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Simon Dixon Branding agency DixonBaxi has created the on-air identity for the Premier League, designing show titles, infographics and a motion graphics system inspired by the movement of the game and DesignStudio’s earlier rebrand. Simon Dixon and his business partner Aporva Baxi have produced a number of inpirational and sporty brands in recent time. Their insight to sport esign, on screen graphics and more will greatly beneoft my learning and insight into this speciic genre of graphic design.
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What does sport branding offer to you as a designer? Sport is about passion. Commitment. Something you love and if you do it is part of who you are. We like the idea of creating work for people who are fans and genuinely love the sports they watch and participate in. It is something very deeply rooted in people and that means the design challenge is an important one. Plus the energy and spectacle inspires a lot of what we do. The sound of an F1 car. The flick and volley of a beautiful goal. The intensity of home fans. The misery of losing. It’s amazing fuel for the creative process.
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Do you intentionally try to seek out sport rebrand ideas? And if so, why? We are approached by many different type of companies. We take our time to commit to a pitch as it requires a huge effort to create [and win] one. We don’t intentionally seek Sports work, it’s just over the years we have got good at it. A prospective client sees previous work and that leads to new work.
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How do you stop yourself from repeating yourself when designing for sport? You react to the sport. They share passion, spirit, the excitement of sport but all have different narratives. That’s why sport is so engaging; Heroes and villains. Club vs Club. Success vs failure. You look for the context of the sport. The journey a fan goes through watching it. They create trigger points for the design. Then you create nuances. The moments that only someone who knows the sport really cares about. So you inspire on one level but the devil is in the detail. Creating a fully live and expressive design experience true to the sport.
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Recently you have had multiple major sport clients who call on you especially for your whimsy. Why do you think that’s the case? I‘m not entirely sure what you mean by whimsy? Clients approach us because we create brands and design systems that get to the heart of sport. Work that is effective at engaging fans in what they love. We have a strong conviction that you need to build brands that are adaptive, flexible and have the ability to grow with the audience, interact with them and build a relationship. That requires personality, behaviours and systems to allow the brand to be alive and responsive to the sport and how it is shared with people.
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How do you balance aesthetic and function to become naturalal, rather a more tedious design process? It is just good design. It can be quite a complex communication challenge, so it has to work. As a viewer or user you have to follow what is happening or get to the content/information you need. However it also needs to be beautiful. There is a very complex and highly technical aspect to what we do, so it requires great rigour and effort. There is only one way to good design and that is to design everything and test your assumptions. So it takes a lot of time and persistence to create the right level and quality of experience. Occasionally you can get a little overwhelmed by the repetitive quality of the testing and production phase, but really it is very satisfying in a nerdish way designing so many components.
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Stereotypical communication problems, such as ‘Can you make it quicker?’ or ‘Make it more sporty’, still occur between client and designer. Is this the same within your experience? It depends on the client. We build our work on a brand purpose and creative idea so that helps frame the conversation. So rather than is it fast or slow we talk about what it should feel like? What does it mean? Why are we doing it this way? What effect do we want on the audience? We find if you find the truth of a sport. The thing that people love about it. Then we can create something with the thrill and energy of sport but built on specific feelings and actions rather than a generic ‘sporty’ feel.
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From your experience, how do clients engage with your proposed ideas? We look to find ambitious clients and inspire them to do more. So initially it is unpicking the problem or challenge facing both our client and the brand. Then we look at the initial phase as a collaboration. Working with them to better understand how they work and what they want the brand to achieve. How it engages with people and what it means to them. From their we build a methodology to tackle the project. At each stage we try to make it both exciting and clear how it will be delivered. Most client come to us knowing we are not an agency to tweak a project. We get under the hood and rebuild from the bottom up. So clients tend to approach us knowing that and we collaborate with them to guide them through our thinking. Once the work is close to delivery we have comprehensive guidelines, assts and ways the brand works that is heavily informed by how the clients team works. We meet their tech teams. Meet the people who run the channel or brand. We the people who make everything. That way we know what difficulties they face and how our new design can help them.
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When designing for sport, are their design principles that you aim to maintain throughout your design production? Initially we try to focus on original ideas and going somewhere new. We try to make the work human and responsive. We like our design systems to be smart and agile. So they are driven by intelligent insights. We are fixated on the accuracy of the experience. How to best tell the story of the sport and find the drama. We also have a highly considered approach to the design system for the graphics to make sure they work well on any platform, under huge technical tolerances, anywhere in the world, on any device.
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Your work for Eurosport breaks down the expected grandeur characteristics of sports branding being fast, bold and celebratory, to become something toned down, immersive, real, and incredibly human. How did the project come about? And how did you base the design scheme? Sport is all of those things. Brands tend to focus on the moment of high impact. A goal scored or a roaring crowd. They also tend to focus on just the sport. Not so much the fan and the people who love sport. We look at Sports branding like any of the areas we brand in. It is a human experience and should be people focused. We design for the real person who watches or interacts with the brand. We of course still have the excitement and passion. The cut and thrust of the actual sport but we look for the entire narrative. The build up, the anticipation, the beginning, the ups and downs, the twists and turns then how people engage socially, build conversations, through the game, into post game analysis. All the time looking at context. How does this effect of games? How does this works where the moment s in the season? These types of things humanise the design experience as they are real and engaging.
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How does designing for sport compare to other projects? And is your design process similar in every project? People love spirt in a way that is a little different to other types of brands. You choose a club for life or are a fan of a tennis player or F1 driver in a way that runs much deeper than a jacket or tv series [with of course she exceptions]. It is in your blood and illicit intense emotions and passion. That is exciting to harness and use to inspire our sport work.
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Do you have a philosophical reason for designing for sport? No. We enjoy it. Who wouldn’t like to work with F1 or the Premier League. They are sports we already love. It is a great privilege.
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