy called Gary Brown and a guy called Chris Ashworth.

7:18Oh, okay. Chris went on to do blah, blah, blah. And I think he works at Microsoft now. And Gary has had agencies in the north of England ever since and worked at Designs Republic. Oh, okay. Oh yeah, Designs Republic. So what after that, what happened next? I joined a group of people who, I basically got a job because I thought I'll go to London to make my fame and fortune, but I had no money. So I went to an agency in the North and got a job there. And while I was there, one of the founders said, we want to open a studio in London. And I said, I'll do that with you. So we took the work that I did.

7:52We went down, shared that with people and it went really well. And that studio grew very quickly. and then somebody else up north said we should open another studio and they say let's go to New York and I said oh I'll do that so after two years I went to New York to open a studio with someone else. You make it sound very easy. Again I didn't know what I was doing but then two years after that that went really well so someone said oh we should service our west coast client so I went to San Francisco to open that studio so I went from boy to man very quickly. And what agency was that? I don't say the name but it was a nice agency.

8:27It's a long time ago. Yeah, okay. It's an amazing experience for working. Again, we learn by doing. So what we found is if we express ourselves and made work which we thought was distinct and specific to us and found people who connected with that emotionally, professionally and saw the effect of the work on the audience, because that's really what it's about. If you make work of any note, it needs to work for the people you're designing for, not for you or the client. Of course, you have to feel the work and believe in it, but you're designing for other people so if somebody who's playing on you know playstation doesn't connect to the design you're creating then it doesn't work and i think our work has always been very visceral and emotional and kind of um connected albeit it's not on the screen anymore oh it's got disappeared i think it works for people i mean i mean really real people and that's what i've always been super interested in how design is democratized and serves people everywhere globally and you make things that are on their terms not on your terms and you have to figure out what works for them because if you work for ac milan it's different to work with netflix they have different desires and emotional connections with football of course if you make that choice it's a live choice it's ingrained in everything in your community your life your family yeah netflix is i've got half an hour i've made some pasta i've got a glass of red wine what shall i watch they're different experiences so you have to serve those masters well i think the fact that let's go on to this in the future but the fact that you even won the job with AC Milan always blows my mind like a sort of hardcore Italian team with a I would never enter my head that they go anywhere outside of Italy and the work you've done is fantastic it's really good but engaging that court that cool mentality it must it must have been hard decision for them to make yeah culturally it seemed to go like the fans seemed to oh the fans were fine they didn't throw any kind of pigs on the pitch.

10:20Yeah, which is amazing for a team like that. I mean, they do. They do crazy things if you don't get it right. But again, it's about sensitivity to people. So with that project, they wanted to work with somebody who had an objective opinion of what they were as a football club. But they wanted to take the Milanese spirit to the world. They want to globalise their brand. And we do that very well. We've done it for lots of different types of companies. And we try and do that in a way that serves the people. And of course, fans are kind of, in a sense, super fans of the brand. So when we talk to them, they're just connected with our connection with the people that they serve.

10:58But we also understood that there's 80 ,000 people in the stadium. But in order to grow a brand like AC Milan, you have to speak to somebody in Malaysia and to someone in Africa and somebody in North America and China. And that person might just wear the jersey or they might like the idea of it. So turning that into something that they care about is a lifestyle choice. It's not just a sport choice. It's about how it connects to their lives. So it's just about taking them in a non-generic globalised way, the spirit and the ethos and the meaning of what AC Milan is, rather than it just being sport or football.

11:30Because football is football, but AC Milan is not Everton. They're different communities, different styles of football, different histories. So it's about legacy, history and community. And if you can get that right, people all over the world can connect with it. And it has to look cool. it did absolutely did look cool so going back to sort of like your journey does that like lead up to when you were in new york is that where you met pulver for the first time i met him in london ah so you met him in like pulver's um co-founder and business partner by the way yeah and best friend yeah and best friend he's like my brother yeah he's like my brother yeah so we've been together for 30 years wow so same time as my wife so i have two very amazing relationships obviously my wife is the most fundamental to my life she's the principal of the company yeah absolutely yeah so a very fascinating setup i don't know why either of them spend any time with me but that's a that's a different podcast but yeah paul was my best friend he's my brother and we've done a lot of things together but i met him in london and he was the first person that we employed in that that that studio and the the story goes is we'd hired someone then a friend of mine ben said meet this guy is super cool so i met a paulva we talked about films and design and life and the following day I rang the person up and said I've made a mistake and hired a pover instead which apart from asking my wife to marry me is the best thing I ever did yeah absolutely that's a good interjection there with but it was it was because we then worked together on and off opening studios he replaced me in New York when I went to San Francisco and then after about six or seven years of doing that I said to him we should just do something different like he's a reaction to what we've done let's find a different way of creating yeah so we started dixon baxi and started in a very small way we were two people for about five years wow were you what really were you so from what 2001 2006 it was just you and a boarder just two of us yeah wow okay we wanted to kind of refine what we were as creatives we wanted to get back to when you scale something very rapidly you lose touch with the work yeah and i was only 30 at the time so i'd gone from 19 to 30 in four cities and five studios i can't remember what it was but a lot of stuff in short space time yeah i felt very disconnected from my creativity so I wanted to get back to something simpler and purer but we didn't know what that would be so we just started doing some backs and started we didn't show any previous work we just went to meet people and talk to them about how we thought and we were looking if that someone gave us some work and then we just kept doing it who was your first client two companies one was a financial advisory firm that was a friend of mine owned so he helped us get going by giving a rebrand of his company a company called bit which we're eternally grateful for and the other one was mtv that's a good first client yeah really good so we did mtv2 for them which was a music channel in the uk and it was very successful it got us a lot of work after we did that yeah absolutely well you can still see i mean that sort of entertainment and music and thing in your work today it's uh yeah we've we've always had a nice affinity to i guess cultural brands iconic brands that are in entertainment sport content things that connect to the world technology so we just did last year we did the 40th anniversary vmas for mtv oh did you so that means we've worked with them for 30 years wow one of our first clients in london was mtv one of our first first clients in new york was mtv different people of course so we have we've had this really wonderful on and off relationship with them for a very long time yeah how did you get them as a client i'm trying to think of like young people listening to the podcast or anyone here today that's thinking how do i get what's the chain of events yeah like what's so what can people learn from yeah so if you think about it obviously when people look at us and look at our portfolio and things like that they don't realize that i'm a 30 some year overnight success yes so it's a long journey to get where i got to so i started doing flyers so i was paid 300 pound for doing a flyer and a poster yeah you know you get 200 quid to print it so you maybe can do two colors it's pretty disposable you don't really know what you're doing and you keep doing that and then someone says you can do a 12 inch record cover yeah so maybe you get 500 pounds you get four colors and they print a thousand of them and you go into a record show and you go shit there's my album not mine obviously the designers and you do that and then somebody says can you make that movies yeah we'll maybe make a little video that goes with that and then maybe you make something for a games cover and then someone likes that games cover and say well what if you did something for the beginning of a tv show so you do that and then someone says how would that apply to a channel design can you make some items you go yeah of course you do that and then before you know it you're making design systems yeah so it's it's little and often i don't think there's any magic to it i think you level out where you deserve in the industry based on talent for some people but also the mechanics of how you make your work and how you grow your career and i think if you show people that your work is effective for the people it needs to be effective for the more likely to use you and we've never really sold ourselves with propositions or like the mechanics of how the industry works because again like i say we're self-taught we don't know how actual the real industry works so you never had the complex branding diagram so we've got all sorts of terrible diagrams but what we try to do is simplify things into human terms so when you talk to somebody you talk about the problem what do they need solving yeah why is it need solving what's the problem behind the brief what's the pressure on people what's the blockage in the company who do they need to serve and serve those people well yeah but serve them with work that's not condescending that doesn't talk down to them that works not work that looks great on the surface or in a bento box but it works for real when someone swipes the phone or puts the television on or looks at something you can't be with real work when it hits the world you can't sit next to it and like you would at an awards and go i did this and i did this and we had this fantastic thing that's behind it when your work hits the world it either works or not it doesn't you can't so next people engage their reaction no because the audience will tell you and if people don't subscribe if people don't use it if people don't like it or emotionally engage with it or it doesn't grow the business then your work doesn't work yeah so that's the acid test that's the principle of getting it right and growing and you know i want to make work that excites people and thrills people including ourselves i want our team to feel like they're making things that fulfill them and they're growing yeah and they're developing as people because that's one of the great things about our industries you can represent yourself and your culture and your background and things that are meaningful to you through your work and you can collaborate with people you independently you can learn but you can do it together as a team and there's something amazing about that yeah definitely yeah you do it very well can I ask about the principles if you've got like guiding principles I can't remember what you call them of that you set the essentials yeah the essentials it's like our kind of supermarket cheap line isn't it so So basically what we figured out was, and I figured this out relatively early in my career, is that I think principles and values take you further than propositions and pitches, mainly because I'm not very good at that stuff.

18:23But also I believe what I believe. And I think making space for you to create with the people you create with in a good and honest way that is meaningful and useful to people requires an opinion on the world and how you carry yourself. And what I found is when we've been tested really hard, our principles bring us back to things that make us who we are and make the work that matters to us rather than trends or the six hacks to have a great business or what the industry tells you you should do. And I love the industry. Everyone is awesome, nearly. But I don't like things that are performative. I don't like things which are binary.

19:00I don't like the idea that there's only one way of doing things. there's many ways of doing that and i think the key to a successful career is finding the truth of what you do and how you do that with the people you choose to do that with yeah and principles are a great way of doing that yeah absolutely what are the can you share a couple of the principles or is that well highly guarded no no it's online it's on our website yeah it's fully online uh what it is is i'm trying to remember if i can remember them yeah that's no i forgot to ask you about this before i can't i can of course remember them but they're very simple things it's about having a high tolerance for change it's like that it's about understanding that you have an effect on people so you should carry yourself in a good way yeah it's about being receptive to that change in a way that is defined by how you do your creativity not some abstract notion of it it's about being fluent in people so understanding the client the people we work with and the people we serve it's about being comfortable with going too far so that creatively you're constantly the edge of yours so it's a lot of those types of things it's not working in ways that don't suit you morally structurally financially creatively yeah so they're all about just centering around things that make sense and we value let's say you don't prioritize the money as in obviously money is important to make business go but that's not the first thing you look for no it's people creativity then money yeah it's always in that order if you get people right the relationships you protect people you grow them they will make better work if they make

20:30Simon Dixon:better work you get get paid better because you deserve to be paid well so it's quite simple if you chase money i'd be in a different industry if i wanted to make just actual money yeah absolutely what i want to do is make things that i enjoy and are meaningful and useful to people and money to me is about control and not in a megalomania way but if you want to sustain yourself for any period a time and choose the work you want to do in a, in a, or curate the type of work you want to do. Having financial strength means that you can focus on the things you're good at doing in relationships. You think you'll bring something to the table rather than just doing work for work's sake.

21:04Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So to me, financial strength is a, is a creative discipline. Yes. It's a business thing, but it's, it means you can be more creative. It's the same with growth and sales curating your relationships and the pragmatic aspect of building those relationships means you get better clients and you serve them better which means you get better work so that's a creative practice yeah so everything we do is a creative practice it's not business and creative money and creative all of it determines what you are in the world yeah all creative yeah absolutely yeah and you know i like money yeah yeah don't be all that's uh you know but it's not yes i'm not a particularly materialistic person yes what i really like is if i look at a piece of work i think that's for can i swear yeah of course i think something fucking cool yeah i get excited by it that's worth a lot more to me than lots of other things yeah definitely i agree can i ask about how you inspire your own creativity is there anything particular that you do or is it the people around you yeah it's an interesting question that there's a there's like a star inside me like a little fire and that's for some reason it's always been there so I get massive enthusiasm from the exercise of thinking creatively and interacting with people and then I go into the studio and I see what the team are making so what I get now is my job is to create the space for them to create rather than make myself make the work so there's a kind of um vicarious thrill to seeing that work I get great joy from it yeah and it gives me great energy and if I see when I walk around the studio that they're at the edge of what they're doing creatively and growing and it's something that we all love then I love it yeah so that's what inspires me I travel I look at things and I do what everybody else does but I've always been I like to think first that rather than look at things so I think about things a lot so if I want to kind of reboot I read that's what I do so I'll sit and I read and while I'm reading my mind will wander and I'll think about the thing that's important to me yeah and the idea pops in my head and I've got loads of books that I haven't read because of that but it's a great exercise to kind of reboot me definitely yeah I do a similar thing with going for a walk yeah trying to go for a walk without my mobile I think what is it's about being present with yourself and giving yourself time to not do the thing you think you're doing and if you've soaked up enough insight and information and had the conversations spontaneously you will think about the thing that comes to front of mind and in my i trust my instincts and my gut yeah i take out i process a lot of information but i trust myself to think about the thing that to me is the most important and that sets the fire and then i like talking about it as well so i endlessly annoy people by talking to them in the studio and while i'm doing that and processing whether or not that's a good idea yeah that's good that's a nice atmosphere in the studio for that well you'd have to ask them that they i think i annoy people obviously but i think talking about work is really important because if you if you talk about things without anything to talk about you have to use imagination and you have to use communication if i say do you like that bottle then obviously we're already talking about a specific thing yeah but if i talk to you about how should you drink the beer yeah what is the beer like you're more liberated to think differently so i think it's important to create space to do that rather than always relying on tools, technology, and mechanics of creation to do that.

24:29Because if you do that, you'll be doing the same work as everybody else. Yeah, yeah. Asking the right questions and going from there. Can I ask about your role at Dixon Baxi? So it must have changed a lot from when it started, when it was the two of you, to what you do today. Like, I mean, imagine - What do I do? Yeah, what do you do? Yeah, what do you do? What do you do today? I can't say because if I do, the truth will be out. If I actually do anything, I serve no real purpose. But I know you do lots of talks and you work with lots of students and work with that. I know there's a lot. I do a number of things.

25:01So I'm a trained designer. Yes. So I started out as a graphic designer and I've done a lot of the work that we did originally. I do work like that. Yeah. But I'm not practicing design in the same way anymore, though I did work on our recent book and things like that. So I do things to keep myself out of mischief. Yeah, the book sounds cool. Yeah, I would have brought it. I'll send you one. I create the space for other people to create. So that's one thing. I help set the standards for that creation. Yeah. I helped determine the direction of the company, helped curate and set the direction of who we work with.

25:30I set the direction or try with other people, set the direction of how we meet the world in terms of technology and our ability to deliver on our work. I want to set the moral standards of the company and I want to make sure we have an environment where people, it's open, accessible to as many people as possible from wherever background they're from. yeah and then when they're with us we develop them we grow them and we hopefully they do very well and then we hand them over to the next person better than we receive them so they have strong careers or they stay with us and grow and develop and then I try also because I think the world is a complex heavy place and has been for a long time our industry used to be very opaque so we try to share things that will maybe help people understand that there's lots of different ways of being creative and it's not a perfect thing I do a lot of that and then I do a lot of talks and mentoring just because I feel it's the least I could do.

26:22Yeah, yeah, I think it's really good. You guys have got an interesting programme, haven't you? I can't remember what it is where you get students in or graduates or anyone, is it, from different backgrounds? Our intern academy. Yeah, intern academy. Yeah, we have an intern academy. So we've had it for a very long time, years and years and years. It pays 10 % over the actual London living wage. It's a three-month programme. And more than a third of our team came through that programme. Really? Wow. How many people now? 57. Wow, that's really impressive. A lot of people from all over the world. Yeah.

26:53So, you know, we've got 18 different countries. Wow. So Lebanon and Hong Kong and China and America and Nigeria and Italy and Germany, lots of different countries, a lot of South Americans. So we've got Venezuela, Brazil, Chile. So lots of people, lots of different places. But it's, yeah, it's about how can we give people access to the industry? and Marta who is our head of practice who's just been promoted from head of production to head of practice she started with us as an intern wow so for us it's about that growth and development because obviously we can only help a certain number of people get into the industry but I think it's a fundamental thing to help us be as diverse and equitable as an industry as possible as you have to invest in that I think that's very interesting isn't it because it's it's a good thing to do but you're not just doing it because you're being nice it's because it produces the best work and the best atmosphere yeah well i think there's there's it's not about being nice it's it's a moral thing so being fair well obviously you should do it you should do it but it also happens but it makes better work but it makes better people i'm a better person because of it i learn i develop and i grow as a person so i've matured and developed i think into a better person than i was through meeting people that i wouldn't have met unless we'd have been more receptive to different types of people in the world yeah and i think it's a healthy thing there's too much there's not not enough celebration of difference there's too much binary in the world which is negative and i think we share a lot more than we have differences the more i travel the more i realize the world is an amazing place and i want to draw on the optimistic and positive parts of that because the world is can be very tough so in our studio i want it to be safe and democratise and open and collective for people so that they feel they can make great work.

28:39We make better work. We have a better lifestyle. It's not perfect by a long chalk, but we're a work in progress. And I think I get better through working with lots of different types of people. Yeah. Yeah. I think that comes across in the work. I think it's, yeah, makes a big difference. Can I ask you about the design industry? How much you get involved in it? What sort of challenges there are? What do you think of it? Yeah, it's a couple of questions, isn't it? I am inherently in the industry. Yeah, of course. But I've always felt we're like a cork that bobbles around in a slightly different place to other people.

29:11Obviously, we take part in industry panels and talks and judging and various things. We invest in and sponsor lots of different events and people in the background. What sort of stuff? I don't want to say specifically, but we support a lot of people in the background. I don't like talking about it because I don't want it to be about us. It's about them. Yeah, so I don't mean to be... No, no, absolutely. I get it. So yeah, and I'm a great champion of our industry. I think it's an amazing thing. We get kicked around a little bit and I don't think people outside our industry quite understand what we do.

29:47But it's a profoundly amazing thing to do, to create for a living. Like everything, the entire fabric of life is designed. So to be part of that is a really cool thing. So I think our industry does something amazing and I'm very proud of it. And the changes it's made in the last 25, 30 years are incredible. It's right at the edge of where business is improving the world. It's showing people that you can do better. And I'm very proud of the industry doing that. Yeah, definitely. Well, that's one of the reasons I like working in it so much, because you kind of feel that I'm living in the future a little bit.

30:19You sort of see what's coming next in all the different sort of sectors and all different kinds of things. It's really interesting. It's far from perfect and the world isn't perfect and life isn't perfect. But I think if you meet it in an objective, positive and open way, you can be part of the change. And I like being part of that change and learning and developing and getting better at what we do. I think that's a really good thing. And I think a lot of our industry does that. Some of it doesn't. But, you know, and there's all sorts of challenges, obviously. There are financial challenges for our industry.

30:48It's very difficult to get work. It's difficult to make money. It's difficult to systemise that. Giving access to talent is a really fundamental thing to make sure that all the things I talked about earlier happen. Making great work is hard. It's difficult to keep making original, distinct and different work. We all see the same thing. So it's very easy to pick up on the same habits. yeah we're a bit obsessed by trends and information and widgets and data I think creativity is more fundamental than that so I think it's better to center around something else but I think we're a great work in progress and so that's why I think about the industry yeah and if I see a challenge in it I think I can only control what I control so I try and do that in a in an honorable and creative way yeah and express that to other people and then work with people who think the same way yeah absolutely that sounds good can i ask about what's next for dixon baxi our 25th anniversary so 25th anniversary next year how do you are you going to celebrate it well it'll be a wild party that's for sure excellent that sounds good yeah we'll do a monograph to celebrate the 25 years of our work but the funny thing about what's next i get asked this a lot but i don't really think like that i think about the moment yeah because you can't to affect what's next is what's now well you know i have no idea how the world's going to be yeah and i don't know how i'll feel either but what i do know is i get great joy from what i do and any given day i look in my hand and i go well i've got these things i've got what i do the people i do it with our portfolio our position in the world what's happening in the world what excites us so what should we go to do now yeah because there's a lot of things that people tell you should tick off as you do have a career but i like the idea of what does it feel like today to do the thing you're doing and why are you doing that thing and if you're more or to me if you're more present you savor the thing that you're doing rather than putting that off for another day yeah because i next week if we had this chat i might think something different but i've got i mean there's two or three things we're going to do next year and announce which i think are things yeah i can't tell you about them now so they will be fun things we do but cool you know being in the moment and being present with the work and making a difference is far more important to me than yeah what is next yeah it's what's now i want to be present in any particular moment i'm in yeah hence the work in progress yeah yeah i like that can i ask you a final question of sort of top tips for young people starting out today sort of beyond just pure design skills how can they set themselves apart yeah it's it's a really tricky thing because there's a lot of competition yeah so often if we put a an ad out of say a senior designer we might get a thousand people apply and we can't look at a thousand portfolios we'll try our best wow a thousand yeah yeah we get people from all over the world so we get a lot so it can be very competitive and i think what happens is people hear that they should do a certain thing yeah be a specialist be a generalist your portfolio should do this you know lots of tips but the truth is the people are more successful are the ones that humanize the relationship when someone sends you a message i get a lot of people who just throw me a portfolio they'll send me a it's a bit like throwing a brick through your window with a note on yeah it says i'm a designer it's not particularly attractive yes but i get contacted all the time by people who every single day that say hey i was thinking this what do you think about that and they start a conversation and what it is it's reciprocal it's not just turning up and going hey i've got this thing to sell will you buy it yes and of course i won't i'm like i'm doing something else but if someone says i was thinking this or what about this so you you build a relationship so i think try and build relationships trying to see yourself as a distinct thing you're not a portfolio you're an idea so when i think about when i say claire i think of something yeah so i think about someone who helps the industry i think someone's really creative someone who's really giving so you have a thing yeah so that's the thing and you didn't make that up you didn't write that down and say my proposition is helping the industry you you chose to do that yeah and you and every time you meet the world you do that so I find people who center around what they think is their version of the world they interact they speak to a lot of people who show up at events like this they listen to people as well as talk to them they don't ask for things immediately they ask for advice their portfolio is not a load of slides that said I did this brief and I did this brief.

35:18They explained the benefit of it, why they made the choices, they humanize themselves. All of those things help. Research the agencies that you go for, sending to the same 50 agencies as everybody else isn't really research. There's millions, not millions, there's thousands of fantastic agencies in this industry. Look for a place that will teach you, allow you to grow, find places that you can connect with in terms of how they see the world and then talk to them. So when you go to an interview, ask them questions and get involved with them research them research the people you're talking to yeah a lot of people stay completely abstract at the point that they're entering the industry and then they're confounded that people are confused i hear that a lot yeah and don't be negative either so i had someone come to see me the other day and i said how are you and he said i can't remember the word but he said everything's torturous so i said okay great wow so i said sit down have a glass of water so I tried to lift the energy and I said you know how's it going and he said oh it's just very painful he said oh wow this is going to be a long chat and so I said to him look you're sat with me in my studio yeah you got into my studio how bad is that you know like not that I'm a particularly cool guy but you've succeeded in the thing that you wanted to do he must have had so much effort to get to that point yeah but what why not just ask me a question or talk talk about something interesting yeah why not talk you know come into the room and say i say how are you doing he said well obviously it's a really pivotal time in my career i'm trying to enter industry but i don't actually know what industry is i don't know education and that gap is really big to me yeah so now we're having a conversation but i can't have a conversation if it's a blank wall so just treat the other person as a person and interact with them and humanize that relationship and you'll get a lot of people i think so and that person's only learning so i'm not being critical of that person yes but i think carrying baggage is very very heavy so allowing yourself not to have that is really healthy in that moment it is difficult yeah it's really very very hard but in the moment if you're in that be clear enough that you want to get something out of it but it's reciprocal and you're interested in the other person you'll make a connection not making it all about you yeah and then you have a greater chance this isn't your chance to perform it's your chance to find so it's about agency the more you take control of your destiny the better it will still be hard it always is i've been rejected by some of the best companies in the world and i still am every single week yeah interesting that must be really good for people to hear i bet people think you must be able to walk into anything now no of course not i mean i have to talk to people and say and they say si what's it like to work with your agency i go blah blah blah it's just like this it's nice we have a chat and then four out three reject me yeah still to somebody else yeah but I'm only going to work with the one who likes it yeah so it's okay rejection is inherent to the industry it doesn't mean it's about you it doesn't mean that you've done a bad job it's just not everybody can work with everybody so see the fact that you only need so many relationships and connections in order to develop a career you don't need what other people have you don't need an ideal that someone tells you you don't need some hack that someone tells you online what you need is a thing you need so get something small and develop that and once you have that thing you can have something else yeah if you try and rush to the end thing you haven't learned enough about the thing you need to get early on so if 19 year old Psy tried to do what I do now we would wouldn't work would it yeah I've had to learn how to do that thing and there's nothing wrong with that humility of realizing that it takes a little bit of time to get the thing you need so determination and persistence and and like I say humanizing those relationships it's really important yeah that's very good advice Simon thank you so much I was thinking would it be good to do a couple of questions for you if

39:10Simon Dixon:anyone's got a question for Simon when you did the Everton work yes I remember probably about five ten years ago they unsuccessfully launched a new crest badge yeah and it went down like a lead balloon yeah to what extent did you consult with the fan base and to what extent you know was was that on the table for you or was it just the wider brand piece we consulted the fans across the board so we spoke to fan groups we spoke to communities we spoke to the backroom staff we spoke to the company the you know the company that owns everton we spoke to players we spoke to the people who run the brand, we were aware of that lineage.

39:53So whenever we do anything which is community-based, we're very sensitive of that relationship. The device we created, the icon which is on everything and the design system, comes from St. Rupert's Tower, which is inside the badge. We didn't need to destroy a badge that's existed for decades and has great importance to people. We created a system that works with that, the same thing with AC Milan. So often in branding, there's this sense that you have to change everything in order to make something fresh. There's a massive cliche in the industry which everyone goes, oh, they've made the logo a sans serif simple logo.

40:30That's not how branding works. It's an interconnected set of experiences. And the logo is just a sharp end of that spear. It's just to remind you of something. But it's an empty vessel unless it's filled with meaning. So that crest means something to people in Everton. And if you track back to that meaning and you make things that come from that lineage of meaning, then they care about it. If you make something random, they don't. So it's just about sensitivity to their lived experience. Thank you. And it had to, of course, be blue. You're not going to turn it red, are you? Has anyone else got a question for Simon?

41:09You talk about be human, don't be negative. I just wanted your thoughts on the industry at the moment where obviously you have teams, blood, sweat, tears into a rebrand, transformation, and then social media hits and hopefully people love it. There's always a trance you don't. Yeah. What do you say to your team saying, you know, look, just we're trying to create brave, distinctive, relevant work. Yeah. But that sometimes has a backlash and a half. What do you say to your team? I'll have to couch my language with this. so there's a number of things at play with that which is any any change people are unsettled by and within that there'll always be a visceral minority so say for example you take AC Milan they had 380 million fans when we started the project they now have 550 million fans so that's about 170 million more people that engage with the brand if 100 people on twitter go batshit crazy about how terrible the design is.

42:11I'd take that every day of the week to get 170 million people. So you have to be aware of whose voice it is and how important it is. You also have to hold your nerve. Change takes time. You can't change a brand and expect it to happen immediately. What you have to do is phase it over time. So we recommend that the change is phased. You don't do it instantaneously and you consult people. so we do internal business relationships and then external relationships in that order to make sure everyone's behind it but you have to trust that the truth will out that the maximal number of people will connect with the brand it will reach the people that are important and the whole point with anything is not everybody's going to like everything so if you're an AC Milan fan you'll love it if you're an Inter Milan fan you will hate it so brands will have different relationships with different people.

43:01Some brands will have highly monetized relationships and others won't. If you think about someone like, let's say Ferrari, millions of people will wear the cap. Very few people will ever drive a Ferrari and almost nobody owns one. But that brand means something because of those different relationships. So you just have to trust that. And then internally, you have to be hardwired to believe in your work. So if someone says to me, hey, Sai, I don't like that work, I go, fine, objectively. you know that's fine subjectively that's fine you can critique our work if you want to go on a you know one of those popular websites that have forums that want to kind of dig into people's work that's fine but we didn't design it for you we designed it for the audience and creativity is subjective but the outcome of our work isn't if the work works that's what determines it for me so So I think pride in the work, high tolerance for knowing that's going to happen is important.

43:59And we talk about as a team that if we believe in it, the client believes it and the people who design believe in it and the truth will allow over time, we're willing to wait. Sounds good. All right, let's leave it there. Thank you, Simon, so much. That was brilliant. I really enjoyed that. Thank you.

44:23Thank you.