PRINT Magazine recently published an interview with Patrick Duffy of ticketing platform DICE. Here is a bit of background on Duffy:

Patrick Duffy is the top dog of the cool cat creative team at DICE. The London-based creative leader and brand builder has been keeping brands weird and provocative for over 25 years. 

He’s also a bit of an all-rounder, having performed as a mime artist, had his music played on Radio One, and launched a fanzine. DICE is renowned for its branding, which invokes curiosity and is packed full of personality. When answering the question ‘Where does your humorous and quirky point of view as an art director come from?’, Duffy attributed it to his upbringing:

I grew up in the North East of England in an environment where having a sense of humour was essentially a survival mechanism, especially if you were bad at fighting and flirting. 

Despite the success of DICE, Duffy is ‘suspicious of success itself – which is where the necessity of failure comes in. Duffy said: 

I just try to make work that I like, that fans might like, that is fun to make, and feels real. I’m quite suspicious of “success,” though. Anything that might be seen as “success” is, in reality, balancing on a mound of failure, and building that mound is the interesting part. As soon as you’ve done the work and it’s “successful,” it’s kind of dead, and you just want to start failing all over again. That’s what I love at DICE— the commitment to a DIY approach to unlock true creativity and productivity in the business and across teams.

Our fellow creatives will be familiar with this part of the creative process: the constant drive to innovate. 

Another part of failure is the fact that, inevitably, not everyone is going to love your work – but that doesn’t mean it’s not important to keep making it. There are plenty of people out there who might love what you’re doing. When talking about DICE’s mascot (an anthropomorphic diamond called The Fan) Duffy said:

Our community loves it so much that someone even got it tattooed on their arm. I think people like it because it’s a bit naïve— it’s not polished, so it doesn’t feel so much like a piece of branding.

The mascot was sketched by Duffy during a train journey with his family, and the design was approved by his six year old. However, The Fan is not beloved by all. 

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, though— a guy wrote a whole blog article about how much he wanted to murder The Fan, so we’ll want to keep an eye on him.

Overall, Duffy says that his favourite part of what he does is ‘making weirdness’. 

Not many teams get the opportunity to make what we make, and even fewer would get it approved so easily. In every other job, I’ve had to fight (and usually lose) to get weird, interesting stuff made. At DICE, it’s just the kind of stuff we all like, so there’s no fighting, which is good because I’m getting old.

Whether you’re ‘getting old’ too, or just starting out, it’s always good to have a reminder to embrace the weird. At Novagram, we are happy to work with clients on all kinds of creative projects. If there’s something you need help with, get in touch.