New York Graphic Action Figure

Chris Dixon - A visual voice
Art director Chris Dixon took the culture-jamming journal Adbusters to a new level. Now that he's moved on to The New York Times magazine, he continues to involve himself in projects that challenge the powerful and champion the disenfranchised

By day he's a mild-mannered thirty-three-year-old editorial designer at The New York Times Magazine, quietly going about his business, helping to create one of America's most respected cultural publications. But after work, stripping off his tie in a Times Square phone booth, Chris Dixon, the earnest, hard-working graphic designer transforms into an international corporation and government-challenging designer/activist. Working on projects such a book for the United Nations and a compaign that takes American foreign policy to task, the former Adbusters magazine art director continues to apply his passionate design sensibility to new activities.

The shift from culture-jamming Adbusters to culture-constructing New York Times may seem a leap between polar opposities, but Dixon is more inclined to see the similarities: quality writing and photography plus a liberal, humanist conviction. "A lot of graphic design is about creating the illusion of emotion and excitement about things or events that are very banal and useless," Dixon explains. "so when a designer works on a project that is socially relevant or political, the emotion is already there. It just has to be effectively communicated to a broad audience, and that's when you see how effective a designer's voice can be."

Dixon had been interested in The New York Times, especially its Sunday magazine, for years. "It is one of the few magazines left with some history and credibility," he says. So when considering a move to New York, he had little doubt about where he wanted to work. Designing feature stories and up-front pages, Dixon has found the professional challenges and learning experiences he was looking for post Adbusters. "It has been humbling in some sense since the people here, writers and editors included, are really the best in the publishing industry," says Dixon. "So the bar is set really high and it's a challenge to try to work at that level."

Dixon's riveting work for Adbusters had already gained him the attention of Michael Bierut, partner at Pentagram Design and president emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Artists. Bierut invited Dixon to guest lecture at Yale University in winter 2000 and appointed him to a position on the planning committee of this fall's AIGA Voice conference where Dixon is collaborating on a program entitled Can Design Change the World?

"What I like about Chris and his work is that he sees his goal as communication, and is willing to use any and all tactics available to him to achieve that goal," Bierut explains. "At Adbusters, he understood early on that the magazine's message could reach a broader audience if it presented challenging, even antagonistic material in an engaging, accessible way."

When you examine where he came from, Dixon's commitment to important social issues is not surprising. Designers are often criticized for being more interested in form and their personal aesthetic vision than in the message the work must convey. Dixon, however, turned to design just eight years ago, after receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Saskatchewan and working in Regina for two years as a social worker.

In 1993, when he enrolled at Vancouver's Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, Dixon was operating on a hunch that he could make a larger impact through graphic design. "As soon as I started the Emily Carr program - doing projects about community, the problems with television, cultural book cover design, exhibits on human rights - it all felt good," he says. "Emily Carr has a great, progressive program that teaches designers to look closely at the projects they undertake and see the cultural and social value in them. It was more than just making pretty pictures. I owe a lot to them."

After graduating from ECIAD, Dixon was offered the position of art director at Vancouver-based Adbusters. While juggling a two-year stint teaching in the design department at Emily Carr, he worked with Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn to develop what they called a "slick subvesive" approach. Dixon's sophisticated, enigmatic magazine covers and page layouts were instrumental in garnering the publication a place on the racks among the most polished commercial magazines. Adbusters soon became an internationally recognized voice in the debate surrounding consumerism, the environment and mass media.

During his four years at the magazine, from 1996 to 2000, circulation grew from 25,000 to 80,000. Lasn acknowledges that Dixon brought a coherence and tone to the magazine that it had lacked. But for Dixon, there was a limit to how far he was prepared to run with Lasn's vision. " I was looking for more pioneering work in terms of what a magazine could be when you don't have any commercial constraints or advertisers breathing down your neck," says Lasn, reflecting on the amicable end of Dixon's relationship with Adbusters. "That's eventually, I think, why he left. I kept trying to pull him further into the chaos and he kept resisting and in the end it was kind of hard on both of us."

For his part, Dixon remembers being so immersed in Adbusters that he was less likely to explore personal projects. "I suddenly stuck my head up and realized that, in a way, Adbusters had become my voice - just because you're so close to it." Dixon decided it was time to balance his career with a broader range of activities.

Dixon's understated intelligence and playful skepticism are evident in various projects. But perhaps his voice is best displayed in a submission to the upcoming Wish You Were Here series of postcards for the World Studio Foundation, an organization that raises funds to send disenfranchised youth to art, architectue or design school. The postcards, addressed to President George W. Bush, cleverly send up the famously untravelled president while criticizing American foreign policy. Dixon's contribution shows a paper-doll rendering of the clothing people must wear in Puntas Arenas, Chile, due to ozone depletion resulting from industrial emissions wafting down from the developed world, especially the U.S.

Chris Dixon's move to New York has challenged him in ways he couldn't have anticipated. "The day of the attacks on the World Trade Center, I went to work and spent the next four days and nights working with everyone to put out a special issue, just on the events of September 11," he says. "We all sort of lived out the events at work, looking at amazing photographs and reading essays, but not experiencing it directly ourselves." For Dixon, New York these days is both sad and inspiring. "The city feels very alive to me, very full of emotion. There seems to be a determination in the air to rebuild what has been damaged. I hope to help with that, maybe with some design or visual projects down the road," he says, fully aware that there is yet too much to do of the first order to entertain more reflective thoughts.