Why It Pays To Be Creatively Restless

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Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi met 24 years ago, when the former interviewed the latter for a new London-based studio, staffed by a small team of northern designers aspiring to “make their name in the big city”.

“We just talked for about three hours. It wasn’t really an interview: we chatted about film, about life, about design; lots of things,” recalls Dixon. “I didn’t even look at his work. The next day I thought, ‘There’s something about this guy,’ and we started working together.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Before formally joining forces as a creative partnership, Dixon and Baxi ran studios alongside each other, and spent a great deal of time travelling and working abroad – in New York, San Francisco, Sydney.

“It was a formative time, and gave us a fantastic grounding in working with large-scale brands across different cultures,” says Baxi. “What was really brilliant is we almost saw each other as inspiration… or competition. I think there was a healthy dose of that.”

Dixon adds: “We’ve always believed that the bit between the two of us is more powerful than the individuals. That’s where the magic is.”

During an afternoon filming in the impressive converted wharf building in Wapping that DixonBaxi currently calls home – the agency soon plans to return to Shoreditch – we explored how this magic middle ground translates into a 30-strong agency model…

Do the two of you have very different perspectives on design?