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We caught up with Fred Deakin, Creative Director of Airside, at his Home in London to chat about their work, their progress and of course Lemon Jelly. We hope you find it as entertaining as it we did shooting the interview. It’s worth watching all the way to the end especially for the last question and for a preview of what’s next!

Thanks to all of you who sent us your questions and a huge thanks to FFF’s Gil Cocker for helping us put the final interview together!

We shortened the questions for the video, below are the full questions we asked Fred.

1. Can you give us a brief introduction to yourself and what you do at Airside.

2. Hi Fred just finished reading your book which I loved I was particularly interested in the ‘group brain’ idea as a way of working, I was just wondering if this was applied to every airside job or do you apply it as and when budgets are there?

3. How do strike a good balance between work and play – obviously Lemon Jelly is a big passion of yours, outside of work and how do you find the chance to pursue this with the time it deserves without it hindering your work at Airside?

4. How important do you think interning for both graduates and agencies is? Ethics and social responsibility seem to be at the core of Airside, do you think interns should be expected to work for free in what is already an extremely competitive market exacerbated by the current economic climate?

5. How do you find new work, especially in these ‘difficult’ times? Do clients mostly approach you based on previous experience or do you seek out opportunities to work with people/companies that interest you? Virgin Trains for example or Yakult?

6. How do you measure success?

7. How do you not lose interest and flit from project to project?

8. Would you say that Airside has a distinctive style, and if so is that something you aim to achieve?

9. The Airside Shop has loads of design lovelies, do the agencies’ designers produce the creative themselves, and If so is studio time allocated or is it more extra-curricular? Also, how important is the Shop as a creative outlet for the agency? Secondly, are you surprised more agencies don’t have shops of their own shops? Finally, what happens with the shops profits?

10.You’ll no doubt be sick of answering these questions, but… where did the names ‘Airside’ and ‘Lemon Jelly’ come from?

11. Is there anyone in Design or Music that you think is currently doing innovative work that inspires you?

12. As part of Lemon Jelly you’ve worked with William Shatner, other than him who have been the influences on your career?

13. What’s happening next for Lemon Jelly? Are you planning any new projects?

14. What are top 3 favorite album covers?

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Author: Glenn
Posted: 21st August 2009
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Filed as: Features Interview