Anthony Dickens: Guitar man

Music has long been an obsession for designer Anthony Dickens.

He learned clarinet as a child, but didn’t get on with it. He shifted to guitar at 13 and has played and written music ever since. He had a band when he was at school and produced music in his bedroom in the 1990s.

‘Music is non-verbal and universal so you can get so much out of it,’ he says.

It is not surprising therefore that his latest creative venture is a guitar. But though the shape is familiar, the Circle Guitar isn’t a conventional instrument. It incorporates electronics to synthesise sounds to create an array of rhythms and tempos.

The guitar bears testament to Anthony’s origins as a three-dimensional designer and his passion for making things. Studio Make Believe, the collaborative consultancy he set up in 2015 to replace his solo studio, prides itself on making things, ‘but making them different’, and in identifying and solving problems through objects.

The power of objects

‘One thing I love about being a creator of objects is everything is relevant,’ he says. ‘Marketers tend to overlook the power of objects [in promoting brands], but a beautiful object draws people to it.’

Anthony explains how he loathed his two weeks’ studying graphic design during his Foundation year at Chelsea College of Arts. ‘I really enjoyed the physical thing,’ he says. Sculpture was an option for him then, but he was more attuned to solving problems, he says, than to expressing himself. It was natural therefore that he should go on to study furniture and product design at Buckinghamshire New University.

An act of fate, steered by his creative talent, took Anthony into design rather than music on graduating in 1997. He and the band were planning to move to Brighton and get into music seriously, but winning a graduate award sponsored by furniture retailer Purves & Purves at London’s prestigious New Designers came with an internship he was driven to accept.

By 2005 Anthony was working in his own right with the likes of Anglepoise, for which he created the celebrated Fifty light. Later commissions from the likes of Tekio, Lexon, Audi and Joseph Joseph added to his portfolio. Meanwhile, work with drinks brands like Red Bull and Veuve Clicquot has established Studio Make Believe in drinks marketing.

But success has its downside and Anthony has realised running a business with the overheads it entails isn’t for him. ‘Lockdown [during Covid 19] gets you thinking what’s important to you. What makes your heart sing,’ he says.

Innovation, invention, collaboration

For him those things are innovation, invention and collaboration – often with engineers. He is, for example, designing vehicles with revolutionary delivery company Magway which hopes to be on the road soon and which could make substantial reductions to the number of lorries on the road. He is also working with garden ladder company Henchman to take its tripod ladders into different environments.

But, fueled by a strong entrepreneurial streak and an innate drive to make things better for people, Anthony is developing his own brands too. His innovation arm Little Solves has already brought the Quiet Glass to market – a drinking glass with personality – and then there is the Circle Guitar.

Anthony describes the guitar’s development as ‘one of those itches you’ve just got to scratch’. ‘There’s a richness in musical instruments,’ he says. A couple of years in, he is enjoying working with musicians trying to find new ways of expressing themselves. ‘It has to be a mechanical thing,’ he says. ‘If an object creates sound it’s imperfect. That’s what creates difference.’

As for the future, Anthony is unsure. 'I’m going where I’m excited, with what makes me happy,’ he says. But the guitar is clearly central to it in his heart.

It’s unlikely to appeal to ‘a guitar virtuoso’, he says, but to people producing sound for performance, film and the like. He’s used to dealing with big brands and is not averse to partnering with one to take it further. It’s a case of watch this space.

ENDS