Some agencies talk big. Dodgems and Floss just do the work and the results speak for themselves. Born from a mix of ambition, creative firepower, and a shared desire to build something meaningful, this Canterbury-based studio has carved out a name for itself by delivering high-impact, personality-driven design and branding for clients who want more than just good enough.
In this exclusive Company Spotlight, we go behind the scenes with Creative Director Tony Georgiades to uncover how d&f tackles creative challenges, rides the wave of AI disruption, and stays fiercely committed to their clients, their craft, and each other.
How was your company born and where are you based?
Ben, Andrea and I have known each other for years. Back in 2014, we began to seriously consider taking a risk and starting our own adventure by building an agency we can be proud of.
We all come from different backgrounds and have complimentary skill sets that allow us to shine and tackle any challenge.
Ben was looking for a new challenge after selling a previous tech business. Andrea was freelancing at the time and talking to us about dream future projects. I was looking to move agencies, but when the opportunity arose, I knew it was the right time to take a risk and follow a dream.
Our ambitions matched and Dodgems and Floss was born in 2015.
We’re based on Canterbury’s high street, which is a little unusual for an agency. But it has a unique perspective, full of life and culture. It also opens our creative world up to the general public who are always intrigued by what's happening in the studio.
What was the biggest challenge to the growth of your company?
New business and finding the right clients to work with is always a challenge. We want to grow through our quality of work and creating value, rather than through low value and volume.
Being a smaller agency has its perks, we’re flexible, adaptable and all our clients have contact with our founders, during the project, retainer and beyond.
Ultimately, we have ambitions to mix it with the best agencies. But this is a process and we must climb the ladder, raise our game and reputation through insightful and meaningful work. This is where finding the right clients with great creative challenges matter.
Which was the first huge success that you can remember?
Pride Canterbury first approached us in 2016, they had a clear challenge: build a brand that embraced Pride values, without defaulting to the usual rainbow clichés. It needed to reflect diversity, inclusivity, and energy, while also feeling accessible and family friendly.
From a modest beginning of 3,000 attendees in 2016, the event has exploded in popularity, welcoming over 30,000 people in 2024. And as Pride Canterbury has grown, so has the brand.
While the core identity has stayed strong and recognisable, we’ve kept things fresh each year by evolving the visual assets. That means new illustration styles, animated content for social media, vibrant merchandise designs, signage, and print collateral, all rooted in the same playful, welcoming tone.
The most recognised element of their brand toolkit is the logo, which is made up of individual characters, each with its own distinct personality, colour and movement. The playful motion added life and individuality to the identity, helping the brand truly connect with the broad spectrum of people it represents.
What’s the biggest opportunity for you and your company in the next year?
Everyone is excited about the possibilities and opportunities with AI. We are focused on design with AI and AI search.
The future of the digital landscape is shifting. Gartner predicts that 75% of searches will be AI-driven by 2026. AI is going to be the new gatekeeper of search, discovery and online engagement. Businesses must prepare now for this changing technological landscape to stay competitive.
We’ve built a tool called Neural Web Optimisation (NWO) which prepares your website for the AI revolution, making your site discoverable by AI search and voice assistants.
Can you explain your team’s creative process? What makes it unique?
We have a fluid collaborative process to suit our client’s needs. We are clear from the beginning that our clients should expect open minds, positive attitudes, and spirited discussions. We challenge them and ultimately, we both change in a positive way.
We begin by immersing ourselves into their business and audience’s lives, attitudes, the way they feel and think. Understanding who they are and who we are creating for, what’s important to them and how it fits into their lifestyle. Only then can we create something meaningful and authentic.
Our team fully invests their time into each company we work with. Often, we become super fans of the brands we work with.
Individually we all have our own creative processes and ways of working, which we encourage building and refining. As long as we are solving the brief, working together and taking the client on the journey with us, we arrive at the final destination together.
How does your team remain inspired and motivated?
We’ve recently refurbished the studio spaces, in order to promote creative expression, providing spaces where teams can connect, be themselves and work in a way that suits them.
This year we are taking the whole team to Mallorca for a d&f conference. During the week, we’ll be taking part in team activities, soaking up culture and we also have a dedicated speaker arriving for an inspirational talk.
We actively encourage getting away and experiencing new things, activities, and cultures. Allowing our team to work from anywhere in the world.
We all have a curious mindset, so we keep experimenting and adapting.
How has COVID-19 affected your company?
The lockdowns were tough. We don’t work on contracts, our clients stay with us because they want to, and we suddenly found ourselves in a situation where budgets were being slashed overnight. It was a moment of uncertainty, but we kept our cool, secured some financial backing just in case, and rode the wave of the accelerated digital shift.
With Covid and any challenge we face, our approach has always been to stay flexible and solve problems head-on. We’re big believers in the Apollo 13 mindset: lay the problem out, focus on the most critical task, use our creative firepower and just keep moving forward.
Which agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
Personally, I’ve been a fan of DixonBaxi for a while. Their process, positive attitude and spirit of creative exploration is great and inspiring. So, I’d recommend checking their work out.
Other agencies like Ragged Edge and Koto deliver amazing work too.
The list could go on but these are my top 3.
What is one tip that you would give to other agencies looking to grow?
Be passionate. The best work comes when you genuinely care about what you do. Every project brings a new opportunity to be different, explore and invent a new creative direction and learn about new industries and people. This is what excites our team and keeps our creative minds ticking over.
How do you go about finding new clients/business? (Pitching, work with retainers, etc.)
The key for us is being visible. When you do great work, you attract like-minded clients who want a piece of the pie for themselves.
We need to carve out time for d&f, treating ourselves like a client and dedicating time for marketing and raising our profile. Most of the time, it’s word of mouth or a client we worked with has recommended us.
There is definitely a balance between spending time and energy into pitching, while maintaining our clients. We’re constantly evolving the process, but we treat each one individually and tailor it to their problems and need solving.
What’s your one big hope for the future of the industry?
Do I dare avoid mentioning AI?
The fast-paced nature of AI tools is disrupting our space. In many ways these tools are also making many disciplines in the creative field look easy, bringing in myriads of people to saturate the space.
However, when everyone is using the same tools, what will stand out?
For us at d&f, creative thinking and problem solving is our superpower. Our unique perspectives will create distinction.
These tools will allow us to work and ideate faster, leaving us more time to reflect on ideas, consider the strategy and solve complex problems creatively.
Ultimately, we are people creating products and services for people. Focusing on connecting on an emotional level, adding value to their daily lives or bringing joy.
Can you share a defining moment in your company's journey that shaped its identity or direction?
We had the opportunity to pitch for a brand in the USA. The process of immersing ourselves with them during the initial stages to pitching our creative direction and solutions, allowed us to believe in ourselves more and really appreciate what our team is capable of.
Ultimately, we lost the pitch to an American agency. However, we created such a rapport that they came back to us 6 months later and we took over their brand and website. We are still working with them to this day.
It was a journey that took us from focusing on local businesses to casting the net wider, adapting to different cultures, time zones and flexing our process.
How do you foster a culture of innovation and experimentation within your team?
We have discipline led activity days, for example ‘developer days’. All developers get together for a day to explore new technologies, experiment with fresh ideas and push us beyond our usual routines.
It also gives them a chance to refine our development processes to ensure we are building in the most efficient and effective way possible for all our clients.
These sessions foster learning, teamwork and a culture of innovation that benefits the entire business. We set aside dedicated time at d&f to experiment with concepts, which is what helps us stay innovative.
What measures do you take to ensure diversity and inclusion are prioritised within your company?
We are a small team but everyone comes from different backgrounds and we love the different perspectives everyone brings to the team. It’s all about ideas and working together and we firmly believe that everyone can have an idea and impact a project.
We are lucky to have Andrea, as a co-founder. Leading and inspiring women looking to join the tech world.
Can you describe a project that challenged your team creatively and how you overcame any obstacles?
We were approached with 4 hours notice of an event by mutual connections in the motorsport PR industry. To capture and distribute the news of Aston Martin Red Bull Racing joining forces with audio tech disruptor, Iris.
In little under two hours we had mobilised from Canterbury to the venue in London to cover the event. One of the challenges was to quickly establish the best way of capturing the mood and shooting video in an underground space. With limited time, our team adapted and solved issues as they arose.
Appreciating that the individuals we were working with are some of the biggest stars in the motorsport world, we worked diligently and professionally to ensure as smooth an experience as possible. Including briefing and conducting interviews with the Redbull’s team principal and Iris.
Content collected on the day had to be edited and ready for distribution for news outlets in 24 hours and shared with a niche message to an in tune audience.
How do you balance maintaining your company's unique creative voice while meeting the diverse needs of clients?
The only way is to have open conversations. Our clients want to hear our voice and perspective on things, that’s what they pay us for. We are clear from the start that working with us they can expect open minds, positive attitudes, spirited discussions and a partnership built on trust and close collaboration
We create an environment where the client feels comfortable to be honest and sometimes brutal in their feedback. But it’s a process and together we can arrive at the destination.
What strategies do you employ to adapt to changes and trends in the industry while staying true to your company's values?
We are an open minded and flexible team, not afraid to try new tools, software or change our processes when needed. You can always be better and improve, even if that improvement is 1%, over time it adds up.
Generally, if changes promote collaboration and help the team work together better, then let’s adapt it. When the team is in full flow and solving creative problems, we deliver for our clients.
Can you share a memorable client success story that exemplifies your company's approach and impact?
We’ve worked with a client almost from the beginning of our journey. Initially we redefined their brand and aligned their strategy with their growth plans. It’s become a trusted relationship that continues to build.
Their needs have changed over the years and we’ve supported them the entire time. From crafting their website to streamlining their internal processes. They’ve grown from a handful of employees to over 100 staff.
We are now creating internal tools to allow them to manage their teams workflow.
In what ways do you invest in the professional development and growth of your team members?
We have the usual training budgets available for every team member. Allowing everyone to craft their own path and develop skills they are interested in.
We also share our QBR’s with everyone, taking the whole team away from the studio. Being transparent and opening up the business challenges to everyone allows for a shared goal.
How do you approach sustainability and ethical practices within your company's operations and projects?
For the most part we are paperless from accounting to pitching.
But in our studio, we still print (archive and recycle).
Printing out work, living with it, and letting it speak in physical space is a way of thinking. We do this in Figma and Slack but sometimes you need to step back, let it sink in and feel the energy of the idea.
From an ethical standpoint, we have a common-sense approach evolved from the attitudes of our team members. Its light touch, not bound by rules and regulations.
Can you discuss a time when your company had to pivot or innovate in response to unforeseen challenges, and what lessons did you learn from that experience?
Starting a creative agency may have been a dream come true, but doing so from a standing start with bills to pay was a challenge.
Yet, as ever, challenges create ingenuity, and with the creative skills at our disposal we designed, built, branded and marketed the first escape room experience in the city of Canterbury.
Welcoming players into our studio space and receiving them afterwards to talk about their experience, running the escape room was an 18-month adventure that won us both recognition and critical acclaim, whilst generating the cash that helped fuel our growth in the early years.
It cements our innate belief that, as creators, we really can do anything that we put our minds to, so long as we do it together.
Do you have any websites, books or resources that you would recommend?
A few websites to check out:
https://the-brandidentity.com/