About
The people behind Blonde, and the network behind the work.
Blonde was founded in 2008 by Benjamin Dawson and Doug Newman, two creatives who’d spent the early 2000s working at the sharp end of British TV drama, documentary and advertising. They started Blonde to build the kind of studio they wanted to work in: one that thought as well as it made.
Eighteen years on, Benjamin and Doug still run the studio day-to-day, hands-on across every project. They’re supported by a close-knit team and a carefully curated network of specialist talent, brought in to match the specific brief in front of us.
Doug Newman
Co-Founder · Managing Director
Doug studied architecture in 2002, then promptly walked away from it to pursue film. He started in post-production, became an editor, and spent the next several years cutting commercials, music videos, feature films and TV, including a BAFTA-winning feature as assistant editor, seven hour-long BBC documentaries, and an Emmy-winning factual film. A self-funded documentary he edited went on to win Best Documentary at the Portobello Film Festival.
He co-founded Blonde in 2008 with Benjamin to take greater creative control and to build the kind of studio that didn’t compromise on craft to hit a deadline.
Today, Doug runs production and operations across the studio, oversees Blonde’s commercial growth, and is the senior on-set lead for shoots that need a steady hand.
Benjamin Dawson
Co-Founder · Creative Director
Benjamin started his career as an in-house tape-to-tape editor at McCann Erickson, working on advertising campaigns that included British Arrows-winning creative.
He went on to direct three ‘first-of-a-kind’ commercials for Xbox featuring live game-play capture (voiced by Ralph Little) and went on to freelance as a producer / director / editor for London-based agencies across creative, comms and PR.
Today Benjamin leads on creative and client relationships across the studio. He’s the Blonde you’ll meet at the first creative conversation, and the one who’ll be there to sign off the final master.
The Network
The work we deliver always has more hands on it than just ours.
For over twenty years, we’ve built a trusted network of specialist talent across every craft discipline. Directors, directors of photography, photographers, 2D and 3D animators, motion designers, illustrators, editors, colourists, sound designers, composers, copywriters, casting agents, and production specialists. Many are recognised names in their fields. Others are quieter craftspeople whose work you’ve seen even if you don’t know them by name.
We don’t list our network on the site for two reasons.
The first is practical. Different briefs need different talent. The right director for a charity campaign isn’t usually the right director for a luxury brand film. The right photographer for an intimate at-home portrait shoot isn’t the right one for a global pharma campaign. We hand-pick for the brief, never the other way round.
The second is principled. We treat the relationships we have with our network the same way we treat the relationships we have with our clients; confidentially. So we don’t broadcast a roster, instead we recommend, propose and engage on a project-by-project basis, with full transparency to our clients about who’s working on their brief and why.
What it means in practice is this. When you work with Blonde, you’re not just hiring our in-house team. You’re hiring access to a carefully curated network of global creative talent, matched to the specific demands of your project, all running under a single creative direction.
Got a brief?
Whatever it is, you’ll work with Benjamin and Doug from the first conversation onwards. Always.