Trim-A-Tree | 2023-2025
Lowe's Home Improvement | 14 Sets
Concept Development | Set Design | Art Direction | Art Department | Prop Styling | Sourcing | Project Management
The annual Lowe's Trim-A-Tree campaign is always a large scale production with on location exterior and interior needs, along with set builds in studio that range from room scenes, to exterior shoots, to more abstract product sets. While this is a shoot we all look forward to every year it takes a lot of planning. We normally start these conversations as soon as the product lists are approved for that year.
Building the right team for a project like this is essential. Any shoot that is holiday focused is going to add an additional layer of details and logistics. From wrapping hundreds of presents, to snowing the exterior of a home, to fluffing dozens of fake trees you need to make sure you over prepare.
+See what it really looks like to shoot a campaign out-of-season here
2023
This was the first year working with the brand on their Christmas campaign. We had heard stories about the scale of this shoot and how long to took to capture everything but hadn't had an opportunity to test our hand at it until now. This year there were dozens of different collections ranging from cottage core small home decor to blue modern baubles to outdoor lawn decor so we needed a neutral vision to unify the campaign and give a sense of continuity.
We decided on a color story filled with warm whites, earthy greens, and dark browns to round out the palette. The sets that were being designed to be built in studio needed to feel part of the same world as the location in order for all of the imagery flow together.
It took several weeks of shooting, endless fake snow and multiple moving trucks to transport all of the products in order to bring this product assortment to the customer.
2024
After having the success of the previous year's campaign under our belts we had a better understanding of what to expect this year. While there are certain things we know we will shoot every year; Lowe's is anything but formulaic about how they shoot their product.
Lowe's added the needs of the social team this year, resulting in the addition of video content needs to our shot list. Personally I really enjoy integrating video along side photo into our shoots. It enables us to tell a more complete story and it helps to unify the reach and vision of the campaign across in store signage, web, and socials.
Lowe's invests in trend forecasting and developing product lines around those trends. Two of those trends this year were costal Christmas and moody traditionalism. I designed a second story landing with a balcony over looking a inlet and a color drenched english inspired living room to showcase their product lines. We also shoot product laydowns, built out a garage set, built a iridescent set, and shot over the course of a week at two different locations.
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
2025
This year the brand was very unsure of how customers would respond the increased cost of good caused by the tariffs. This is a challenge we faced on our 2025 halloween campaign that year as well. With the increased cost of goods they decided to drastically shrink that year's product assortments and focused on new licensed product and reusing imagery from previous years.
I designed sets for their Grinch, Rudolph, Bluey, and Nightmare Before Christmas collections. All of these movies had differing looks so we needed an idea that brought them all together. The color story and concept needed to unify the different characters. We didn't have the budget to build out different 3D background and props for each of these sets so I suggested we design and fabricate stylized theater flats instead. This enabled us to showcase the iconic styles of each of these IPs while letting them share a design commonality.
We also shot a few product collections on a green monochromatic set and on location.
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.
Gift Wrapping
Wrapped countless presents for each year's gift wrap paper collections
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 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
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