Lex Johnson is a British designer, director and creative executive. He is the founder of creative agency DAZZLE SHIP, a former lecturer at Swedish design institute

Hyper Island Hyper Island is a digital creative business school with a consultancy side specializing in industry training using digital technology. It was founded 1996 in Karlskrona Karlskrona (, , ) is a locality and the seat of Karlskrona Municipality, ...

, and the founding online director of RWD magazine and RWD Forum.

Career

RWD Online / RWD forum

In 2001, Johnson became founding Online Director of RWD magazine created to push

UK garage UK garage, abbreviated as UKG, is a genre of electronic dance music which originated in England in the early to mid-1990s. The genre was most clearly inspired by garage house and jungle production methods, but also incorporates elements from ...

grime Grime may refer to: * Dirt, in the form of black, ingrained dust Music * Grime music, a genre of music * ''Grime'' (album), a 2001 album by Iniquity * "Grime", a 2023 song by Macklemore from ''Ben'' * "Grime", a 2024 song by Kittie from ''Fire ...

and

dubstep Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken ...

, and RWD became the first platform to champion grime music and feature UK artists

Dizzee Rascal Dylan Kwabena Mills (born 18 September 1984), known professionally as Dizzee Rascal, is a British rapper and MC. He is often credited as a pioneer of British hip hop and grime music and was ranked by ''Complex'' as one of the greatest British ...

Skepta Joseph Olaitan Adenuga Jr. (born 19 September 1982), known professionally as Skepta, is a British grime MC, rapper, record producer and DJ. Alongside his younger brother Jme, he briefly joined Roll Deep before they became founding members of ...

and

Tinchy Stryder Kwasi Esono Danquah III ( ; born 14 September 1986), better known by his stage name Tinchy Stryder, is a British rapper, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur and investor. Stryder has released three solo studio albums, '' Star in the Hood'' (2007 ...

. The RWD forum is mentioned in grime MC's lyric; the most notable incidents were in its earlier years when Wiley would frequently post and often argue or troll with users. In the book ''This is Grime'' by Hattie Collins, Wiley states "the RWD forum was a good place" and Matt Mason added "Grime had always been a conversation and Alex understood this and grew RWD forums, making RWD one of the most popular music websites in the UK" During this period the website received London Business of the Year, UK Garage Awards : Best Website 2002 and Sidewinder Peoples Choice Awards : Best Magazine 2003. Johnson was also personally awarded an "Ernst & Young Future 100" Award in 2011.

The Booo Krooo

The Booo Krooo The ''Booo Krooo'' (occasionally also spelled ''Boo Kroo'') started life as a comic strip and then turned into a web-series and then a UK adult animated sitcom created by Matt Mason (author), Matt Mason, Alex Donne Johnson and Julian (Art Jaz) Joh ...

was an adult animated TV series. Lex Johnson was the producer/animator working in collaboration with Matt Mason (writor) and Julian Johnson (Art). Taking hints from underground music culture and the intersection between

UK Garage UK garage, abbreviated as UKG, is a genre of electronic dance music which originated in England in the early to mid-1990s. The genre was most clearly inspired by garage house and jungle production methods, but also incorporates elements from ...

and

Grime Grime may refer to: * Dirt, in the form of black, ingrained dust Music * Grime music, a genre of music * ''Grime'' (album), a 2001 album by Iniquity * "Grime", a 2023 song by Macklemore from ''Ben'' * "Grime", a 2024 song by Kittie from ''Fire ...

, the 3 episode web series was shortly co-signed by

Missy Elliott Melissa Arnette "Missy" Elliott (born July 1, 1971), also known as Misdemeanor, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. She began her musical career as a member of the Contemporary R&B, R&B girl group 4 All the Sistas Arou ...

after her PR team asked to feature the artist as part of the campaign for her hit single ' Work It'. The series then acquired a 6-episode deal on Channel U (now named Total Country) and recorded a music video with UK Garage producer 'Sticky' known for hits such as Ms Dynamite's track (also named) ' Boo'. Music publication ''Ransom Note'' cited the series as the first 'grime comedy' saying it was 'essentially a proto(type) version of People Just Do Nothing"

Creative consultant

From 2009 - 2013 Johnson worked as a freelance consultant providing strategy for various fashion brands creating campaigns such as the 'adidas About to Blow London Olympics 2012' campaign featuring

Tinie Tempah Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu (born 7 November 1988), better known by his stage name Tinie (formerly Tinie Tempah), is a British rapper and singer. He has been signed to Parlophone since 2009, now a subsidiary of Warner Music Group. He created his ...

and

Mo Farah Sir Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah (born Hussein Abdi Kahin; 23 March 1983) is a Somali-British former long-distance runner. Considered one of the greatest runners of all time, his ten global championship gold medals (four Olympic and six World tit ...

Dubstep / EDM / Grime

Johnson was responsible for design collaborations with

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...

artists such as

Appleblim Skull Disco was an independent dubstep record label, based in Bristol, England. It was established in 2005 by Shackleton (musician), Sam Shackleton and Laurie "Appleblim" Osborne, and ended in 2008. Releases on the label prominently featured Af ...

, Headhunter, Pinch, Komonazmuk, Joker ( Kapsize) and 2562. The most notable being an Audio Visual live show with Headhunter ( Tempa) now called Addison Groove. He also directed music videos for

and Addison Groove. The most notable was 'Changa' which premiered on the

Adult Swim Adult Swim (stylized as dult swimand s is an American adult-oriented television programming block that airs on Cartoon Network which broadcasts during the evening, prime time, and Late-night television, late-night Dayparting, dayparts. T ...

YouTube Channel and gained official selection status and was nominated for awards at Aesthetica, London Short Film Festival, Berlin Music Video Awards, The Smalls, Stockholm Independent Film Festival. His work has been mentioned in books including: ''Dubstep Graphics'' and ''Contemporary Colour Theory''. Artwork has been featured in Vice Adult Swim Tech Crunch and includes collaborations with musician

James Bond - GoldenEye

Johnson worked as a motion graphics director with video game developer

Eurocom Eurocom Entertainment Software was a British video game developer founded in October 1988 by Mat Sneap, Chris Shrigley, Hugh Binns, Tim Rogers and Neil Baldwin, to develop games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Eurocom expanded to Handh ...

, commissioned by

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

to work with the ''James Bond'' franchise to develop '' GoldenEye 007'' and ''

007 Legends ''007 Legends'' is a first-person shooter video game featuring the character of British secret agent James Bond. It was developed by Eurocom and first released by Activision in October 2012 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with Microsoft Windows ...

''.

Animation / Short Films

He created a handful of films entitled 'Monotone' 'Monkey Business' and 'Do Not Feed The Horses'. Screenings include : AniFest, Resfest, British Film Council and

Channel Frederator The Channel Frederator Network is an American animation, video game and pop culture multi-channel network founded by cartoon producer and serial media entrepreneur Fred Seibert and managed by Frederator Networks. After launching Frederator Studi ...

He was invited to resident at The Pervasive Media studio in Bristol as part of art collective 'Lumiere Digitale' as Technical Director and Developer, Johnson was responsible for animation and visual art direction.

Hyper Island

The business school

recruited Johnson between 2014–2017 to teach 'storytelling' to the motion creative course in Stockholm/Karlskrona.

DAZZLE SHIP

In 2013, Johnson founded the design and motion graphics studio - DAZZLE SHIP. The studio divides its time between self initiated projects and client service work. Their clients include

Wateraid WaterAid is an international non-governmental organization, focused on water, sanitation and hygiene. It was set up in 1981 as a response to the UN International Drinking Water decade (1981–1990). As of 2025, it was operating in 30 countries. ...

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician a ...

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in the xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a s ...

, The Drone Racing League and

Blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

. Their most recent work includes branding the sport of the future 'Drone Racing'

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Lex 1984 births Living people Designers from London English directors