Trends | 2023-2025
Lowe's Home Improvement | 8 Sets
Concept Development | Set Design | Art Direction Prop Styling | Sourcing | Project Management
After a few years designing and directing the annual Lowe's Trends Campaign I've come to understand the brand's priorities. The overarching goal on these shoots is it to showcase in-store Lowe's home products alongside of their building materials, as well as web only merchandise. A large challenge we face on these shoot is only using products from Lowe's and designing around their private label brands to push those sales. We also partner with Valspar to create a overarching color stories across the different sets. From tiles, to moulding, to paint, the rooms were designed to maximize the amount of purchasable items we featured.
A general deck of products were presented by the client and from there I concepted, finessed, and designed spaces.
The Designs
The designs needed to be approachable while offering a dash of innovation to capture interest. Maintaining this balance was very important and enabled us to elevate the imagery while staying on brand. Lowe's home decor products are very transitional in nature. Meaning one product may have to ability to be reinterpreted and styled in different spaces.
Creating layers of depth in a scene is the key to giving a space it's sense of life. While the initial scope request single rooms without connecting spaces. Adding simple scalable spaces like a hallway, an entry, or something as simple as finishing the exterior of a wall created an additional layer of realism and allowed for wider flexibility for the photography team.
Some clients don't realize that designing for the camera is often very different than designing for someone's home. You need to take into account the specific camera lens, shot list, the product assortment, and various logistic challenges. This may result in removable walls or windows, pushing scale and perspective, or partnering with the post production team to pick up where the build team left off.
Design doesn't end at custom windows and build plans. From there we tweak the art direction's plan for camera angles and collaborate to create a lighting plan that defines where the lighting is motivated from and how the lighting should look. For this job specifically we blended the look the brand's lighting standards and pushed them slightly to create more elevated and realistic atmosphere.
The Direction
Just like any other project identifying the priorities and constraints are the first step that was taken. This is where the foundation for the project is built, which informs where the creative has the potential to go. This particular campaign needed to represent various interior styles that were trending at the moment.
With a retailer as large as Lowe's that caters to a wide variety of customer profiles. We have to be varied and aware of maintaining a consistent concept and message across the various set styles throughout the campaign. Targeting the weekend warriors, the tradespeople, and your average millennial mom we had to be intentional while still staying somewhat broad.
The advantage and end-to-end service of both directing and managing the creative team is that it ensures everyone is aligned while staying on vision. Unfortunately when the logistic side of the workflow isn't in lockstep with the creative you can loose both time and money. Streamlining this under one umbrella is an easy way of avoiding unnecessary headaches.
The Shipwreck
This the first year I partnered with Lowe's to creative direct and design their 2024 Halloween Campaign. This shoot consisted of 3 different sets: a dilapidated house, a cemetery, and the interior of a shipwreck, all of which were built in studio. The shoot also had a portion that was shot on location.
I developed comprehensive creative decks for each of these scenes as well as the designing and fabricating custom props.
Our Art Department of 15 worked together over the course of around a month to create these spaces.
A year later Lowe's came to collaborate on their 2025 Halloween Campaign.
+More on the 2025 campaign here
The Propping
Looking at the final assets it's easy to notice the props, but the logistics it took to get them there is something that's often overlooked. Communicating, maintaining project benchmarks, and staying organized is essential to having the art department operations run smoothly. Spreadsheets, order tracking, emails, rental trucks, and packing are all necessary aspects of ensuring these intentionally selected props make it safely to set.
With 8 sets you can probably imagine there are a lot of items to keep track of. We had hero products, secondary products, and few extra racks of additional prop options. Understanding the client's personality and exactly how the assets are being used allows us to plan for potential pivots on set. Changes on set are a natural part of the process but we like to be prepared for different outcomes when its finally showtime.
We balanced offsetting Lowe's products with touches of props sourced from architectural salvage shops, antique dealers, and makers. This is a fine line and a necessary one. Creating this realistic sense of depth is a crucial part to crafting a lived-in space.
The Shoot
My process is somewhat unique with how "hands on" my workflow is. Getting into set along side the teams and working with them has proven extremely valuable in communicating subjective ideas to visual thinkers.
With my previous history of working as a prop stylist, my prop team and I have a very intuitive short hand for communicating. Additionally when timelines are tight or running behind, I seamless step in and offer an extra set of hands to get us across the finish line.
8 sets and hundreds of photos later we handed over a project that we all were happy to put our names on. The clients were very pleased with how cohesive and well executed the project was, surpassing the quality of their previous years imagery.
Naturally productions of this scale are challenging but we are here to streamline that creative workflow and set obtainable deliverables and clear expectations. At the end of the day we are here to assist in translating your story into an actionable plan and provide expert level guidance and direction on exactly how to bring your story to life.
Concept
Pitched concepts for 3 set builds, on location scenes, and product shot.
Project
Management
Managed art department timelines, work schedule and project benchmarks.
Art Direction
Developed creative decks and directed art department, styling, scenic, photo and video team.
Budget
Maintained budgets for our various sets and the labor of the art department team.
Sourcing
Transported and procured specialty props with salvaged architectural elements.
Art Department
Organized multidisciplinary crew of stylists, fabricators, merch handlers, and scenics.
Design
Designed detail rich sets, along with color selection, scenic instruction and lighting direction.
Organization
Maintained a highly organized prop department and prepared select products to be returned mid shoot.
The Process
A project of this scale takes an immense amount of planning. Establishing clear expectations, strong direction and detailed briefs aligns all the various teams on the overall creative and logistic goals.
I collaborated very closely with the producers on studio's production team to ensure the proposed daily shot lists made sense for the various teams workflows and ensuring the movements of the lighting teams overlapped in a way that made sense with the movements of my styling team.
The Propping
The House
This the first year I partnered with Lowe's to creative direct and design their 2024 Halloween Campaign. This shoot consisted of 3 different sets: a dilapidated house, a cemetery, and the interior of a shipwreck, all of which were built in studio. The shoot also had a portion that was shot on location.
I developed comprehensive creative decks for each of these scenes as well as the designing and fabricating custom props.
Our Art Department of 15 worked together over the course of around a month to create these spaces.
A year later Lowe's came to collaborate on their 2025 Halloween Campaign.
+More on the 2025 campaign here
In order to sell that this once was a conservatory we would need thousands of plants. Overall the space needed to feel like it was being reclaimed by nature from the outside in. The plants that once were intentionally grown inside were long dead and now vines, branches, and dirt had broken through the glass window panes and started taking the space back.
The plan was to be intentional about our plant placement wile keeping in mind where plants would naturally die if they were abandoned. Areas closest to the broken glass of would have access to outside water while the area closest to the brick wall and the grassy area in the middle would be dead.
However, the week before we were due to begin shooting we got a call that the shot was being put on pause again. We had already driven these plants over 100 miles and were over halfway through installing the plants in the set. From that point we took a pause to come up with a plan, finished placing our plants, took a video record of where everything belonged, and then stuck everything. From that point we found someone to care for the thousands of plants while the brand settled on how they wanted to proceed.
The Propping
In order to sell that this once was a conservatory we would need thousands of plants. Overall the space needed to feel like it was being reclaimed by nature from the outside in. The plants that once were intentionally grown inside were long dead and now vines, branches, and dirt had broken through the glass window panes and started taking the space back.
The plan was to be intentional about our plant placement wile keeping in mind where plants would naturally die if they were abandoned. Areas closest to the broken glass of would have access to outside water while the area closest to the brick wall and the grassy area in the middle would be dead.
However, the week before we were due to begin shooting we got a call that the shot was being put on pause again. We had already driven these plants over 100 miles and were over halfway through installing the plants in the set. From that point we took a pause to come up with a plan, finished placing our plants, took a video record of where everything belonged, and then stuck everything. From that point we found someone to care for the thousands of plants while the brand settled on how they wanted to proceed.
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