Vale Tony Dick, Mo and Jo’s long-term art director: “Designer, director, writer, producer, Tone could do it with panache and flair,” says Jo

January 15 2024, 3:41 pm | BY Lynchy | 16 Comments
Vale Tony Dick, Mo and Jo’s long-term art director: “Designer, director, writer, producer, Tone could do it with panache and flair,” says Jo

The Australian ad industry will be saddened to hear of the passing of Mo and Jo’s long-time art director Tony Dick, who died last week.

 

Mojo’s former CCO Doug Watson says Tony Dick was part of Mojo’s most acknowledged campaigns. Says Watson: “Tooheys, Fourex, Qantas, Meadow Lea and a number of US campaigns all wore his signature. Among them was the Australian Tourism Paul Hogan series including ‘Shrimp on the Barbie’.

“Alan (Jo) Johnston [pictured above left with Tony], knew him best and in the following words, says it best.”

What a wonderful human being. My dear friend and gifted art director, Tony Dick.

The gentlest of men with a mischievous sense of humour and an abundance of creative talent.

Designer, director, writer, producer, you name it, Tone could do it with panache and flair. He could be prickly if you wanted to change his work but aren’t all art directors?

Once Mo and I worked with him for a while we no longer bothered to script the video column, Tone would just go off and see it through from storyboard to editing. We were churning out commercials in those days and Tone spent half his life globetrotting from England to the United States.

We never lost sleep worrying about the outcome … he was that good!

We still talked on the phone every week when he retired to the south coast and got together whenever he was in Sydney.

I will miss him like a brother.

Farewell mon ami.

Jo.

Vale Tony Dick, Mo and Jo’s long-term art director: “Designer, director, writer, producer, Tone could do it with panache and flair,” says Jo

Above: Tone with Jo, Paul Hogan and John Cornell during an Australian Tourism shoot. Below: Tone driving in LA

Vale Tony Dick, Mo and Jo’s long-term art director: “Designer, director, writer, producer, Tone could do it with panache and flair,” says Jo

Tony Dick. Remembered by former creative partner Ian MacTavish

I was one of the lucky ones.
I worked with Tony Dick.
I was a writer but early on I got to work with some very tasty art directors who made my words look good.
Craftsmen who could doodle a dream as you talked.

In London in the 60s I discovered that writers and art directors could share an office. Amazing!
It was when I came back to Australia and found writers in one corridor and ADs in another ‘killing paper’, scribbling layouts from copy slid under their doors.
I managed to convince DrawingMasters like Peter Thorne and Frank Palmer that we were better sharing briefs together from the outset.

I first met Tone when he was a junior at McLelland Advertising in Elizabeth Bay in the late 50s. Just a baby like me. I spoke to John Wilson (writer, creative director and managing director of this parish) who also at started in dispatch at McLelland and he remembers Tone’s talent was spotted early by management and he was on his way as a ‘Drawer’.

We didn’t link up commercially till the seventies when I hired him into Masius. We launched Rosemount wines. We drank them to be sure. We wrote beer commercials. We tasted them to be sure.

A few years later MacTavish & Dick took on the world.

Then came the Mojo years. I worked with him on the best of briefs, but of course he was soon snaffled by Mo and Jo as their favourite art director. As so he should have been.

I’ve met some showy art directors. Shee-it haven’t we all? Not Tone.
Tone was quiet. Quiet and determined. Clients loved him. On the tough day-to-day, he was A-level and bankable as a minimum. But when he saw a chance he grabbed it and soared. Magical.
Images he brought to paper and film still glow.

Too many stories to tell here. But the good ones with a great practitioner like Tone stick in your mind.
A cheeky slow smile. “Huuuullo, Mate.”