Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi abdicate their old jobs on the aforementioned day in 2001, bent to alpha their new studio, DixonBaxi, with a apple-pie slate. ‘We absitively we wouldn’t assignment with our old clients, and we wouldn’t appearance any assignment we had done,’ says Baxi. ‘We wrote two lists,’ says Dixon. ‘One annual of things we would do … ’ ‘Simple things like actuality honest, no bullshit,’ interrupts Baxi. ‘And one annual of things we wouldn’t do, like music architecture and alive for agencies,’ continues Dixon. ‘But we didn’t absolutely apperceive what we would be doing.’
What they do now – with flair, humour and ample success – is design, art administration and branding, conspicuously in television. Afterwards seven years as DixonBaxi, with some characteristic and memorable projects for Formula 1, the Sci Fi Channel, Last.fm and MTV beneath their belts, they accept aloof completed their bigger job to date, the rebranding of Five, the UK’s newest earthbound television channel, which launched in 1997.
The Five bureau has taken them above the accepted boundaries of art direction, banishment them to leave the abundance area of bandage or alcove channels for a added mainstream, abridged admission that would appoint Five’s ‘telly-loving’ public.
‘Five’s abrupt said that aggregate was up for grabs,’ says Baxi, answer that the duo had to attending at the character and how aggregate looks, additional all the ‘underpinnings’ – the accent of articulation and the way that is articulated. In some senses, their role was afterpiece to administration consultancy and branding than graphics, as they approved a active character for the channel, alive to an ‘aggressive timeline’ that answerable them to cool added projects and about-face bottomward new admirers for bisected a year. As able-bodied as alive aural Five – with its 300-plus advisers from boutique to boardroom akin – they commissioned abounding altered absolute design, blur and activity studios, including Mate Steinforth and David Cairns.
DixonBaxi’s assignment has had the aisle of abounding agnate architecture duos: a few baby jobs for agreeing admirers in the aboriginal few years as the workflow boring grew in size, ambit and value. What is remarkable, however, is that it has remained the aforementioned size: two people. The principals administer over the acceptable amplitude of their East London flat in baroque isolation: two desks, a few chairs and lots of bank amplitude for accepted posters, accession statements and try-outs, additional a few mementos of accomplished projects.
No interns, inferior designers, annual managers or admin agents arrest the appearance from abaft their analogous 30-inch monitors. The duo fabricated a advised accommodation to comedy bottomward their antiquity as allotment of Attik, whose turbo-charged, computer-driven cartoon seemed to be everywhere at the abutting of the antecedent decade. Baxi, who advised bright architecture at Middlesex University, abutting Attik in 1995 afterwards stints at Michael Peters and Saatchi & Saatchi. Dixon advised at York College, and founded Orange Architecture with Chris Ashworth and Gary Brown afore abutting Attik in 1993. Baxi and Dixon formed calm in London afore Dixon went off to admit Attik’s New York operation in 1995. Baxi set up the company’s San Francisco appointment three years later, afore abutting Dixon in NY in 1999, area they spearheaded campaigns for brands such as Sony, Ford, Levi’s and Swiss Re.
Seven years ago, they hardly dared brainstorm how the new convenance ability develop. But their ‘manifesto’ would adviser the apprentice aggregation into a new way of working, with guideline statements that reminded them to ‘Look underneath, but ability the surface’, to ‘Work with the applicant directly’ and to accept the ‘confidence to say “no”’. They absitively to abandon the sectors taken affliction of by 100 added London practices, such as music packaging, book covers and busy websites. Their aboriginal two projects bound authentic the administration they would follow: character assignment for a banking casework aggregation and for MTV.
Despite their ‘no music’ rule, DixonBaxi’s logo and advice architecture for the Last.fm website helped the apprentice amusing networking accouterments (founded in 2002 by Martin Stiksel, Felix Miller and Richard Jones) transform the way music is disseminated, allotment of an advancing change that is banishment the industry to amend the accord amid music and imagery.
Last.fm was a ‘little’ client, financially, but the arrangement that DixonBaxi advised acclimatized seamlessly as the arrangement took off: ‘In some senses it wasn’t baby at all,’ says Dixon, ‘because all the elements we put in abode advertisement as it grew to 20 actor people.’
Top: On-air attending and admission amalgamation for MTV UK. Client: MTV Europe, 2002-2005. The iconic music admission affianced DixonBaxi to devise a ‘newer Brit-focused character … a aberrant and askance absoluteness area annihilation is absolutely as it seems.’ Dixon and Baxi wrote and directed 60 alive activity idents featuring blimp and alive animals and devised a appearance adviser for the channel’s on- and off-air attending and ‘tone of voice’.Below: MTV2 Admission Amalgamation and on-air look, 2002-08.Creative administration and design: DixonBaxi. Animation: James Wharfield. A brace of the aboriginal 2002 attending created by DixonBaxi, which uses hundreds of new aweless statements: either accounting by the designers or beatific in by viewers, arch to new means of communicating and creating chat with the admirers in awning graphics, advice arrangement and admission navigation.
Their assignment for Formula 1 is absolutely their best arresting work; DixonBaxi’s on-screen branding and advice commitment arrangement alcove 40 or 50 actor admirers about the apple for anniversary race: it is a huge sub-brand aural sports television. The aggregation won a three-way angle for the job, assault two advertisement architecture companies with a accomplishments in sports programme graphics.
‘When we did Formula 1,’ says Dixon, ‘if we hadn’t fabricated use of our bright architecture abilities it wouldn’t accept been as acceptable as it is now.’ He sees a absolute articulation amid the Swiss acquiescence he abstruse as a apprentice and the conduct adapted for a job like this, area the applicant adapted an advice arrangement that was accurate and robust. ‘It’s absolutely a three-dimensional grid,’ he says. ‘Because you accept to add time to it. After the technology aspect of it, the architecture allotment of it wouldn’t accept been as good. The architecture is absolutely simple, it’s all about watching the race. If I about-face on to ITV twenty annual in, I aloof charge to apperceive who’s acceptable and who’s additional and what’s happened.’
Both designers are accomplished at bottomward amid big annual and detail: they allocution the casting allocution while walking the bright walk: ‘The affair I like about bright architecture is that it’s a craft-based discipline,’ says Dixon. ‘The best bright designers accept this built-in charge to accomplish things about perfect. Whether that’s Farrow or Build or North (whoever your favourite is) they accept this way of attractive at the apple which is absolutely aerial affection and able-bodied considered. If you can booty that mindset to a altered discipline, it’s absolutely exciting.’
Their assignment for MTV and the Sci Fi admission additionally puts the accent on the admirers – who are about absolutely altered to the bodies who run the channels. To adapt a presentation for the MTV2, they aboriginal collection about London, gluttonous out the places area the archetypal admirers would adhere out. They took photographs, calm bits – trainers, flyers, etc. – and complete a ten-foot advanced clutter collage that became a behemothic ‘mood board’ for the channel. ‘This resulted in about “anti-channel” design,’ explains Dixon. The MTV identity, borer into what they appellation ‘the disenfranchised, boy-in-bedroom, music-with-attitude’ accent of the channel, was based on the way their admirers spoke, in obtuse, snarky statements and text-style language.
A after aberration on this character approved to be added ‘gritty’, with backgrounds and overlays fabricated from photographs of pavement, planks of copse and begin absolute from skips. ‘The colour palette and visuals were advised to be strong,’ says Dixon, but the accent was stronger, because it was based on how their audiences spoke, and adapted with absolute emails beatific to the MTV2 website from its viewers: the admirers could absolutely see their words on the screen.
An character for MTV UK took accession abrupt turn, application photographs of scenarios that are odd, austere or absolute peculiar, a ‘Martin Parr’ worldview for alienated teenagers. Dixon and Baxi wrote and directed added than 60 alive activity idents featuring animals (stuffed and live) in accession to camp characters such as ‘Smell Guy’ and ‘Dougie’ the taxidermist. By contrast, their assignment for TMF (The Music Factory) was fundamentally graphic, with coloured blobs and typewritten captions – a much-needed ‘lick of paint’ for the highest-rated (if not the coolest) Freeview music channel.
The Sci Fi admission adapted a altered accent of voice, or rather set of voices. With a abrupt to booty the anchorperson from ‘geekdom’ and accomplish it into ‘the assured casting it should be’, DixonBaxi advised and art-directed a set of 48 annual cards whose about-face texts would additionally accord the channel’s agents some actual ample casting guidelines (somewhat evocative of Schmidt and Eno’s Oblique Strategies, see Eye no. 24 vol. 6). The images accommodate aliens, the casting of Star Trek absurd as bedrock band, some other-worldly countryside manifestations and a abstruse pyramid.
No affliction for the F wordWriting, systems and typography lie at the affection of DixonBaxi’s anticipation processes. Dixon advised Swiss typography with Jim Deans at York College, area he after formed as a academy designer. ‘It was actual benign to be accomplished acceptable typography,’ he says, ‘it brings a faculty of ability to the discipline. We were advantageous because at York we could assignment in hot metal letterpress, there was a big Berthold book apparatus and photo labs, and they had Macs.’
The Five job answerable them to aftermath a bulk of words (often with the advice of the autograph bureau 26) to ‘explain the admission to itself’. They printed out all the elements of their antecedent assignment on to A2 cards, which they put in a big white box and presented formally to Five. ‘The presentation is a story. Afore you alike get to some of the key amount components, you’ve already apparent them,’ says Baxi, ‘The typefaces and the colours are already chip into the presentation as a whole.’
They capital to claiming the ‘brand idolatry’ of TV channels – what Baxi calls ‘the caked let’s-find-the-logotype-in-the-environment affectionate of thing’ that Admission 4 does so well. ‘Television is unusual,’ Dixon explains, ‘because in actual few added places in branding do you amble on it for a continued aeon of time afore you do annihilation else. The alone acumen it happens on TV is that alternation – the voiceover which tells you what’s accident and area you’re activity – needs article to accompany it. So the articulation picks up, starts talking about the TV programme, the logo appears and 25 abnormal annual of absolute happens. That’s the convention. ‘Our activity was that the character should aloof clarify in and out of the accomplished admission and pop up aback you charge it, not accept ample chunks of it sat there for periods of time. Bodies are watching TV, they don’t appetite to be attractive at logos!’
They had to present their designs to Five’s administration (six times in the aboriginal week), rapidly alive their way up the administration chain, to the CEO (who had never afore in the eleven years of the aggregation had to accord anon with ‘suppliers’), again the board, who asked ‘quite boxy questions’. The final hurdle was a presentation to Gerhard Zeiler, the arch controlling of RTL, the media accumulation that owns Five. ‘He anticipation the “F” was a bit apologetic, and asked us to abode “Fuck” on the board,’ says Dixon. The designers responded by adage that they were aiming to advise Five’s admirers rather than affirm at them. Afterwards some refinements to the atoning ‘F’, they begin an advantage he was blessed with. Dixon says their aim was to aftermath a logo mark, not a typeface, and one that would attending acceptable in monochrome. ‘There’s article nice about these old logos by guys like Saul Bass. Alike aback you see them in atramentous and white, printed badly, in all these logo books, they still attending good!’
The character was additionally activated in focus groups, with Grey London, the aggregation amenable for announcement the new-look Five. ‘We fine-tuned the colours and the accent a little bit, based on the focus groups. The autograph was a bit verbose, and you could about apprehend scriptwriting in it.’ But he adds: ‘You accept to booty analysis with a compression of salt. You set up a bearings area bodies apperceive it’s research, so they act in a way that isn’t normal.’
In actuality Five already had a actual bright abstraction of who is watching the admission – it checks the ratings every day – so the analysis did not derail the process.
The demands of Clarity, the computerised arrangement that manages all Five’s on-air architecture assets and content, meant that the designers had to go beeline from the broad-brush, artistic aspects of the abrupt to typographical detail. For this, application the book Gloriola, they laid bottomward a set of rules and guidelines for Five’s agreeable managers. ‘You accept to be very, actual able-bodied about the architecture components,’ says Dixon, ‘because if you don’t accomplish the adapted accommodation now, aback you get to the average of the testing a baby abuse actuality could accept big furnishings there.’
Once this was beneath way, DixonBaxi had to abode the charge for interstitials (short clips amid programmes), bumpers (the items that abstracted programme agreeable from the adverts) and what they alarm ‘brand bursts’, embarking on a adventure to acquisition and bureau abeyant collaborators about the world.
After attractive at added than 100 submissions from companies and individuals, they best admiral that they anticipation appropriate, and beatific them an advancing brief, all about ethics and spirit. ‘Suddenly, we had this huge aggregate of ideas. Some admiral came aback with one idea, others with thirteen or fourteen,’ says Baxi. Companies commissioned so far accommodate Grant Gilbert, Mate Steinforth, Aardman, Robert Seidel and Chris Cairns, whose amusing clips about-face accustomed items like abundance trolleys into agreeable instruments. In anniversary burst, the logo appears briefly, with an animated, coloured halo. ‘We didn’t appetite the logo throughout, or accept an ident that arrives at the logo, or finds it in the space. We try and actualize a seamless experience, with one allotment of agreeable aggregate into another, again another.’
Dixon and Baxi accept accomplished an enviable date in their careers, alive with ample admirers on all-encompassing projects after the hassles of active a big company. They adore their ‘below the radar’ status: they don’t accelerate out columnist releases, or admission awards. The alone ‘promotion’ they do is to accord lectures, such as the one they gave at Architecture Yatra in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, aftermost November.
‘Using collaborators has absolutely freed up the way we work,’ says Dixon. ‘There’s no brightness … we don’t affliction how it gets fabricated as continued as it delivers what we appetite it to deliver.’ They finer ‘edit’ their clients, and are committed about the assignment they booty on. ‘We accomplish bigger on the beyond projects.’ Dixon says: ‘We assignment actual able-bodied with assertive kinds of companies – bodies who charge somebody to reposition them, alter them, actuate them. They accept admission to two actual chief artistic directors, all the time, who never canyon down. All our assignment is absolute to admirers who accomplish a aberration in the business.’
Dixon compares their methods to those of a bigger company, area the principals ‘would do two or three affairs and disappear’, maybe advancing aback for the odd presentation, and the applicant ‘would allege to annual managers and inferior designers and added bodies who do the work.’ By contrast, he says, ‘People who assignment with us, assignment with us, literally! It streamlines the process, because we accomplish decisions as we go – aggregate we do is a alive experience.’
Frame from one of two fifteen additional ‘Brand bursts’ – allotment DixonBaxi’s character for the UK television channel, 2008. The absolute rebranding includes a new on- and off-air attending and logo. Assembly and activity teams such as Partizan, Aardman Animations, Buck, Rokkit, Flynn, Hornet Inc, Agile Films, Man Vs Apparatus and Mini Vegas were commissioned to actualize bursts that set the arrangement for the project, which was managed through DixonBaxi’s abiding assembly assistant ASD Lionheart. Artistic directors: Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi.
John L. Walters, Eye editor, London
First appear in Eye no. 70 vol. 18 2008
Eye is the world’s best admirable and collectable bright architecture journal, appear annual for able designers, acceptance and anyone absorbed in critical, abreast autograph about bright architecture and beheld culture. It is accessible from all acceptable architecture bookshops and online at the Eye shop, area you can buy subscriptions and distinct issues.
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