Build Your Art Direction List #2
A list of artists to add to your art direction list, to have the best references and collaborators bookmarked.
Hi everyone,
A new post in the series on building your art direction list. As an art director, you are always looking for the newest techniques, outstanding artists to collaborate with or smart ways to execute something cool within the budget or brand guidelines. These people, websites, etc I add to a bookmark called my ‘art direction list’. So this series is all about helping you build your art direction list.
I always go through the newest talents at representation agencies or look for people online, save them to my art direction bookmark and visit these when building out an art direction concept for a client. Sharing these artists work, I mean by no means to rip off their work and use it as an art direction. The purpose of this is propose talent that can uplift your concept or execute it in your team and add their own flair.
Most of the time, an art direction concept is quite simple and easy to understand, but it really comes to life when you pick the right talent, create the best briefing you could make and pick out all the details together. Consider this as a cheat sheet for moving into pre-production. I have a long list of people, but I’ll start with sharing three.
1. Yuji Watanabe - Photographer
Clients include: Zara, Ebony. Vogue Italia and more..
I recently ran into Yuji’s work on Instagram and was immediately intrigued. The photographs look so timeless, very contemporary yet nostalgic. The sepia colours and faded look is very distinctive of their style. Yuji is based between Tokyo and Paris and I think you can definitely see the influences in the work. Below a selection of my favourite photographs.
2. Juliette Cassidy - Photographer and Director
Clients include: Dior, Adidas, Fila, Gucci and more..
I’ve been following organisation and global movement Skateistan for years and this is how I discovered Juliette Cassidy’s work. Her work seems to be a mixture of fashion photography and documentary, mainly with women was the subject. She’s also done kids photography. Her work feels warm, light and has a sense of realness to it.
3. Julian Song Wanjie - Photographer and Creative Director
Clients include: Thom Browne, Nike, Rimowa, Off-White and more..
When I discovered Julian’s work I couldn’t get enough and looked through every project on his website. His strength is at expressing characters and in each image the model portrays one. His work is highly curated with playful concepts and an attention for details. I think the images below tell the story..
Three different artists with each their own signature that can uplift your art direction as a collaborator/talent on the project. I am aiming to keep sharing these to help you grow your art direction list continuously. Just an FYI is that Sunday’s post will be coming a bit later, probably Monday or Tuesday as I am on a couple of shoot productions this week and haven’t had the time yet to finish my post unfortunately. Apologies.
Have a look at the previous post on this series to discover more artists:
Love,
Zoe
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