Marcus Dixon, The Man Making Your Favourite Graphics
Images Courtesy of Karl Warwick Pearson
Hailing from Newcastle is one of skateboardings best illustrators, Marcus Dixon.
He’s the man behind some of your favourite graphics, he’s done continuous work for Pass~Port over the last ten years. His graphics are so good that even skateboardings harshest critic, Gifted Hater, puts them in the S tier. He’s also single-handedly responsible for the rise in popularity of sequence graphics, even if he can’t confirm if he was the first, it seems like everyone started doing them after he did.
On top of his illustration work, he owns two companies Labour Recreation Rest and Come Sundown, the clothing sponsor of Girl Skateboards’ latest pro, Rowan Davis. I reached out to Marcus to have a chat about illustration, working for Pass~Port his brands, being copied and his encounter with Yowie Hunter, Rex Gilroy.
I feel like most people know you from your work for Pass~Port. How did you get involved with working for Pass~Port?
I sent Trent [Evans, owner of Pass~Port] an email, which was ten years ago now, it’s flown on by. I asked him if he wanted to be in a show I was doing at the time, and he wrote back asking if I wanted to do graphics. That was in 2013. It was really seamless; I think it was my first year out of uni so it was good to end up working i the field I’d been studying for. I did a graphic design course with an illustration major.
Woah, I can’t believe it’s been ten years already.
Yeah, I thought it must’ve been getting close, so I went to the start of our email thread and my senses must’ve been bang on because it was within a couple of weeks of me sending him the first series I did.
The brand was still so small when you started working for them. How has it been seeing Pass~Port become what it is and seeing your boards all over the world?
It’s great, they put in the work, for sure. So, it’s nice to see it come from this early days local brand, which had great graphics and direction before I even started doing graphics before them. To now getting worldwide distribution and being in the corners of Finland and stuff. A mate of mine was in Finland a couple of weeks ago, and he sent me a photo of him in the local skate shop and my board was in the window, which was really cool. That thing comes down to them being really good at what they do, with working out all that distribution stuff and getting other people involved to help push the brand further and further.
I’ve always wanted to ask you this; do you know if you were the first person to do the sequence graphic?
I don’t think so, I think someone would’ve done it before. I mean I have all those skate books, that have all the graphics of all time, but I’m not too sure if there is a whole lot of sequence stuff in there, I’m sure there’s something. I don’t think I would’ve been the first. With the way they sit on a board and take up the whole board, it made perfect sense to use that as a theme and run with it for a while. Then it became the running joke every time I’d send in a series. Maybe I need to find a new gimmick [laughs].
It feels like in the last five or so years with Pass~Port blowing up a lot of people are doing sequence boards now.
Yeah, I get sent a few from time to time, but I don’t take it personally. I don’t even know if they would’ve seen it or maybe they chose to do it themselves.
How did you come up with the idea to do the sequence graphics?
A lot of old frame-by-frame animation stuff. I saw a couple of really good references from the 20s and 30s, in these crazy old illustration books and I appropriated it from there. I put different themes, the themes that I’ve already been working with for Pass~Port, just like a bit of that Aussie stuff, people say ‘tongue in cheek’.
Yeah, where do you get your inspiration from?
I’ve got a couple of really good books from weird spots, old Australian illustration references, some pub humour, folklore, and gag kind of stuff. Also, taking photos on my phone just when we are in a random pub, that has all this paraphernalia on the walls, nothing really beats that. Stuff that you wouldn’t even find in a book ever. Things that are just framed on the back wall on the way to the bathroom, that is the best stuff. Outside of that are pretty general sources, websites, Flickr’s, Flickr’s are great.
There’s this book in front of me that I haven’t referenced a lot but it’s the kind of thing you look for if you go into a second-hand bookshop or something, it’s called ‘The Great Book of Australiana: Folklore, Legends, Humour, Yarns’ by Bill Wannan. It’s just a mix of stories, poems and at the start of a chapter page they have a wacky little drawing, that you would never find anywhere else besides, 4 by 6 centimetres in this book. It’s just that kind of stuff. It's hard to find but when you get that one thing it works out great for you.
Is it harder when you’re looking for Australiana inspiration as it’s not as well documented as some other styles?
I mean, I don’t do a lot of Australiana stuff anymore. That was more a few years ago where I was pretty hellbent on the Australiana thing. Maybe it’s sort of converted into whatever I draw. That thing where if you’ve been drawing for a while that’s in a particular style, people recognise it as yours and even if it’s not directly Australian people still interpret it as that. People still email me being like, ‘we want it in your style, in that Australiana, tongue-in-cheek thing’. I mean I’m not out there drawing a kangaroo with a pouch full of beers or something, but maybe 10 years ago I would’ve.
What is your process for designing a graphic?
It’s finding that initial theme. Working out what I’m going to do that links a series together is probably the hardest part. Once I get that theme up, it’s just a matter of finding references and doing a Photoshop balance, to see if it works, then take it from there with drawing. I still draw by hand by tracing paper into the scanner to digital colour.
I’m sure people are familiar with Come Sundown now. What is Come Sundown?
It just began as a creative outlet. Something that I didn’t have to be briefed on, something that could have my own direction. It’s more design based; I haven’t done much drawing for it. It’s a lot of text-based stuff, a lot of found imagery, a lot of textures. I just wanted a change from what I do with Pass~Port, I wanted to differentiate from the two and I need a break from drawing too. It’s nice to work in a different way.
Yeah, for sure, is it nice having a different outlet where you aren’t drawing?
Yeah, I definitely need that balance for sure. Also getting people on to do graphics is refreshing as well. I’ll send out a bit of a brief or direction to someone and sometimes they’ll pay attention to it sometimes they’ll just do their own thing, which is completely fine either way, I’m just happy to have people involved. It’s always pretty exciting getting their graphics in and seeing what they’ve done.
How long have you been doing it for?
I don’t know actually maybe like 7 or 8 years. It’s been really slow, there was never any rush to put things out. Now it’s picked up a bit of traction so I’m trying to work on a bit of a schedule which is good but also hard, trying to fit it in around other work and you know, when things go wrong or get pushed back you learn about missing seasons and if you wanted something out at a certain time, if you wanted to sell something in the winter period if you miss it, its hard because no one wants to buy a heavy jacket in late spring, for example.
You’ve got a team now. Who is on the Come Sundown team?
We’ve got Rowan Davis, Justin Pountey, Adelaide Norris and Riwaz Kazi.
That’s a great team. What was it like putting the team together?
It was Fun. It all happened really naturally. The early days were just Rowan, he was skating Newcastle a bunch and I hit him up. He’s obviously blown up a fair bit since then, as he should, he’s incredible. Then Justin who is one of my favourite skaters from Newcastle and a really nice guy. Then Adelaide I love the way she skates, and I hit her up. Then Riwaz I hit him up too and he was keen. Everyone is coming up in a few weeks, we haven’t done a full group skate yet, so we’ll have a couple of days. It’ll be good.
What has it been like seeing Rowan grow up and be in the position where he is now and releasing amazing parts through the brand?
It’s great. Yeah, we put out a part recently that came together really naturally. He’d just been skating a bunch and filming with his mate Will [McDonald] who filmed that clip. They’ve been doing this funny thing where a few of them go and jam in this abandoned building they found. Rowan will take his drum kit in his car and his other mate John will take his guitar and a few amps and connect them to a car battery. He was telling me the other day they’ve been playing under Stockton bridge, which is this weird no man’s land and they’ve been playing there till 3 am and the cops came past and didn’t kick them out, they were just puzzled as to why people were playing music under the bridge. It’s kind of similar to skating, you find the spot and maybe you’ll get the boot eventually and then move on. They’re just keen to play music. Which was what the music was in that part. It was cool.
That’s crazy, that part came out so well.
Yeah, they were hyped on it and so was I.
You’ve also recently started another company that is Labour Recreation Rest. What is it?
That’s just something that I do with my buddy Andrew Nash. It’s kind of the same. I wanted it to be separate to Come Sundown and I wanted to put some more stuff out there under a new name.
Where did the name come from?
Andrew came up with that one. I think it’s the old labour party slogan. It’s the way you’d break up the day, 8 hours labour, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours rest.
That’s sick. Did you know Victoria was the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce the 8-hour day and the 5-day work week?
That’s cool. It should be 4-days though by now.
Your work has been copied a bunch. I remember I saw Billabong copied some Pass~Port graphics what is it like when your graphics just are blatantly copied?
It’s interesting. It would be nice to see their mood boards. But yeah, that kind of stuff happens all the time. I think Trent followed up with some of the Billabong stuff. I mean even the tea towel boards I did for Pass~Port weren’t a super original concept in the first place but we kind of got in there and did it a bit before everyone else.
I’ve had people directly steal my work and try and sell it as their own which hurts more than people referencing a bit too close. I’ve seen a few of those shitty Instagram companies selling my designs. It’s like what the fuck are you doing, you can’t just screenshot someone’s design from their Instagram and change a word or change a colour and claim it as your own. Then you call them out and they’re like ‘oh sorry, I thought nobody would notice’ or ‘I thought it was a free image on the internet’.
To end this, I want to ask you about the story behind going to see the UFO guy.
That was the sickest trip ever. RIP Rex Gilory he died this year. Coincidentally we had just started talking about that trip again recently and then literally that week he died, it was a crazy coincidence. That was Jim, Nash, Mike D and me. We decided to make this pilgrimage to Katoomba, to hang out with him and chat with him. Jim wanted to write an article for Sprawlers. We got to his house; he was super reserved. Being in that world, you’re going to get made fun of a bit. Especially when he’s out there promoting his belief in time-traveling dinosaurs and yowies. But we went out there with nothing but wanting to hear his point of view. He warmed up to us and showed us around his whole house. He showed us his artefacts he found, the moulds he made of Yowie footprints and some tools he found, from some giant humanoids that used to live in the mountains. They were just massive pointy rocks, but to him they were tools. He had a cinema out the back. He’d put in a lot of work. By the end of us being there, he didn’t want us to leave, he was just telling us stories for a couple of hours. It got to the point where we had to leave because we had to find a spot to camp for the night. He was following the car still talking as we were leaving. It was cool. He’s written books about time travelling dinosaurs if you want to read them.
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