Oren Meets World: master art direction: a creative's guide to brand photos, content, and luxury design

All right, so we are back and talking about the principles of art direction. This is one of my favorite topics. I do a lot of passionate videos on this because I love creative direction and art direction, how you can use its principles to elevate your brand photos, elevate photos of anything in your life, and how to think about content in the world around you with this artistic and creative thought. So in this video, we're gonna tap into a few things. This is another level two video. I have a one-on-one video I'll link at the end here if you wanna dive in from the start at what is art direction. We're gonna be doing a level deeper here. We're gonna be talking about white background shoots. These are the corners of most brands, shoot white background stuff. We're gonna be talking about how you can apply art direction intention to them. We're gonna be talking about the bell curve of art direction and content adoption and where your brand fits and how to think about where you're executing art direction, where you should fit in terms of reusing concepts. It's actually a really interesting conversation and we'll pull up some reference brands like Aritzia and Gia and a few others. We're gonna talk about video ideation with art direction and content for ads. I'm gonna open up my Foreplay account and go through a bunch of the links that I have inside of it and we're gonna dive into luxury references. Some of the things that I'm pulling and looking at for content and why, that will give you a little bit of an art direction toolkit, things that you can use for your own brand. So without further ado, let's dive into white background shoots. So I wanna pull up this first photo from a brand called Lunge. This is what I mean by what kind of white background. Anything happens in a white studio. We're gonna talk about photos that are on just a product place and how you can make those stand out, but anything happens in a white studio. So white studio is one of the easiest places for people to shoot. They are across the country and everywhere. Everyone knows it. How do you make these interesting? So what Lunge did here, this is an incredible photo and it's comp together, right? This is Photoshop from many photos together, but they have a super wide angle approach they've done here and they've pieced together a concept executed well. I like to look at as a great example of how do you do something different in those environments by having a camera placed one time and then being able to build a story around it in multiple photos and obviously some post-production. And I love this photo from Marnie because again, they're using the same shoot of where a model could be there and they're telling a story with it. They're doing it in a number of ways. Like the wires across the screen here almost make you think your screen is cracked. There's a lot that will make you stop scrolling on the feed from this. And again, the models are doing something different. And this perspective you gain here of one standing behind the other, again, they don't have to be in the same shot if you've kind of thought through and planned this, right? But whenever you're choosing to do like a model shot, having them engaging in activity the way they're doing photos shows off the clothing just as well, but it's inherently more interesting. I love to think about that action. So like on my valuable shoot, my first shoot, I had the model reading a book. So I had him reading Catcher in the Rye inside of one of the first shoots and then one of the other shoots, I believe there's like a Bukowski book or something floating around as well. But again, doing any activity becomes inherently more interesting as a photo than if not. And they took this a step further because the wires, you begin to wonder like, okay, why does that exist? And what does it mean? And what is it connected to? A story begins to build. And this third one is from Futura 2000 times. Off-white, again, just getting in that same idea of we're shooting all these things in a white background. Gives you a canvas with which to play, right? You can shoot from the same location. You have your camera on a tripod and anything you do there, you have that sense of perspective and shift where you can combine the photos to try to create an interesting scene. And then last, we have this from Chantelle Paris, which again is just the idea of how do I do an activity, but they've upped this, right? So she is on a treadmill here. She's on a treadmill and heels. That is something that's naturally gonna stand out. She's got the pose nailed. They're taking this device from social media, right? We've seen these treadmill walking videos all the time. They're bringing it into the photo shoot. They're making it like a seam. It's almost absurd. And it's just a really great example of like whatever it took to transport this to the shoot and to make this work was worth it, right? Because this is a true standout image by just adding that prop. And so I would encourage you, again, if we look at some homework from this, looking at this, like if you are doing a white background shoot, what is it that you can bring? Like let's do the Craigslist exercise. Like could you find a fitness machine like this and like buff it to look as nice as you can on there and probably get it for a few hundred bucks in a truck? Yes. Like what are those things that you could look at? Do you wanna comp in a number of things? Like what are those props that activities you can do to turn your next white background shoot into something interesting? And so let's also take a look at what some of the luxury brands do with this. I always find that interesting as well. So I'm inside my Foreplay account. Foreplay is sponsoring this video. I asked them to because I think they're the perfect software to combine this. This is where I actually store all my ads and references. So we'll dive into that for a second here. Essentially, Foreplay is a Chrome extension, like you see here, that allows me to save any Instagram organic, TikTok organic, or Facebook ad library post to a board. So then I can kind of cruise through them. I can add them to boards. I can save them to boards directly. So this is what I use to save and organize mood boards of paid and organic content because it lets me really easily send them to clients and partners. I can just grab a link like this and then share it in Slack. So right now, I just put in Balenciaga and I'm scrolling through the Balenciaga ads. So in Foreplay, you can basically pull open every ad that a company has in here. We'll look for one in a second. We'll get it. All right, so we have this shot here. You see, okay, cool. They're doing these where they're falling in. So again, just applying an effect to it. Simple enough. They're doing photos. Obviously this is like, they're doing the opposite of a really well-groomed photo. They're doing an unmanicured photo. Love this, where basically they're using that like spinning in that comp. This would take some work and planning, but again, this is one where if you talk to your editor or anything ahead of time, they can likely put together a plan of how you execute something like that. This is actually a great example. And you'll see they're doing some relatively straightforward shots in there as well. So let's actually take a look at Jacquemus as well. As I mentioned before, inside Foreplay, you can basically go into any company's ads that are in here. And it'll show you every ad that they're running. I can go sort by newest to oldest, the longest running, et cetera. And there's really, I think, Jacquemus has like 2,000 or 6,000 ads running, different languages, whatever. But now we can see their white background sheets, right? This is a really interesting one because it's a size perception one. Like they have this purse on top of this desk. I literally have no idea what the size of either of these things is. Is this a massive purse or is this a tiny desk? That's a really like subtle, interesting kind of variant of this that I thought is kind of well done. And we get to look at, okay, they're taking a much more basic approach to this, which is interesting to note, right? Why I like to pull references when I'm doing this because brands will often choose things that perform in a certain way or not. And they're saying, hey, we're actually better off on our model photos doing something straightforward. Whereas we're doing kind of a visual trick on some of what we're doing with our product photos. I'm gonna pop over into my swipe file here to look at some content. We're gonna kind of go through a bit of it. Because one of the things I wanna note is you begin to think about these concepts. I've talked about all these art direction concepts and location and position and all the things that you've heard from me about how you can elevate a shoot or elevate what you're doing for your brand's content. But you often think about where your consumer is at is a key one. I like to bring up Aritzia when I do that. So over here in my swipe file, Aritzia did a TSA bin video for Black Friday, right? We've all seen the TSA bin videos. The TSA bin videos are washed, torched, completely done. We have seen them to death. If you are anywhere in fashion, there's been a thousand TSA bin videos. But Aritzia chose to do it and they did totally fine. Good video for them, 180,000 views or whatever it is. Because they know where their customer is at. Their customer is not on the bleeding edge. Their customer is likely seeing this. They've seen it once or twice before, maybe. Or even if they've seen it a bunch of times, they are at that point in the bell curve that is not early adopter, where they don't care. Where they're gonna find it good. And Aritzia knows their place. And I tie that into this same video as well. They released this kind of right after. This is a December video for them, where they're doing a 3D animation. We've seen every fashion brand, like a major house, do one of these 3D animation videos. And they are doing it late. And guess what? It doesn't matter, because they know where their customer is. And this is actually a great spot to be. If your customer is a middle of the bell curve customer, it means all of these references and things we're looking at, you don't have to be like, oh, how can we make it original? Just do your own version of it. Literally, the TSA bin video has been ripping. Everyone's been doing it. It seems like it's too late. Perfect. Run it. It's worth acknowledging where your customer is, because for a lot of people, their customer is in there. And they shouldn't be afraid of doing things like this. And it's interesting to think about. Now, if you're on the bleeding edge, you have to think about that as well. So another brand I have saved in here is IamGia. And this is a relatively risque brand. They sell kind of like a lot of lingerie and swimsuits and things of that nature. But they are on the edge. So they had this campaign they did. They did this OfficeCore campaign. And they have excellent art direction side of their videos. They understand exactly what's happening. They did this at the cusp of OfficeCore. They have these two in here who are major TikTokers. You may not recognize them, but she's got like millions and millions. He's got millions and millions. And he makes food for her is the whole idea. And they've brought them into their art direction canon. They've said, here's this thing happening in the world, CorpCore. Here's these people that are popular that is on the kind of the fringe. Only people that are really terminally online know about. We're bringing those together. And that is a core part of our shoot. And also in that shoot, they shot like 20 or 30 different types of content around like that brand, the different things, around that concept and the things that they do. And so they're a brand that's on that far end of the curve. They're trying to make sure they are ahead of it. They're the first major fashion brand that's using these influencers, like that type of thing. And that's an important one to acknowledge as well if you wanna see a different angle of it. So now I'm gonna go through a couple of references of the things I have saved inside Foreplay so you can kind of see what we're looking at there. So one thing is, so they have this part of this app called Spyder where you can basically see all of a brand's stuff and they will actually like track and analyze it. And I have Skims saved in here because I look at Skims like a lot as a example of excellent content for kind of a number of reasons. You'll kind of see like these split ads where you have the girl and the outfit next to it. And this is a good example of how to use those references, right? I'm gonna go through this. And Skims doesn't care, right? They are sex sells, everything sells. It's before, after ad. You know, again, like they are unafraid of doing anything that is even like a little bit risque. And these are just really interesting like approaches to it. And even look at like, you know, like the crop there, the bump is what matters here. Like nothing else does. And so this is one thing I like to do is kind of just go through these ads and then say, what are the things that you can take them from your own style? And so, so far, not gonna click anything too risque in here. The number one thing I've gotten was that top ad where I was saying, hey, that split of the outfit in nine by 16 with that at like a third range is actually a really interesting shot. And I'm looking down here being like, all right, cool. I'm kind of seeing how they're doing like the minor styling. Like this is a white background shoot for this apparel. This is an interesting one too for white background standout. Bandit Running does this really well too. But they shoot white background and they AI comp in the background like cities and interesting places and textures. And that's pretty sure what's happening here. They're bringing some to the forefront with this like snow blur. Again, it's interesting thing to think about for white background as well is shooting and copying into it. And then you get all kinds of options if you're using like Visual Electric to generate images behind it. But I would encourage you to find those brands that are your muses. And it's about looking regularly at what they do, right? Because ads is kind of a current thing. Certain types of ads are hitting or popular at a certain given time. And I think it's an important tool inside your art direction toolkit to be able to like monitor those regularly, to be able to add things to your list of things you wanna try in the shoot, especially when it comes down to like basic things like e-comm shoots like this. So popping back to my swipe file here, a few more things I like. I love this video, another Jacquemus one where they're just taking around this book that is also the name of the collection, I believe. And this is a great example of if you have a brand object or create a brand object and can tell a story with it or use that as an announcement, this is a really interesting example. They just put this through a bunch of really interesting shots. I think another good homework exercise or thing you could try is what would my brand object be? Can I create a book for my brand or for my shoot? And then what are all the scenarios I could put up on it? They took this a level further. This is another kind of tool when you sort of think about this for video creation is they're actually trying, they're teaching people how to pronounce Jacquemus behind the video. So that's what the voiceover is even while they have this entirely different visual story happening. And that's kind of a cognitive dissonance is another useful kind of art direction tool, especially as you get into video content. And that's what we're gonna kind of focus on here. I know I've done a ton on photos. I'm gonna talk a little bit about video. So I'm gonna talk about this brand Gant. I think it's probably the last brand that we talk about here but they're a really interesting one because they have done a bunch of different styles of content I think are very well done. So the first is like they don't have a model doing like a standard shoot to show off their clothes. Like this one is they have the model who is not a great actor. He just looks good. Giving a style lesson, right? Like inside this where he is choosing to show them how to style the clothes, not just pose in the clothes. I love that angle of leaning into the fact he's not particularly good at this. They are kind of engineering something that has some value and a tip and that is watchable versus just showing it. This is kind of the basics we can translate these art direction principles into video is like, all right, let's just put this into a scenario. And they're doing this almost in a classroom with a mannequin. This is a way to embrace like having a model on a shoot that actually does something versus just being there. And again, that whole video is quick. It's about 30 something seconds. The second one I love is this postcards format. We'll break this down in a minute but they are taking location-based storytelling and they are saying, hey, we're going to present our brand like in a location. You see they're in the clothes the entire time but they're choosing a vignette of a place that anyone that feels nostalgic for kind of old Italy or that version is able to kind of lean into it through this content. And so I'm going to break down this quick. So I actually think this is a good idea. Anyone who wants to create a vignette, you want vignettes in your art direction toolkit. By vignette, I mean, you're telling a story like likely around like a place or a thing that's happening. The way they've done it is perfect. And so it really comes down to fonts is the first thing to choose. They have fonts for the title and they have fonts for the subtitles. Choosing something is on brand there. That's kind of your category one. Then they have the video style, right? And so they've chosen to shoot this has this kind of like this more film and kind of traditional look. Again, you could definitely choose any number of different styles for something like this but it has its own kind of signature style and everything shot with relatively the same close kind of cropped framing throughout the entire video which is actually a really interesting choice. And then there's lifestyle to this, right? This whole video is based around them kind of exploring and cooking a meal. And so like, what is the lifestyle you're showing? And obviously they kind of have this like affluent like country club European lifestyle that they're showing. So you get fonts, you get video style, you get lifestyle. So the three things like inside the vignette so far. And you have the people and who's involved there. And obviously she's kind of the main character. There's person she visits at the market. The other people at the table like how do they perceive the brand? And then they're all wearing the brands. How are you kind of integrating it? And then the narrative, like what are they doing? I love the idea of like sharing a meal in a place cause you get to show off the place and people love like the food porn shots of like pasta and then the setup and the resources they had to do this like our location, food, vehicle, the market they went to. And so it's all about breaking things down, right? I love breaking things down into like a repeatable style. So if you went and decided on your fonts the video look you wanted to have for this the lifestyle you're trying to portray the people that you have available a narrative you're trying to get across and how you're integrating the product. And then you say, all right, what are the resources we have? In this case, like a location, a vehicle, the meal, et cetera like that is now a organization like a foundation for you to be able to execute like an interesting shoot. And so I just wanted to walk through a few of those examples from white background to the kind of more luxury stuff is give some more ways to think about your art direction toolkit. Like I mentioned, I save all this stuff in four plates where I use for my swipe files enable these kinds of research tools and ability for me to organize this attach them to briefs, share it with other people which is a really useful tool for me. So I will put some link and some more information of them down there in the bio. And I highly recommend you check that out if you are trying to organize ads and organic content like I do on a regular basis and please any other kind of core art direction concepts that you wanna tap in on for future videos. I know we've been covering a lot of ground on this recently please let me know and I'll prep in another one for next month. Thank you so much.