Who the hell is Matt Caldwell?

We couldn’t do what we do without the people we work with, and we think they’re pretty interesting. So, we’re sharing a little about what makes them who they are. From the professional to the personal, nothing is off limits here. We sat down with Matt, senior designer at DixonBaxi, to learn more about what makes him tick. Here’s what we talked about:

Who are you and what do you do?‍

My name is Matt and I’m a senior designer at DixonBaxi, and assistant player-manager of DBFC.

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What’s your story?‍

I grew up in Shakespeare’s home town, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 430 years after the immortal bard was born. I had a few obsessions as a child – drawing hideous monsters, collecting rocks and designing the entire floor plans of vast hotels on A2 sheets of graph paper – down to the position of potted plants. But my best subject at school was Geography (I was also obsessed with flags and capital cities) and I thought I wanted to be a glaciologist or something. But one open day at a distant sea-side university convinced me that I wanted to be a Graphic Designer for the rest of my life.

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What are you working on right now?
Deciding where to position 5 conch shells that me and my girlfriend collected from the Caribbean. If you know anyone who needs one, let me know.‍

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“Good design clearly communicates an idea in a way that hasn’t been done before and improves at least one person’s day a little bit.”

Describe your working style in 3 words.
Unignorable. Stealable. Off-beat.

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Tell us about some of your interests – what are you into?
If i’m not at work, I am probably doing one of the following things:
Riding a bike on a road or in the woods.
Watching Aston Villa lose.
Buying 1970s football programmes on eBay.

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Do you think design can change the world? How?
100%. The reach that design can have is mind-boggling. What we create has the potential to be seen by millions, if not billions of people. You never know who they could be, the stature these people have in their community, what they are going through, what their opinions really are. As long as you have good intentions then you hope that that positivity will trickle into what you make. Design has a scary amount of power so it is important that we use it wisely!

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If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
I would create a fluid-planet where there are no borders, you can go where you want, when you want. It may not be totally practical but I just like the idea of it.

What’s the last song you listened to?
I need you tonight by Punkin Machine.

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Why do you do what you do? What motivates you?
For me, design is my way of better understanding the world we live in and the people who inhabit it. But also – the process of inventing and bringing to life a completely new idea, that looks cool, improves lives, and gets people thinking is the most rewarding thing in the world. Every design you create has a bit of you within it – so you might as well make each creation count. To be honest, I’d be a little lost without design in my life!

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What’s your definition of good design?
Good design clearly communicates an idea in a way that hasn’t been done before and improves at least one person’s day a little bit.