ART DIRECTION & CONCEPT CREATION
Our creative team works collaboratively in house to see client briefs through from initial contact to image delivery. We spend time getting to know and understand the client and their brand and use this knowledge to interpret their brief. From here we generate exciting concepts that we see through to refined imagery, our goal always looking to create work that really communicates & connects. Below you will find an example of a live project that we Art directed.
BRIEF
YesColours - an exciting paint company injecting colour into the world of paint and doing so in some seriously forward thinking packaging. Co founders Emma & John approached us with two obstacles:
1:How to communicate their colour matrix 2:How to do this whilst communicating that their product is paint
YesColours palette of 62 colours seen on the matrix opposite is divided into two methods of grouping. Running from left to right, the 10 Colour Collections (Fresh, Friendly, Joyful etc) and running top to bottom, 9 Colour Groups (Yellow, Green, Blue etc). Each palette in the 10 colour collections and 9 colour groups required a still that featured every colour within its palette. For example:
COLOUR COLLECTION Palette Fresh - 7 colours
COLOUR GROUP Palette Pink/Red - 8 colours
It was essential for the stills to be consistent and for the focus to remain with communicating the product as paint. Not just paint for interiors, but paint for creatives, paint for commercial use, paint for set designers, paint for the garden, paint for any industry with a love of colour.
CONCEPT
Team members Veega & Annie worked to conquer this challenge, their combined experience in set design, prop making & creative direction as well as being our lead Photographer and Stylist, enabled them to work through and investigate the most efficient yet visually exciting way to realise this project.
Across several days, they spent time learning all 62 colours and how they featured within their collections and groups. It became clear that the main hurdle to overcome was consistency. The variations between each palette were not just the colours within them, but also the number of colours, with some palettes featuring 9 colours and others just 3. Veega and Annie needed to communicate 62 colours in 19 stills. That's a whole lotta colour! The answer - simplicity.
The light bulb moment was a delivery of paint from YesColours. The paint pouches were packaged and held in interesting cardboard inserts. This inspired ideas of shapes and stacking, decorating and waste. They decided to use any items associated with decorating, any shapes and fixings that you might find in a home or workshop and importantly, the packaging YesColours used to dispatch their paints.
DEVELOPMENT
We started drawing. We needed to find objects that would stack & balance, have a surface area big enough to carry a single colour and find objects that would provide a range of textures. Of course, we needed to work within a budget too.
Next step was to create a mock up. We gathered a selection of objects from around the workshop, including the paint packaging. We realised that we would need a frame to build into, this would assist with balancing and consistency. We started to notice circles; The YesColours dot - a transparent round window on the paint pouches used to show the colour inside, the round sample pots, the black lids, the circles at the end of a roller. Finding ways to repeat these shapes would be key in representing the branding and in developing consistency across each still.
We made a list of all of the different objects we could use and decided that every set would feature the same items, each time arranged in a different way. Each colour would feature in 2 images, once in a collection still and once in a group still, it was integral that we had more than one object painted to avoid two of the same objects featuring in the same still. We decided that each of the 62 colours would need to be applied to a minimum of 3 objects. This would allow enough variation when building each set to ensure that every image was different. Confusing huh.
Finally, we needed to decide which colour would become the 'Hero' colour for each palette. These colours would be used to paint the backdrops. They needed to provide a good grounding for the other colours in their palette, not take the attention, not disappear and importantly, they needed to work well alongside the other hero colours so that when all stills were viewed together, they worked as a full deck.
PREP
Our team of prop makers assembled at VeegaStudioHQ and during a week long workshop takeover, measured, cut & painted around 400 objects in 62 different colours and 38 backdrops in 19 colours. Dowel, brackets, cardboard tubing, packaging, doorknobs, cork, architrave, sanding blocks, disks, shelves and skirting. We used paintbrushes so that the paints texture could be seen in the final stills, always working to communicate that the product was paint.
THE SHOOT
We built each palettes set on set. The final additions to each build were dripping paint brushes, painted rollers and sample pots. Maybe our biggest challenge to date, we worked with various shapes, in various colours, with wet paint and glass. With so much room for error, it took accuracy, patience and acute attention to detail from our whole team to deliver what we feel is an incredibly refined body of work. A huge thank you to YesColours for providing us with creative freedom and ultimate trust.
FINAL OUTCOME
