In this episode, we go inside the mind of Simon Dixon, co-founder of the global brand and design consultancy DixonBaxi.

Known for shaping bold, human brands for some of the world’s most iconic companies, Simon shares how his team builds what they call Intelligent Identities—living systems designed for scale, emotion, and relevance.

We cover:

• The DixonBaxi Way: principles, process, and creative culture
• Why emotion—not aesthetics—is the foundation of powerful design
• How to build brand systems that stay flexible without losing clarity
• What SuperFutures is, and how it’s reshaping the future of brand innovation
• Lessons from decades of creative risk, leadership, and reinvention

This is a must-listen for designers, strategists, and creative leaders who want to push beyond surface-level branding and build brands that actually matter.

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Transcript

Identity is only as powerful as the meaning you fill it with. So, a logo is an empty vessel. So, say for example, you see an Apple logo on a car. What would you think that car is going to be like?

Brilliant.

Yeah, exactly. You haven’t driven it, you don’t know how much it costs, but you assume it’s going to be good, don’t you?

Yeah.

That’s the power of branding.

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding. The only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

Hey folks, welcome back to JUST Branding. Today’s guest is someone we’ve been wanting to speak with for a while, Simon Dixon, who is the co-founder of DixonBaxi, which is a global brand and design consultancy. And if you’re working branding or design, you’ve probably seen their work without even realizing it. Netflix, IMAX, AC Milan, Samsung, Hulu, the list goes on. But this episode isn’t just a highlight reel. What we really wanted to explore with Simon is how they think, how him and his team build brands that feel bold, human and future ready. We’re going to dig into their approach to design systems, how they keep creativity alive at scale, and how they’re using innovation through things like AI and motion to build what they call Intelligent Identities. We’re going to tuck into the DixonBaxi way, not just their work, but the culture behind it, and peek inside their Innovation Lab Super Futures, where they prototype the future of brand. There’s a ton to cover, so let’s jump in. Welcome to the show, Simon.

Yeah, thanks for having us, Matt. Thanks for having us, Jacob, and thanks for that very nice introduction.

Welcome. There is a lot to cover, so we did cover a bit about your agency, but I’d love to learn a little bit about yourself. So do you want to share with our listeners a bit of insight into who you are?

Yeah, sure. My name is Simon Dixon. I’m one of the co-founders of DixonBaxi. So I’ve been a practicing designer for 36 years now. So I started as a graphic designer, and then over the years, through opening studios, the first of which was when I was 19, and subsequently opened studios around the world, then DixonBaxi 24 years ago. I’ve gone from a graphic designer to basically a brand designer or somebody who runs a brand agency, really. That’s what I do. I create this space for other people to be creative. DixonBaxi, as I said, is 24 years old. About 90% of our work is international. And 50 people in this studio, 54 people, create brand experiences for billions of people all over the world through quite iconic companies. And we’re lucky to do three main things. We build the strategies for businesses. We translate that into identity systems, living and breathing ecosystem, and then the implementation thereof, a lot of which is highly collaborative with a client.

It’s quite a big difference, isn’t there, Simon, between being a designer with hands on the tools to then leading a team and creating that space like you say. How have you found that journey? Has it been tough for you to transition to that? Or have you found that step into team leadership relatively easy? What are your thoughts?

You’d have to ask the team rather than me. I’ve done a good job. I mean, I’ve been working for a long time. So when I started out, as it is with anyone, you’re very selfish. It’s very about your career. It’s about what you love. It’s about defining yourself in terms of your creative expression and how you show up in the world and setting the template for what you believe is your career. And of course, most people’s careers are quite kind of squiggly and messy. But then I’ve always run studios. So I’ve always been in a collaborative environment, whether that’s with two or three people up to much larger relationships in terms of groups of people. And I think you just learn it. I’ve learned everything I do really by doing. I’m not a highly academic person. I’m not a highly educated person. I’m somebody who basically learns by the practice. So I try things. I test my assumptions against the world. And I think when you’re running an agency, it’s about how you create space for other people to create and make the most of their talents. So rather than them expecting to show up in the world similar to how you do, it’s creating a space for them to show up the way they need to and then collectively go after something because you need a raison d’etre. You need something to believe in, I think. So it’s a combination of how you mentor the individual as part of a collective.

Interesting. What I found fascinating was on your website where you talk about the DixonBaxi way, and you got a whole video series that go into your creative principles and creative lives and everything. On one of them, I think it’s the first video, actually, you say that you ask what is good design, and you say that good design should move people. So what does that actually mean in practice?

It’s emotional, isn’t it? So if you think about a brand, you have different relationships with brands which have different relevance and different meaning and different kind of interaction with you. Some of you love daily and will be with you a lot of your life, some will be quite transient, some you’ll need for specific moments, some will be things that you use in a more ubiquitous way. But it’s all about how it’s relevant and meaningful, and it creates a connection because we make choices about what to interact with in lots of different levels. Some are pragmatic, some are emotional, some you just need to get a cab or you need some information, some that define what you are as a person so that those logos and the things you wear and the things you like define you as a person. You know, it’s that collection of things. You’re showing the world who you are. So it really depends where you are in the relationship with the brand and how important it is to you.

So how do you actually make a brand that matters then?

How do you make it matter? Well, basically, it’s not about making the brand matter. It’s about expressing the truth of what the brand does for people and then meeting them in the world on their terms. And then the people who want to use it and the people who believe in it and it’s, like I say, relevant and serves them well will use it. So, for example, if you took AC Milan, if you’re an Inter Milan fan, you will have a hate relationship with AC Milan’s brand. If you go to the San Siro, you’ll have a love relationship. But then there’s many people in Malaysia and China who will like the idea of what Milanese football is, style, culture. They might like a particular player. So they’ll have a kind of medium relationship. So it really depends where you are on that kind of relationship scale. And the key really is meeting people in a way that has a kind of honest and a kind of clear track to the benefit of having the relationship. So if you’re using Netflix, you want to get a nice piece of content. And obviously there’s competition for brands that give you nice pieces of content. So what it does is it creates an idea in your mind. It makes you think something when you say a brand’s name or it makes you think something when you want to do something where you go, well, this particular brand will facilitate that obvious choice. So that’s really what you want to do. You want to build meaning and benefit for people. But if you can do that on an emotionally engaging level, something which is more truthful, something that’s dynamic, something that’s useful, something that’s exciting and delightfully engaging and the experiences you create allow people to be the best of themselves and interact with it rather than be a monologue and force things at them, then you tend to have a better relationship.

Simon, really fascinating to hear you talk and express that in such beautiful, crystal clear terms. Quick question then. So you mentioned that there’s these three steps to the process, and I just wondered if you could walk us through, how do you find that truth? How do you understand, how do you get your arms around a brand to the point where you’re confident enough then to start working through creative and experiential things for potential customers? Give us a sense of how that works.

Great. Excellent question. The previous question was an excellent question as well. I didn’t realize you were going to be this difficult. I should have practiced.

We try.

Yeah, I’m only joking. Yeah, they’re very broad. The questions you’re asking are very broad questions.

Yeah.

So they create broad answers. But if you think about the principle of the process, you need input. So in order to understand whatever the challenge is, there’s usually a brief. Somebody says, we want to rebrand, we want a brand change program. And they’ll usually write things on a brief that say this, this and this. We need to target a new audience. We launched a new product. There’s more competition, things like that. Aging, audience base. There’s usually a driver. Behind that, there’s usually a bigger driver. And it usually comes down to place in the world, relevance in the world, the ability to grow, the ability to be distinct as a brand or an entity. So what you really want to do is look at that. You want to look at the business itself, the company, the people who run it and what they do for people, how that shows up in the world, how that system works. What’s the competitive set? How does culture, behavioral habits, attitudinal habits, technology, platforms and devices affect that relationship? And in that order, what we do is we play back what’s called what we heard, and we play back the core insights that drive the benefit and the meaning and that distinction for the brand and then that starts to inform how that shows up. You translate that into a strategy which drives, in a sense, it’s the engine of change. It’s a future-proofing engine for the business which is on its terms. What you don’t want to be is a sh** version of somebody else. You want to be a brilliant version of what you are, and that creates a distinction, and then you translate that strategy into a kind of living, breathing thing. Traditionally, branding was a fixed-state set of assets. You take a logo, color, the semiotics work, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap. It doesn’t work like that now. You have to show up in the world where you are interacting with people, your share of conversation. It’s a narrative, it’s storytelling, it’s experiential. You can hear it, you can touch it. In many instances, you can feel it. So that’s a connected ecosystem. So whatever strategy and brand you create has to show up in both a fixed and flexed way. You have to have a through line that people understand. They know what it is. But at the same time, it needs to be localized and flexible at the point of impact because it’s different. If you’re on social, it’s completely different to if you’re in a shop, for example. And it has to be adaptable to change because change happens regardless of whether you want it or not. So, smart brands become cultural entities as well as JUST Brand entities. They’re part of general conversation and culture. So, it’s a kind of line. And then when it hits the world, the implementation, it needs to work. If it doesn’t work or the language and the narrative disconnects to the reality of what the brand does, people realize and they disconnect. So, it’s very hard to cheat people. You can’t say, if we do something awesome or we save the planet, you get there and they’re not doing that, there’s a disconnect. So, there has to be a kind of underlying reality to that as well.

Love that. I love that idea of meeting people in the world on their terms and also in the context of the brand and the company that you’re working with. Funnily enough, Jacob doesn’t even know this, but I actually experienced a bit of that with DixonBaxi because I was a design director at Capital One in the UK around, I can’t remember, how long ago was that? Maybe 10 years ago, eight years ago. And your team were working with us on the rebrand of Capital One. And I was involved in quite a few of the kind of focus groups, the meetings. I was predominantly running the creative team there. And we were looking at that. We were sort of sharing information around how we’re using this, all of the communications that were going out. And that kind of review, audit piece definitely helped, I think, later on, because then we were able to take the amazing work your team did that was super creative. And then my team were also doing some of the basic stuff, like letters to customers and so on, how they were laid out.

But actually, that’s not basic, is it? Because what you’re actually doing is that that is the reality of the brand. Whatever you make and send to a person is the brand.

It’s a touch-pointing experience, yeah.

Yeah, and my feeling is, the more actively you listen to people like yourself who are experts in your field, experts in the brands you work on, the better our objectivity works because it’s a match of those two things. And when we create a brand system, the more we understand the technical stresses, the system stresses, the information flow stresses, the team stresses on the brand, the better you can serve it. So what you’re doing is you’re teaching a person to fish rather than saying, here’s a bunch of stuff on a PDF, don’t squash the logo. It doesn’t work. So what you’re doing is you’re trying to build belief in the brand because if the internal team believes in it, it will hit the world in a really cool way. And usually the people we work with, our clients, they’re super smart, really articulate, highly creative people with a lot of pressure and stresses and strains on them. So helping them with that means that the brand is much more likely to be successful when it hits the world.

I want to talk into the internal team section question next, but before we do, I wanted to talk about the DixonBaxi way, because you’ve kind of outlined the process. But is there anything unique that you feel that you guys do differently when it comes to building brands that people become fans of?

Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. Traditionally, in our industry, the idea is you have a proposition, you come to market with a proposition, and your agency is the most transformative, or the most expressive, or the most technically gifted whatever. In my experience, I don’t think it really works. What works is a quality process, one that is high fidelity, is tested a lot, and has been through a lot of rigorous thinking. But it’s actually the people, their attitude, and the principles that drive the work that determine the difference of agencies, I think. It’s not the process, and it’s not the clients. It’s how you think, how you act, how you carry yourself, and what drives the work. So, when you talk about the DixonBaxi way, that’s driven by principles and an ethos. Things we care about, about creativity, wherever they show up in the world. And they’re more of eternal things that we’ve tested over 25 years, so they’re not the latest proposition to match AI into our industry. They’re ideas which we believe will work whatever we do and however we apply ourselves. And I think if you do that, it’s the truth to you that you’ll show up in the world and you’ll do things that people can connect to and they believe in. And if you do, you’ll have a strong collaborative relationship with people. If not, they’ll work with somebody else.

So what are the ones that come to mind when you think about your way?

Yeah, in terms of principles. So high tolerance for risk, that’s a calculated risk. So there’s a risk of inaction basically. If you don’t change, the world will change around you and you will be less relevant. And relevance is a big thing for me, is making sure that we’re making things that make a difference. Creating a safe space where people can create and push themselves and go to an uncomfortable space to discover new things and then come back to sharpen that to the thing you need. Because if you don’t go far enough, you’re not creating new and interesting things and that’s what’s needed. It’s highly collaborative. It’s very much about share of voice. Everybody is equal at the point of creating. It’s about, I suppose, this idea of always being in beta, this idea that we’re a work in progress. So we’re a body of work and a methodology that meets the world rather than any one project, any one person or any one thing. Trying to do that in a kind of enthusiastic, optimistic way as well. I think optimism is a superpower. And when the world is difficult and hard, optimism won’t solve the problems, but it will give you a great chance of doing so because you’ll be in the right mindset. So it’s things like that. There are things that just put us in the right frame of mind to be the best version of ourselves. And if that works, then we’ll work with the people who like that and connect with those ideas.

I love that. I love that. I mean, I’ve worked at a number of agencies and more recently in my consulting work. And I think what you’ve set out there is so wonderful because I think you’re absolutely right. The people that drive the brand, they need to feel that confidence as well. They almost like what I’ve found is the most successful projects I’ve ever worked on. The team has got inspired, like not just the immediate project team, but the wider company, you know, and all the people in it. They’re inspired by the work and, you know, they’re connected to it. They come along with the journey, you know, almost like it’s a change piece, like you were saying, and they’re the best projects. And for your team to do that, they also have to be in the positive frame of mind, like you were saying. Confident.

Yeah, I agree. But I think it’s another level. I think great clients inspire the agency. So there’s a lot of bulls**t in our industry about how s**t clients are and they get in the way and they give feedback. That’s their actual job. That’s literally their job, is to give feedback. So all the kind of like, clear winning, black pencil winning work is sponsored by clients or sponsored by some form of leadership. The more you respect and understand that the people in the organization, the people who create the thing and you’re inspired by that, then inherently you’re inspired to do better work. The thing I look at is the people we’re serving, which is the end audience. That’s the actual client. So the client is serving them as well. So when we focus on the work, we focus on how to help the client, help the people that they’re serving. That’s the key to it. And the better you get that, just the better the work, I think.

So you have a fairly intense process. When you pass the torch over to the clients, how do you actually empower the internal teams to keep going?

Yeah, it’s not an intense process. It has intense, rather intensity. So it’s a very focused process. There’s a difference, because you can be very intense and put a lot of energy and get nowhere. I mean, it obviously has momentum. But a lot of it is how you set yourself up for success, I think. The key to it is, even before we work with a client, it’s about how we build a relationship and we have a shared ambition together. So we don’t pitch creative, we just we do chemistry meetings and we get to know people. And you get to understand whether your worldview would be suitable to their worldview to solve the problem they have to solve. And if you have a shared ambition, it’s amazing how much you can achieve together. There’s bound to be ups and downs. And we’ve got a very pragmatic view of that, which is there’ll be stress points and moments which are difficult. But usually that’s because you’re pushing, you’re changing and change is slightly uncomfortable. So we spend a lot of time talking to the client about what’s coming next, how the process works and talk about trust, really. Trusting that the outcome will be great. This moment, we might not have the answer, but that’s OK because we’re not supposed to have the answer now. We’ll have the answer later. So what we tried to do is not rush the processes. And we we try to do each beat in a way that it builds consensus, it builds belief and it builds momentum for the next phase. So by the time it hits the world, everyone agrees that’s the thing that should hit the world.

In practical terms, what does that look like? You mentioned like chemistry sessions, but is there, you know, things handed off or do you meet, you know?

Yeah, yeah. You want like, do you want literal things then?

Yeah, like we can go into the practical things, literal things now.

No, no. I mean, if you want literal things, I can give them to you. I mean, it’s not different to anyone else. It’s basically meetings. Everybody in a project, you do hundreds of meetings and they’re all for different things. Some are strategic, some are procedural, some are creative. But what we see is every meeting is an active conversation to move the project forward rather than just demarcating it. So we have different types of workshops, different types of ways of working. So for example, internally, we have a thing called Ignite, which is like an Inspire phase. So it’s a couple of weeks, which is ours. It’s semi-private, where we’ve got the brief, we brought it all on board, we understand the strategy, then we just create things with fire. We just mix lots of things intuitively based on the brief and what we’ve learned. Then we have what’s called a Campfire. The Campfire is where everybody looks around the table and we say, what do we want? What do we like? What is working? What can we add that would add to this? We start to look for the signal in the noise in the work. Then what we tend to do is we tend to be very open-source and high-cadence with our clients. We’re sharing things all the way. We do, of course, large formal presentations you have to present to executives and things. We’re showing people as we go our thought process and how the insights and the strategies translate into the design and the systems and the implementation. There’s a series of moments of commitment and consensus all the way through. But what we do is we’re just trying to be live and active in every meeting and be listening all the time to what’s behind feedback, what’s behind the question, what’s behind a particular thing. Because if you just do feedback loops, you’ll be ticking boxes and the work will just become gray and mushy. But if you think this person is saying something like, I think the blue is too cold, and you’re like, okay, so what does that mean? But behind that might be anything. It might be, they tried blue before and it didn’t do very well, or they subjectively might not like blue, or they might actually think the whole thing is just a bit hard and they want it to be warmer. So what you’ve got to do is kind of figure out what’s behind the feedback as opposed to just take everything on the surface. And I think if you do that, a lot of the process is much easier to handle.

Thanks for sharing that. I think we’ll jump into the next section, which I want to talk about your Intelligent Identity. So do you want to just share what that is all about? And how is it different from, I guess, visual identity?

Well, it is visual, but identity is only as powerful as the meaning you fill it with. So a logo is an empty vessel. So say, for example, you see an Apple logo on a car, what would you think that car is going to be like?

Brilliant.

Yeah, exactly.

You’ve never driven it, you haven’t driven it, you don’t even know if it’s petrol or electric, you don’t know how much it costs, but you assume it’s going to be good, don’t you?

Yeah.

That’s the power of branding. So there is an idea in your mind that comes from everything that Apple has done through humanizing technology, creating e-scoop systems that work, design of a super high fidelity, that connected relationship, the way the market, the way that shows up in digital, how easy it is to download the packaging, the stores, it raises the bar. So you believe something as soon as you think about that brand. So in essence, that’s what it’s about. It’s about intelligent identities rather than just being a surface thing. It’s driven by things that will make greater change for the organization, but will also serve people better. Ultimately, what you’re trying to do is build communities, give access, get people to what they want faster, allow them to have control of the process rather than just projecting a kind of linear idea of people. But of course, you do also need to build brand fame and do that. So you’re driving purpose and relevance and a strategic engine which fills the identity with meaning. The identity shows up in the world in a fully active way. So it moves sounds, it’s a narrative, it’s physical, the semi-optics of the color and the systems and everything works. It’s a language and then that builds attribution, it builds conversations, it builds meaning in the world. It’s something that works everywhere and then ultimately it’s relevant and it drives the relationships with people and ultimately can drive communities.

So how are you actually building an Intelligent Identity? Do you go through a certain motion or is it less linear than that?

When you say motion, like as in process or do you mean as in physical?

Yeah, like a process, would you start on the static and then move into motion or voice or like…

No, we start… No, no, I get what you mean. Yeah, yeah. We’d start on the ideas first. So what you do is you go, well, we did a project recently for a brand called 2B. 2B is a streaming platform. There’s lots of streaming platforms, but what you don’t want to be is a Netflix not light. You don’t want to be just like a library of just like lots of stuff going, here’s a video, here’s a video. You like this and watch this and watch this and watch this and watch this. It’s just boring and it’s lifeless. And they have a huge catalog of content. Some of it’s great. Some of it is just the stuff you might watch on a Tuesday night because you’ve got a cheeky half an hour. But in a world where everybody was basically trying to be something for everyone, the strategy behind that is really everything for someone. The idea of super serving underserved people. So it’s a very simple idea. But from that, you suddenly realize that you can’t design it like a wall of a library. You’ve got to actually speak to people. So there’s a lot of tone of voice and language to that. The color palette is highly distinct. The way they market is highly confident. The way that the product works is much more kind of interactive and it’s got lots of really smile in the minds. They created a thing called Stubios where they invest in minority communities so they can make their own content and share with their audience. So once you have a kind of clear strategy, you can make whatever you want indefinitely. It’s not about static emotion. It’s about how the brand shows up in the world. Because what’s the point of moving it if it’s a poster? If you go to the top of a mountain and you’ve done this wonderful walk, why would you wear an AR experience for North Face? You wouldn’t, would you? But you would use Strava to track that, to tell you how far you’ve gone and how useful it is. So the design and how it moves, how it sounds, and what it does is entirely relevant. With 2B, we created an audio sting, which is, 2B, 2B. That’s how it goes.

Can you do that again? That was beautiful. Yeah.

2B, 2B. It’s a lot better than that. But it’s highly addictive. It’s highly addictive and it sticks in your mind. But what it does is, if you’re in a room and you’re not paying attention, when that sound comes on, it makes you think something. You’ll know that from the HBO sting and things like that. So they’re all kind of Pavlovian or things to make you think something. Then you think, oh, 2B, there’s probably something there for me. Not so there’s something there for everyone. So there’s a different relationship. There is something for everyone as well.

Love that. What that does is it highlights that principle you were talking of earlier, which is like relevance, right? And understanding the way the brand needs to show up for the customer or for the user in order to serve them.

We don’t call them customers.

Sure.

Because it’s important demarcation because not everybody has a monetized relationship with the brand.

Yeah.

I’ll give you two examples. Say Coca-Cola, let’s give you numbers. Coca-Cola is worth 100 billion just for round numbers. They have 5 billion pounds worth of assets. There’s another 95 billion. What is that? It’s not sugar and water. Or if you took Ferrari, millions upon millions of people wear a Ferrari cap. Very few people drive a Ferrari and almost nobody will ever buy one. But the brand’s relevance is that idea, that meaning. So it’s not always about someone being a customer. It’s about the value of the relationship, some of which are monetized and some of which are not. As I said earlier, an Inter Milan fan has a very different relationship with AC Milan, but that love-hate thing is still a very powerful driver for their brand.

I stand corrected very well.

You’re not corrected. It’s just important to how we see things. There’s different ways of doing it. I’m only expressing my version. So when I say this, I mean no disrespect.

No, no, none taken. It’s lovely to hear you speak like that and everything you said, 100% agree. I was going to say as well, I love that idea of the relevance, because what that sort of brought out for me when you were talking, was particularly with the brand example that you gave, it’s kind of like that. The strategy allowed you to know what the brand was, but more importantly, what the brand was not in a positioning wise, strategically against the other offerings on the market. So that then drove the brand code and the assets and the creation of the experience. So I think that’s absolutely a great point for folks to take away.

Yeah, and that’s from leadership. That’s from the CEO, the Chief Marketing Officer, the Head of Product, their creative team, their internal team, because you can’t do it unless they believe that. So that’s what I was talking about earlier about the truthful relationship, the advertising agency, the digital agencies, performance agencies, all fantastic on that to be project, but it was a leadership choice that they did. They had the strength of mind and the creativity and taking the risk to be the best version of themselves. And then it makes it easier for obviously agencies like us to deliver against that.

Let’s talk about the future. So we’ve talked about your intelligent identity. There’s another section on your site that’s all about the super futures, which is kind of like a R&D for brand, it sounds like. What are you prototyping now?

What it’s to do with is, there’s a number of things. We’ve always had a forward-looking version of ourselves because the last thing you want to do is believe you’ve become successful or you’ve got to the point where you know what you’re doing. Because that’s when you start to atrophied. So what you really need to do is challenge yourself to improve. So there’s a kind of restlessness to improve. Also, the world throws a lot of sh** at you, they throw COVID at you, they throw remote working at you, they throw stresses and strains, tensions in the world. So to remain creative, you need to keep putting something back in. So super futures is basically an unlimited form of expression where the team is given two or four weeks to work on a project, everybody works on it, not just the designer’s entire company, so the operational growth producers, everybody works on it. And they have to make something. And it just teaches the form of intuitive, passionate, real making. And then we see what we’ve won. And what it does is it just enriches our process, it enriches our thinking. And the Ignite session I talked about earlier that we use early in our process, that is super futures. So we do that on projects. So it both benefits us as a creative entity, makes us more inventive and comfortable with trying new things. But it also allows us at the early phase of a branding project to try different things and prototype in different ways of solving the problem. And we’re going to publish on our website and do a book to share it with people. But what I found is it just, you know, making for a living is great. It’s like a really amazing thing to do to create for a living. And there’s a feeling that you get in your stomach and your heart and your head, like a flow state when you’re making. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that. But it’s like a really profoundly amazing thing. That’s why lots of us love creating. So it’s trying to find that feeling. And once you found that feeling, you can recollect it. So when you’re in the middle of a project and things are tough, you can say, let me just go back to what it felt like when I was creating like that. And it just opens up the kind of creativity.

Are you purposely trying new tools and methodologies, or how do you approach it? Like, for example, AI or mixed reality, how do you expand that?

It’s a good question. The technology is only as useful as the person using it and the reason they’re using it. So technology in itself doesn’t mean anything. It’s just software or tools. So I think what happens is people get caught up in terms. There’s a lot of terminology in our industry about different tools and software and stuff. So they talk about Figma and assets and AI. AI is like a utility. It’s a ubiquitous technology that is everywhere. It’s in everything. So it’s how you navigate the world. It’s how you create. When you think about applied AI to actual creation, the problem with it potentially is, it’s grabbing everything, remixing it and creating something. Now, the problem with that is you get a great group. You get something that looks really highly finished on the surface, but has potentially no meaning to the application you’re doing. But if you apply AI to problem-solving, so for example, we’re working with the brand at the moment that’s doing early detection in cancer, just using AI to increase survival rates, that’s when it gets really interesting for me. It’s something that is actually improving the actual outcome as well as the style of it. Of course, we’ve tested AI and AR and VR and all the various technologies at different stages. When I started in the industry and when I certainly started DixonBaxi, there was no Uber or Google or Deliveroo, there were no smartphones, there were no apps, there was no applied AI like there is now, there’s no self-driving cars. Motion didn’t exist, digital product designers didn’t exist. So as you develop your career, I think all you have to do be is present and active and consistently applying your version of creativity, to your principles, your ethos, to the tools and technologies that allow you to make the work you want to work with the people who want to work with in the way you want to work, and that’s really all it’s about. So yeah, we use AI for testing, research. It’s fantastic for things like that. It’s great for versioning, it’s good for implementation, but it’s not great human invention. And what happens is it’s a bit like social media, because everybody can see everything instantly. Everybody makes the same bento box, and AI is that on uber steroids. So you just have to find your truth and yourself in that, I think, and not copy other people.

You’ve been through the ropes, starting from all those things not even being existed to where they are now. So I’m curious, like what excites you and scares you from where branding is heading?

I’m not scared by anything, to be honest. I don’t think like that. I think if you take all your knowledge, everything you have, your experience, whatever talent you have, I don’t necessarily have any talent, but if I had some talent, my experience, people I work with, the things I’ve learned, and I hold them in my hand and say, right, I can do something with this now. It’s really exciting. It’s a cool thing. And I get great joy from creating. I get great joy from interacting with the team as they create. I really like problem solving. I like the blank canvas. I like it when there’s nothing in front of you. I love that feeling where you can go into virgin territory and try something. That’s a great feeling. And I like the outcomes of that. So I get enthused in a sense that I’m a creator, a professional creator by definition. That’s what I am. And I have been since I was 15. So that’s, how long is that? 41 years. So a very long time. I can’t do anything else.

I do not believe it. I do not believe that one, one a-o-two. For those of you listening, Simon is a very fresh-faced young man by look at him.

Fresh-faced, yeah. Yes, dad, he is as well. But that’s very kind of you. But there is a thing which is, if you do something that you enjoy, it’s hard work. Don’t get me wrong. What we do is hard work. And running an agency is tricky at the best of times. But I get great joy from it. And I’ve never had a work-life balance in that traditional sense. This weekend, I worked on a book that we’re creating because I wanted to. I didn’t have to. So, I think when you’re making for a living, there’s something really cool about that. So, that’s the thing I love, I think.

All right. Let’s tuck in to some of your life wisdom. I have a few questions around wisdom, values, risk.

Wisdom.

At the start of this, you said one of your principles was like taking big risks, something along those lines. So, I’m curious, what’s one of those big risks that paid off and one that didn’t?

The incremental calculated risks. I started a studio at 19 when I lacked any knowledge or ability to do so. I moved to America when I was very successful in London and tried something different. I made a feature film when I wasn’t a director and tried that. So, I’ve tried different things. But for me, it’s a persistence and an aggregation of thousands of small things rather than one big thing. That’s how I see it. It’s a consistent and persistent way of looking at the world. What was the other half of the question?

Yeah, just one big risk that paid off and one that didn’t.

One that didn’t?

You like to ask the tricky questions, don’t you?

Yeah. The weird thing is, I get asked this a lot. And I slightly reject the question, really, because it goes back to what we were saying before, which is I’m an aggregation of everything I’ve ever done, good and bad. And as I sit here, I’m really happy and I feel satisfied and I feel fulfilled. That’s the word for it, fulfilled. So I don’t see anything that didn’t go right as a problem because I’m sat here fulfilled. So that’s how I see it. And it sounds a bit kind of trite or a bit kind of avoiding, but that’s just how I think. And of course I fucked up. I’m a much better leader than we’re not. I’m a much better person who runs a company than I was. I’ve got a lot of skills that I can bring to bear. I’ve learned a lot of things. I’ve made, I’m sure, lots of actual mistakes in the way I’ve carried myself, but I don’t see it as a thing. Do you know what I mean?

Well, let’s reframe that then. Like what advice would you give to your younger self those 40 years ago you mentioned?

The biggest thing is work the way you want to work and don’t let anyone tell you any different. Don’t work for money, work for the work. The risk is worth it, that’s why I would always say to my younger self, which is whatever sacrifice I made or whatever commitment I made to get where I was going was worth it because, like I said, I’m fulfilled. But I think it’s about self-determination and definition. That’s how I see it is working the way you want to is the most important thing and not letting the bullshit of the industry and other people detract you from that.

I love that. It also sounds like you don’t tend to, just listening to you there, you don’t tend to blame stuff. You seem to take a lot of responsibility.

No, it’s all on me, isn’t it? If we f**k up, it’s my fault.

I mean, a lot of people and it’s like, oh, it’s this person’s fault or this happened in my past and that’s made this.

No, I mean, I’ve had profoundly hard things in my life. Like if we were really talking about these things, like everybody, we all have issues or problems. Yeah, you know, we’re all manufactured by how difficult life can be. But my belief is that one, you only get one go at it, so you might as well make the most of it. But two, if you’re surprised that the world is difficult, or you’re surprised that people won’t act like you, or you’re surprised that things will change, you’ll be consistently confounded. Yeah. I don’t think like that. I just assume that there’s always another shoe going to drop, and there’s always a thing that you need to be tool for. For me, it’s about what you can control. I can only control so many things. I can control how I show up in the world. I can control the directions I go in. So I switch off the things that I can’t control, because it can be overwhelming. And I think that’s one of the problems, is that everybody is saturated by everything. And not everything is equal, and not everything can be the same level, and not everybody works the same way. So as long as you’re respectful and give access to people and open, and treat people with respect, and then go about your business and try and carry a good footprint, and try and be additive and useful and relevant, then I think the rest is up to other people.

Wise words. Thank you so much. We have one last Quickfire round. Matt, do you want to kick us off?

Yeah, I’d love to. So Quickfire, are you ready for this, Simon?

Yep.

Okay, first Quickfire question. One brand you love right now and why?

Oh, ****. Wow, okay.

I don’t know.

Let me see what this is. One second.

Simon’s taking his jacket off.

It’s a Calador.

Calador. You love it right now? Why?

Several reasons. I travel a lot. It’s very, very light. It’s made out of a tactical material which doesn’t crease. I like this color. It’s Japanese and I love Japan. And it’s waterproof. And I’ve never won it before, so it’s those reasons.

Oh, and you chose our podcast to put it on for. This is a great honor.

Yeah, I’ve tested it. I did a talk. I’ve done two talks with it, and I felt good because when you’re doing a talk, you kind of get a bit hot, so this is quite nice.

You look great. You look great. All right, next.

I wasn’t fishing for compliments. Thank you.

Well, you got one anyway. Next quick round question. Name a creative routine must-have. In other words, something that you would insist your team do for every creative exercise or creative process. What would it be, that kind of that routine?

It would be showing up with a positive, optimistic mindset and ready to be open.

Love that. All right, next one. Most overrated branding trend.

The word trend is f***ing pointless.

Final one. Branding in one word.

It’s two words. It’s meaning and image.

Love that you just rebelled against the question. Absolute legend. Brilliant. I love it. Thank you very much. All right. I guess, Jacob, is there any kind of final questions before we close?

Just where we can connect with you, see more of your work and anything else you’d like to leave with our listeners.

Well, thank you.

Yeah.

It’s dixonbaxi.com, which is dixonbaxi.com, and I’m on LinkedIn at Simon Dixon, D-I-X-O-N.

Simon, you mentioned a book that you’re working on. Is that relevant to the branding community, and is that something that you could mention, and maybe we can look out for it when this episode goes out?

I think it’s the 10th of June, we’re rebooting dixonbaxi.com, and on that will be some new case studies work people have never seen before. We’ll have DixonBaxi Essentials, which is our ethos and methodology, which is a book we’ve made for ourselves, but we’re going to share it openly. DixonBaxi Journeys, which is the description of each role in every single department, it’s about 200 pages. It’s to help the team understand the growth potential of their particular roles. So we’re going to release that open source. The DixonBaxi Way Season 3 will also launch at the same time, so that’s a full 50-odd people talking about creativity, and obviously a lot of that applies to brands and companies. And then the final thing is a book called DixonBaxi Remix, which is our kind of process, the kind of more expressive aspect of it. We’re releasing that as well.

Amazing. Our listeners will for sure check that out. So that’s a bit…

I’ll be very, very kind of them if they want it to. That’s very nice.

Well, thanks so much for coming on. It’s been an absolute honor, and all the very best, and keep up the good work.

I appreciate it. Thanks for the interesting and tricky questions.

You’re welcome.

All right.

Thank you, Ray. All the best.

Thank you. Take care.

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