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span class="inline inline-left">JP/Dina IndrasafitriGather and be merry. For UK animator and musician Fred Deakin, the words mean more than just a call to party; they are also a secret to success.  

The founding director of the Airside creative agency, which boasts clients such as Nokia, Panasonic and the BBC, has discovered through the years that his penchant for bringing people together and entertaining them has led to various business opportunities as well as good times.

Airside, which has been around for 14 years, has benefited from that particular skill of Deakin’s from its earliest days. At first, the company only consisted of Deakin and fellow founders Nat Hunter and Alex Mac Lean.

“The three of us came out of college together pretty much and we had all been freelancing or working for other people and we kind of just got fed up with it and wanted our own thing ... The first thing we did is we found a big studio space and we got a very good deal on the building,” he recalled.

Deakin then proceeded to contact fellow designers and others who had been working from home to share the studio space, thus making it appear as if the startup already had plenty of staff members working on various projects.

“It’s a very different relationship [with the clients]. We had more power,” he explained of the benefits.

Airside had even more ideas about bringing people together up their sleeves. Just after they moved into their studio, they had an opening party and invited all their friends.

“That was the best way to get work. They got us so much work, it was a really good party,” Deakin said.

The three invited anyone they knew who might get them work. They discovered that throwing a party is one way of showing off their skills — it helped show people how good they were at what they do.

Airside now has 12 full-time staff members and has won various awards, such as recognition from Design and Art Direction (D&AD), the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and Design Week.

Deakin’s skill at throwing good parties would have been well-polished by the time Airside was established thanks to his years of DJing and running clubs. In fact, at first the reason he decided to study communications design was to make his events more attractive.

“I started my design career because I was very passionate about music and DJing and putting up club nights, back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when clubs were still relatively young and new and still very exciting. There were lots of possibilities. You can do interesting things. It wasn’t a big business like it is now in the UK. I was very passionate about that and I decided to create my own club nights and express my creativity through that and create a place where I can DJ … So I had to learn how to create good communication basically through my club flyers
and through my visuals for the night,” he said.

The “club nights” Deakin refers to extend beyond the standard nightclub to parties held in unusual venues such as church halls, art galleries and even medieval castles.

“It was always going into these unusual places and creating an environment there for one night only, like a magical kingdom,” he said.

These kind of club nights might have their roots in the rave scene, where one would only know the party’s venue about half an hour before the event through a phone call. However, Deakin said holding that kind of event is becoming more of a challenge due to the exhaustion of unique spaces as well as increasing competition.

According to Deakin, the ability to create a club environment is actually similar to that of making websites and animation, in which one has to hold people’s attention psychologically, take them on a journey and make sure they don’t hop off the train. For instance, one has to make sure that a website that is being developed is far from one that frustrates its users and prompts them to click somewhere else.

“I think I was always interested in audiences. Not just for myself but for people as well. I would put on shows. I loved going to fairs, kind of that Christmas feeling when everything is really exciting and loads of stuff going on and making that sort of thing happen. Making experiences happen,” Deakin said.

After studying, and eventually teaching at Central St. Martin University of Art and Design, he eventually found his style in the visual arts, a mixture of vector arts, psychedelic bright colors and kawaii culture. This style naturally made its way into Airside’s signature look, although he said that the company is also making gradual changes
to its style.

His DJ and club nights also led him to found Lemon Jelly, a downtempo electronic music duo with Nick Franglen, back in 1998. The duo released three albums between 2000 and 2005, and were nominated for a number of awards.

The success of Lemon Jelly goes hand in hand with Airside, since most of the duo’s music videos were made by the studio.

Thus while Lemon Jelly got to have a distinctive visual identity, Airside got to experiment in a number of music videos.

“There was a place where we can learn and experience and grow as animators and after the first two Lemon Jelly music videos we did an album when we did every single track as a music video. That was kind of a boot camp for us,” Deakin said.

He added that he never imagined the duo would become that successful.  

Lemon Jelly, according to Deakin, is currently “asleep”, although he said that he had plans to meet Franglen soon to talk about the future. Deakin himself is still active in music, at times under the anagram Frank Eddie.

Although, he sometimes still plays a hands-on role in Airside, most of the company’s day-to-day business is currently running without him. He is now engaging in many teaching activities, and The British Council recently brought him to Indonesia to give presentations and workshops as part of the Hellofest pop culture festival held last month.

Airside’s animation, as well as Lemon Jelly’s music, tend to have particular dark elements paired with the cute and whimsical. “We like a bit of a kind of edginess … It’s about doing it with humor and lightly. We want to say ‘Yeah we understand the dark side. Let’s be graceful and playful and joyful with it but its still the dark side.’” he said.

And indeed there is plenty to frown about, but Deakin said there is always a reason to get together and have fun.

“It’s a scary time at the moment in many ways but people always want to be entertained and be brought together and kind of experience things together and maybe that’s the real part of entertainment,” he said.